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Celebrations

Our writers....our voices

The Bengali New Year is only days away. As we prepare to welcome the year 1421, we celebrate some of the men and women who have, through their literary endeavours, enriched our cultural traditions over the decades. Enjoy!

Syed Badrul Ahsan
Serajul Islam Choudhury (born in 1936) has had a distinguished career as an academic and critic. Educated at Dhaka University, Choudhury obtained a Ph.D from Leeds University, UK. As a teacher in the English Department of Dhaka University, he established a reputation for careful class preparation and inspiring his students into the various genres of English, indeed western literature. But while he taught literature, he also went into political writing, especially for such reputed Bengali language dailies as Sangbad, which carried his weekly column Gachhpathor for many years.
Professor Choudhury, insistently a selfeffacing individual, has scores of books to his credit, each one of which deals with issues he has felt closest to his heart. He has written on literature, focusing on such aspects of it as Shakespeare. His works on politics, particularly his analyses of conditions in South Asia, have been a hallmark of the intellectual tradition he has always upheld and passed on to others. Left-wing in his view of politics, Choudhury has nevertheless brought into his intellectual observations the kind of objectivity which has regularly endeared him to readers. Serajul Islam Choudhury has, besides teaching and writing, been actively involved in the movement to preserve the environment in Bangladesh.
Humayun Ahmed (1948-2012) was in the last two decades of his life without question one of the most prolific writers of fiction in Bangladesh. His works, which have brought into play the lives and aspirations of common people in a language they identify with, have regularly been bestsellers. Once a teacher of chemistry at Dhaka University, Ahmed shot to fame with his first novel, Nondito Noroke. He did not have reason to look back after that.
The many-faceted nature of the writer has always been a pronounced affair. He has produced a number of drama serials for television and thus laid a credible claim as a leading playwright in the country. In his plays as in his novels, it is the urban middle class Bengalis who take centre stage. The extent of his appeal as a writer was demonstrated a few years ago when a poll showed him to be one often great living Bengalis.
Muhammad Habibur Rahman (1928-2014) had much of the protean about him. He served as chief justice of Bangladesh's Supreme Court and in that capacity presided over a general election in 1996 as chief advisor of a caretaker government. But if all that has been a significant phase in his life, there is too the man of letters that he has been. In recent years, before death overtook him, he wrote with passion and gusto on a wide range of subjects. Think here of law, language, literature, poetry and religion. His Banga Bangala Bangladesh promises to remain a seminal work for a very long time.
Educated in Calcutta, Dhaka and Oxford, Muhammad Habibur Rahman remains noted for his wry wit, a trait he brought into his conversations in his private as well as public life. His articles and books, on the other hand, reveal a no-nonsense approach to contemporary issues. And he wrote poetry that emanated from somewhere deep within him.
Badruddin LImar (born in 1931) has over the decades retained his pre-eminence as a leftwing progressive where writing is concerned. Son of Abul Hashim, a leading figure in Muslim League politics in the 1940s, Umar demonstrated a clear inclination toward leftist politics and to that end directed his intellectual energies in a systematic analyses of politics as he saw it or as he thought it ought to be. His energy as a writer has never flagged.
A particular aspect of Umar's work lies in his careful observation of facts and the record, a factor which has always been noticeable in the
the years. His Shamprodayikota is truly a scholar's guide to an understanding of communalism in the Indian subcontinent. There is also Shonskritir Shonkot. Perhaps Badruddin Umar is at his best when he studies the history of the Language Movement of 1952, on which event he has produced some indisputably authoritative works.
Abul Mansur Ahmed (1898-1979) was both a writer and a politician. The difficulty is in trying to understand which calling appealed to him more. Or was it a combination of the two that brought to readers his perspective on life? Suffice it to say that Ahmed was that rare breed of politicians who brought, in a way few have, a strong element of humour in his deportment. He was witty in speech and equally humorous in the written word. Even in the rather serious Amar Dekha Rajnitir Ponchash Bochhor he cannot resist bringing in a bit of humour. There is then, of course, the oft-referred-to Food Conference, a work that demonstrated conclusively the fundamentally literary bent of mind in him.
A particular work of Abul Mansur Ahmed's has been his survey of Bengali politics in the pretty incisive work, Shere Bangla Hoite Bangabandhu. It is a sweeping account of why Pakistan needed to be replaced by Bangladesh twenty fours into the division of India.
Taslima Nasreen (born in 1962) has always been famous for courting controversy with her writings. A medical practitioner until she switched to writing, first columns for weekly magazines and then going for full works of fiction, Nasreen has felt comfortable in expressing radicalism in her writing. She has repeatedly attacked obscurantism, argued for women's emancipation in a fundamentally conservatism society and has been open about her belief that sexual freedom is a necessary component of life and literature.
Nasreen was driven into exile in 1994 as a result of an outcry against her views. She has lived in various countries in Europe and in India, delivering talks and lectures and seeing her works translated in foreign languages. At home in Bangladesh, she continues to arouse great admiration as well as great hate.
Selina Hossain (born in 1947) is a writer constantly on the move with new ideas. In recent years her output has been of a remarkable sort, placing her on a perch where she shares the glory which comes to writers of true merit and striving. In these past three decades her writing has been prolific. She began writing soon after the liberation of Bangladesh and then went on to develop new themes and ideas for her subsequent works. Hangor Nodi Grenade, a searing commentary on the armed struggle for Bangladesh in 1971, has been powerful, purposeful reading.
z\nd those who have read her voluminous three-part novel Gaayatree Shondhya will have little reason to forget the exhaustive sociopolitical history she draws of Bangladesh all the way from the late 1940s to the mid 1970s.
Muhammad Zafar Iqbal (born in 1952) has established an enviable niche for himself among wide swaths of the reading public in Bangladesh. Besides being a teacher at Shahjalal University, he is a well-known and respect columnist because of the principled stand he has adopted against any move to undercut the essential secularism of Bengali society. His boldness has been a hallmark with him.
As a writer, Iqbal has been prolific in coming forth with works for children. That endeavour has been complemented by the excellence which shines through his many works of science fiction, a literary factor that has endeared him particularly to the younger range of readers.
Younger sibling of Humayun Ahmed, Zafar Iqbal's soul remains seared by tragedy. His
father was killed by the Pakistan army in 1971 beside a river. It was Iqbal's heart-rending task to bury him, all by himself, and then convince his disbelieving mother that her husband had indeed been murdered by the soldiers.
Moinul Ahsan Saber (born in 1958) is the son of Ahsan Habib, one of the foremost of modern Bengali poets in Bangladesh. And the young Saber, seemingly unwilling to be left behind or because family tradition demanded it, soon went into the making of literature on his own. It all began in 1982, when his novel Porasto Sohish hit the bookstores. It was only the first step in the building of a reputation.
In subsequent years. Saber was to come forth with such works as Adamer Jonno Opekkha, Manush Jekhane Jaaye na, Tumi Amake Niye Jaabe, Shongshar Japon, Pathor Shomoye and Dharabahik Kahini. He has also tried his hand at film making. Proof of that is Liliputera Ber Hobe, based on the Jonathan Swifts' Gulliver's Travels.
Imdadul Haq Milon (bom in 1958) exercises a powerful hold on the young. His fiction ranges across a rather wide field, for if he at one point dealing with historical facts in an enumeration of his stories, at another he is bringing pure, clear romance into the telling of the tale. He goes back to the classics in literature, the better to present an unambiguous expression of the sensibilities which create passion and sometimes tumult in the modern soul.
Love between man and woman is a recurrent theme in his works and keeps him on the pedestal he has created for himself over a long period of time.
A glimpse into his literary output will perhaps be a hint of his significance in these times. Read Jabojjibon, Nodi Upakhyan, Bhumiputro, Poradhinota and Rupnagar. And don't forget that eloquent instance of a work he calls Rajakartontro.
Rahat Khan (born in 1940) has been active both in the world of Bangladesh's literature and journalism. His journalistic association has for long years now been with the Ittefaq, a leading Bengali language newspaper. While his columns have regularly given fresh food for thought to readers, it is his literary peregrinations that have strengthened his hold on the public imagination. Rahat Khan took his first tentative steps in fiction at a tender age, when he was in class three.
Khan's output has been eclectic. In recent years he has achieved wide renown for such works as Moddho Maather Khelowarh. Other works of fiction from him include Ek Priyodorshini and Akangkha. His contribution to the genre of short stories has also been considerable.
Syed Shamsul Haq (born in 1935) has had a highly productive literary career. His writing has been prodigious, for it has brought within its ambience a lot of poetry, a high range of plays and an incredible arena of novels. Haq has never seemed to want for a theme and even now brims over with ideas and themes he quickly puts into fresh new creativity. Few writers have lived by literature. Haq has been one of those fortunate individuals. His poetry has been the stuff of new legend. His plays, such as Paayer Awaaj Paowa Jaaye, Juddho Ebong Juddho and Nuruldiner Shara Jibon, have broken new ground in Bangladesh's theatre.
Where Haq's novels are concerned, there is a whole mass of them that has come to readers from the late 1950s. Make note of only a few, if not more. There are Ek Mohilar Chhobi, Shimana Periye, Ek Juboker Chhayapoth, Nishiddho Loban and Khelaram Khele Ja. Tradition and modernity are in Syed Shamsul Haq most deftly combined.
SYED BADRUL AHSAN IS WITH THE DAILY STAR.