User:Uck22/sandbox

Archaeological ruins point to development of civilization in Bengal since the Bronze Age. The region was dominated by successive Hindu, Buddhist and Jain kingdoms for much of antiquity. Islam arrived in classical antiquity, possibly during the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad. With the spread of Sufism and Muslim conquest in the early 13th-century, Bengal evolved into a pluralistic Indo-Islamic region. It was ruled by the Sultanate of Bengal, the Mughal Empire and the State of Bengal until the 18th-century. Following the defeat of the last independent Nawab of Bengal, the British East India Company established colonial administration and formed the Bengal Presidency in 1765. It was subsequently brought under the direct administration of the United Kingdom as part of the British Raj. During the late-19th and early-20th century, Bengal became the political, revolutionary and intellectual hotbed of the struggle against British colonialism.

The borders of modern Bangladesh took shape during the Partition of Bengal and British India in 1947, when the region became East Pakistan- part of the newly formed state of Pakistan. Due to rising cultural and linguistic nationalism; inflamed by the political, economic and ethnic discrimination of the Pakistani state; popular agitation and civil disobedience led to the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971. After independence, the new state proclaimed a secular democracy. However, it struggled with widespread poverty and famine, as well as political turmoil and military coups. The restoration of democracy in 1991 has been followed by relative calm and economic progress. In January 2014, the Bangladeshi general election was boycotted by major opposition parties due to differences over election oversight government. It paved way for the incumbent Awami League to gain an absolute majority of 232 seats in the 300-member national assembly.

Bangladesh is a unitary, secular, democratic and parliamentary republic, with an elected parliament called the Jatiyo Sangshad. It is the eighth most populous nation in the world. Its population is diverse, multireligious and multi-ethnic within a Bengali and Muslim majority. The four largest and constitutionally recognized religions in the country are Islam (89%), Hinduism (8%), Buddhism (1%) and Christianity (1%). Bangladesh straddles the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta, one of the most fertile agrarian regions in the world. It also has one of the highest population densities in the world.