HISTORY becomes eloquent about the men she loves. The frosty barriers of time melt down to reveal the many splendoured colours of rainbow in warm radiance as the chronicles are related to men and women who boldly faced their restless times and yet retained their composure and visions that transcended their own age. Syed Mahbub Murshed was among them.

Like those of his generation and the one that followed them in the south Asian sub-continent, Murshed lived courageously under three flags. Born as a British subject, he lived to work for and saw the departure of British colonial rule from the sub-continent. As a citizen of the post 1947 two part state of Pakistan he fought, with quiet dignity to establish, protect and preserve the inalienable rights of the Bengali citizens of Pakistan even as he rose, by diligence and merit, to the high position of the Chief Justice of the High Court of erstwhile East Pakistan during the sixties.

During the post liberation period in sovereign Bangladesh of the seventies, he strived on for ensuring justice, human rights, democracy and national harmony. Retirement and failing health could not deter him from his relentless struggle for ensuring justice and equity in the context of a liberal, democratic society. In the final analysis, Chief Justice Syed Mahbub Murshed (1911-1979), an avowed spiritual and moral disciple of John Stuart Mill, was a democrat. As he himself stated in elegant simplicity:

"In my early youth, I was a Pan Islamist. I later became a socialist, until recently I used to consider myself to be a social democrat. Nowadays I think of myself as (merely) a democrat a demo-

crat, pure and simple" (The Pakistan Monitor, September 1970).

The journey was not easy. Syed Mahbub Murshed's generation of Muslim Bengalis was confronted with daunting challenges. It grew to youth not only under demeaning foreign colonial rule but in a context of sharpening communal antipathy in a reawakened sub-continent straining to break free of British Imperial control.

Scion of an aristocratic Muslim Bengali family, a brilliant student who entered the legal profession in the mid-thirties and was called to the Bar in England by the Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn in 1937, he responded to the challenges of his time with a clear head and conscience. It was a mission fraught with countless difficulties. By the forties, the Muslim separatist movement that began humbly in 1906 under the leadership of the All India Muslim League, had gained tremendous momentum.

The failure of the then subcontinental nationalist platform -the Congress -- to convince the leading Muslims of its secular character led to emergence of what could be called 'Muslim nationalism' and the Muslim League exploited it to the hilt. The liberal elements among the leading Muslim Bengalis tried their best to find a practical way out. Syed Mahbub Murshed was a young activist of this group. Through the All India Muslim Majlish formed during mid-forties, Murshed tried to bridge the Hindu-Muslim political chasm and challenge the dominance of the All India Muslim League. The Majlish said that the Muslims should ask for 'Pakistan' only if it became an unavoidable necessity (Dr Shela Sen. "Muslim Politics").

As the time for the final parting of ways drew near, Murshed joined those who enthusiastically supported the 'Cabinet Mission' plan of 1946 in its last ditch effort to keep the sub-continent together. The Cabinet Mission led by Sir Stafford Cripps proposed a near confederal sub-continent with autonomous Muslim majority groups of provinces in north-west and east of undivided

India and a Hindu majority group in the rest. It did not work.

When the partition of the South Asian sub-continent (United India) seemed inevitable during early 1947, a group of Muslim Bengalis led by late Abul Hashim, persuaded the then Premier of Bengal, H S Suhrawardy, to start negotiations with leaders of Bengal Congress, Sarat Bose (brother of the legendary South Asian nationalist leader Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose) and Kiran Shankar Roy to explore the possibility of a sovereign independent Bengal, out side both postBritish Raj India and Pakistan, Syed Mahbub Murshed and his father-inlaw AKM Zakaria, a Cougressite and Mayor of Calcutta in 1936 actively participated in these pro-

cesses which were defeated because of intransigence of the Congress leaders, Nehru and Patel. The dream that Murshed shared with many who wanted to keep Bengal intact even in the divisive days of 1947 was not to be realised. The "Congress decided upon the partition of Bengal which their forbears so bitterly opposed" (Hodson, The Great Divide P. 275). Consequently East Bengal (today's Bangladesh) became one of the five provinces of Pakistan in August 1947. Separated by a thousand miles of hostile Indian territory from its western half, East Pakistan (East Bengal) appeared a "manifest proof of the absurdity" that pre- 1971 Pakistan was.

As a relatively young member of the Dhaka High Court Bar, Syed Mahbub Murshed was drawn into the Language Movement of East Bengal. He thus participated effectively in the successful process spearheaded by the Bengali youth to gain recognition for Bangla as one of the two state languages of pre- 1971 Pakistan.

He also participated actively in the more comprehensive and longterm process of ensuring the political and economic rights of the Bengalis in Pakistan through a radical transformation of political and economic power within the state. Along with Late Abul Mansur Ahmad, noted political leader, thinker and writer, who served in the fifties as a central cabinet Minister of Pakistan, Murshed helped draft in 1954 the 21- point manifesto for the autonomy of East Bengal. The 21-point programme constituted platform of the United Front coalition of the autonomist Bengali political forces of Pakistan which routed the ruling Muslim League in the 1954 provincial elections.

Despite the restlessness of his time, Murshed was faithful to the tectonic trends of time. That loyalty to profound principles and his benighted people remained intact during his exacting and splendid years in the bench of the Dhaka High Court (1955 -- November 16, 1967). Even after the imposition of Martial Law in Pakistan in 1958, Justice Murshed worked coolly and resolutely to ensure the dispensation of justice according to the rule of law.

As Chief Justice of erstwhile East Pakistan (1964-67). Murshed faced his times with the raw courage of a

romantic idealist. That was the heyday of a successful military dictator, Ayub Khan. His rule was garnished by apparently constitutional trappings. The boldness of Murshed's judgements during these days became legends of judicial history. These judgements encompassed the so-called Minister's case (which made President Ayub Khan change the constitutional provisions relating to Ministers), the Mahmood case, the Dhaka University Convocation (1962) case and the Basic Democracies case. These proved that his commitment and loyalty to the rule of law was unflinching. He realised the essence of justice; that laws were for human beings and not vice versa. That realisation of the timeless truth antedated and followed his years in the elevated height of the bench of the High and Supreme Courts.

He remained faithful to life and, therefore, its essence, human beings. In the final analysis, Syed Mahbub Murshed was a people's man. That was why even as early as 1961 when it was neither convenient nor fashionable, he took the lead in organising the centenary of the birth of the Bengali Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore. He steadfastly stood by the essential cause of the people. He was at once an epitome of the best and noblest of the people to whom, as a constituent unit, he was unflinchingly loyal. That was why even after his resignation as the Chief Justice of erstwhile East Pakistan he played an active and leading role in the mass uprising against autocracy and forcefully advocated the case for meaningfully establishing Bangali rights at the Round Table Conference convened by the Pakistan dictator Ayub Khan during the fag end of his regime.

In post liberation Bangladesh he was instrumental to projecting the voice of reason and justice until his demise in 1979. After the emergence of Bangladesh he was the first prominent public figure who pleaded for a general amnesty for all political prisoners. He also urged the then government to start immediate negotiations for the repatriation of Bengalis stranded in Pakistan since December 1971.

Syed Mahbub Murshed was a romantic realist. He lived with his times and yet never failed to link beyond the transitory and superficial elements of contemporary years, however tumultuous and exacting those might have been. That was why along with H S Suhrawardy and Abul Hashim he fought a seemingly losing battle to keep Bengal untied and preserve the historic separateness of the Bengali people.

Syed Mahbub Murshed was certainly the epitome of a nationalist citizen of Bangladesh. He was more. He was at once a participant in and observer and analyst of life as it was lived during his times. He was at ease with several languages,

besides his mother tongue Bangla, including English, Urdu, Persian and Arabic. A gifted writer, he wrote on cultural and social themes with elegance. I had the privilege of publishing, as editor of the Dhaka English monthly Concept, several of his thought-provoking and superbly written articles during 196467. Exacting responsibilities of the top position in the High Court could not prevent him from sparing a few moments for us, Mr Mosharraf Hossain, Mr Zakiuddin Ahmed (the publisher and managing editor of Concept) and myself, whenever we went to see him and collect those writings. We were all younger then and I was a fresh teacher of the Dhaka University. Yet, he treated us as equals with whom he shared some of his fondest thoughts and dreams and depressing frustrations.

Beautiful dreams, like, good human beings such as Syed Mahbub Murshed, do not appear in vain. A noble dream inspires humanity to strive to be humane. So do the life and work of men like Syed Mahbub Murshed.