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My Friend Akhlaq : A Tribute

by Syed Najmuddin Hashim
WE go back a long way. Akhlaqur Rahman and 1. way back nearly half a-ccntury In the nature of things few of our contem poraries survive. Some like Munier Chowdhury and Sha hecdullah Kaiser were done Io death by the collaborators of the Pakistan occupation army on the eve of tts abject surrender In December. 1971 Horrid word — collaborator — which has a surprisingly contemporaneous ring in Bangla desh. which has the virtue ol forgetting nothing perhaps because of its congenital Inability to solve current problems currently. The confusing rhetoric of the day makes yesterday s enemies of Independence undergo a sea change to become todays guarantors of independence and state sovereignty Akhlaq would have none of this passing off of wolves In sheep's clothing till the last day of his life. He said as such during our first meeting in ten years about two months ago. unhappily also our last, when he walked in unannounced into my office In the company of a common friend of our stormy student days. Syed Anwarul Karim (Sack for short), former foreign secretary and our one time PR to the UN.
Akhlaq took hts Master's In Economics from Dhaka and Manchester Universities and his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) under the celebrated Professor WW Rostow, the Innovative pro pounder of take-off economics', before Milton Friedman perhaps the last un abashed academic to uphold the magic panacea of refurbished and updated capitalism But Akhlaq survived Walt Rostows authoritative, almost authoritarian assaults to remain an unreconstructed Marxist. This last terminology too has come to mean all man ner of things to all manner of men and in later days one did not really know who among those calling themselves Ixft, Radical etc were the fish and which the fowl!
In my life Akhlaq had the remarkable jack-in-the-box quality of popping up as and when he wished, at the most unexpected moment and occasion The farthest I can remember of him is in late 1947. when as a student activist from Calc utta I met this stormy pe trel who had already made a name for himself In East Bengal as a militant of the All Bengal Students Federation. I recall with some amusement how. soon after partition. I saw Akhlaq, bloodied but unbowed like a bull >in a Spanish ring, parrying off attacks for having actively campaigned in the Sylhet Referendum for the Muslim-majorlty district s accession to Pakistan under the British plan to carve up the
Subcontinent along communal lines. He had ammunition aplenty like recalling that the SF. following the lead of the Communist Party of India, had done much to lend theoretical legitimacy and to popularizc among the masses the Muslim League's communal demand for Pakistan by equating It with the Leninist-Stallnist thesis of "Self-determination of Nations." confusing the medieval concept of religious community with the twentieth century definition of nation states. The CPI had changed course suddenly with the change in its leadership even before partition by disowning Dr Gangadhar Adhlkarl s learned thesis In support of the Pakistan demand and substituting it with the equally flawed theory of progressive India' versus reactionary Pakistan', to which feudal country no accretion of territory could be supported by any communist or progressive worth his salt. Akhlaq however survived and soon after 1947 became president of the reorganized East Bengal unit of the Students' Federation.
I next met Akhlaq in Karachi when his travel plans to the UK for higher studies were, according to him, thwarted by the then prime minister' of East Bengal Nurul
Amin, on the strength of his unsavoury police dossier. After cooling his heels for weeks on end In the Pakistan capital, he had to return to Dhaka During our long sessions in Karachi. I recall how we concurred on how Pakistan had already be come "a vast prison-house of nations, after having come to know Slndhl, Pathan and Baloch firebrand nationalists of every hue and colour.
After losing sight of my friend for a dozen years, I met with him again In the 60s In Karachi, and the meetings be came almost a daily affair, when he was joint director of the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE) housed on Bunder Road within stone's throw and almost opposite to Broadcasting House where I worked as news editor. He had returned to Karachi after a stint at Peshawar University where he had founded and built up the economies faculty. One day. I was witness to an unusual hap pening. A young man with a First in economics from the local university turned up for an interview for the job of a research assistant. Akhlaq gave him short shrift. He told him without batting an eyelid that only students from Dhaka and Peshawar universities nepd apply for the simple reason
thal Dhaka had proven quality In leaching economics, while Peshawar had lately acquired quality under his own leader ship! Akhlaq had one quality and that was of overweening, almost abrasive self-esteem and scaring contempt for those of his fellow academics whom he thought not worthy of his steel. Qf course such sterling qualities only served to endear him to us old-timers like Mahbubur Raichid. chief of the Industrial Development Bank of Pakistan and later gov ernor of the State Bank of Pakistan; AKN Ahmed of the State Bank and not long after Liberation governor of the Bangladesh Bank; Abdur Rab, a brilliant and combative central secretary who, drawing his diminutive height to Its full like bantam rooster, once told Ayub Khan that the iron man could do nothing for him because Rab one day aspired to Ayub's position of president of Pakistan; Khan Mohammad Shamsur Rahman (known as Dr Johnson for his ency < lopaedte knowledge and total recall) — intellectual, admtnts trator, diplomat, secretary of East Pakistan's planning think tpnk in the 50s and coaccused with Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in the notorious framc-up of
Agartala Conspiracy Case Raschid considered Akhlaq s economic formulations the last word in clinical precision and clarity and Rehman Sobhan as approximating the classic concept of political economist Akhlaq had his own rating system for a clan he considered overwhelmingly prone to selling out for a handful of silver and among the honorable exceptions he listed himself,
Rehman Sobhan and Antsur Rahman. I remember his fantastic performance in Rawalpindi during a nationwide live broadcast of a seminar on Ayub's five-year plan, whose architect was the super technocrat Shoaib (who owed Pakistan nothing because even his drinking water came from France — the bottkd Evian and Perrier I). When Rehman Sobhan. in his flawless Englishman's English and low-keyed voice, offered some barbed comments, the economic adviser to the OOP, Professor ML Qureisht jumped into the fray in the government s defence using the blunderbuss rather than reasoned argument. Up jumped the redoubtable Dr Akhlaqur
Rahnuin and. metaphorically If not literally rolling up hts sleeves, barked." Qureisht. Rehman Sobhan has forgotten more of economics than you can ever hope to learn!" The meeting ended In a fiasco with the authorities precipitately retreating from Ibcir venture into the glasnost of live broadcasts.
It was during his time in Peshawar that he read a keynote paper at Maulana Bhashant s Kagmari conference tn March-April, 1957. its elaboration In his 1963 publication. Partition. Integration. Economic Growth and Inter regional Trade became indispensable source material in the exposure of inter-wing economic disparity. He showed how the forced purchase by East Pakistan, at inflated monopoly prices, of manufactures of West Pakistani industries built out of our plundered jute earnings, constituted a classic example of neocofonial extraction of the Eastern Wing's wealth. Akhlaq for one was never fooled by hypocritic appeals to Islamic ideology and state loyalty which yielded value added to the West at the cost of unabated impoverish-
ment of the East.
During the 197) crisis when he was adviser to Agha Hasan Abed is United Dank, Akhlaq was untiring In hts efforts to raise funds for the Bengalees stranded in West Pakistan.
After another hiatus I came upon Akhlaq In Dhaka in 1975 and the reunion nearly ended In a fight. About his rumoured association with the Jatlyo Samajtantrlk Dal, I com mented that I could forgive political tyros of the self-professed Left being totally Ignorant of recent history but how could a seasoned socialist like him lend his authority to a party which had named itself literally after Hitler's National Socialist I “arty. the abominabk Nazi? On that occasion I well recall what he said. "If you had not been who you are and my old buddy I'd have wiped the floor with you!" Only he caustically pronounced it as baddie as in Western movies but good humour and the old camaraderie were soon restored The government of the day can be forgiven for a lot of things but not his long incarceration on dubious charges of *com-plicitv tn the ease agMnsi colonel Taber, which left Akhlaq broken In body though not tn spirit.
Our last meeting two months before his untimely death win given to reminiscing which Inadvertently was tinged with the’sadness of yet another Impending separation The work! may not remember far long Dr Akhlaqur Rahman, brilliant economist. superb tv.a her. outstanding Marxist theoretician and political ac itvisl. but the dwindling ranks of his friends will cherish the warmth of his friendship, his generosity, his prowess of tn tcllect In a scenario denuded of the mielMgcntsta and finally as a combative fighter in wor thy causes. The bell that tolls for him also tolls for those who once shared his dreams and some of his tribulations
rhe writer is a format Minister for Injormut^y and AoitMissodor to rhe •toufor l/nton