Prof.
Kabir Chowdhury :Voice of Secular Democracy |
Kabir Chowdhury was born in 1923 in Brahmanbaria of the then
Tipperah district of united Bengal where his father was working as a civil
servant at the time. He grew up in an atmosphere of liberal ideas and secular
thinking. His father was a devout muslim but completely free from any trace
of religious fanaticism. Kabir’s many close friends in school belonged
to the Hindu community. When he studied English literature at the Dhaka University
in the early 1940s he was greatly impressed by the writings of H.G. Wells,
George Bernard Shaw and Bertrand Russell, among others. During the second
world war he was deeply troubled by the Nazi atrocities carried out in their
concentration camps, the mass killing of Jews as a plan of ethnic cleansing
and the destruction of all democratic norms. Kabir’s faith in democracy,
secularism and liberal thoughts grew stronger by the day and he found himself
drawn to socialist ideology.
After the partition of the subcontinent in 1947 and the emergence of Pakistan
as an autocratic state with theocratic ideals, the democratic and secular
aspirations of Kabir and his friends received a rude shock. During the 50s
and the 60s the Bengalees of the then East Pakistan waged a relentless struggle
to free themselves from the yoke of Pakistan’s neocolonial hegemony.
The Bengalees found great inspiration in their age old secular culture and
traditions and in their rich language and literature.
In the late 1960s the movement of the Bengalees, first for regional autonomy
and then for independence, gathered great momentum. Bangla Academy, the premier
institution of language and culture of the region, became the fountain-head
for propagation of the ideals of Bangali nationalism which was rooted in secular
democratic values. Kabir Chowdhury was the head of Bangla Academy from early
1969 to the middle of 1972. He played a major role as the Director of Bangla
Academy in propagating secular values during the mass movements of 1969 and
1970. After the genocide of 25 March 1971, he continued to disseminate the
ideology of secularism and democracy but, understandably and of necessity,
surreptitiously. Then Bangladesh emerged as a sovereign independent nation
after a nine-month long war of liberation and Kabir Chowdhury began to work
tirelessly through his writings, speeches and formal and informal discussions
to imbue the citizens of the newly independent country with the values of
democracy, secularism, non-communalism, tolerance and liberal humanism.
The offices he held from 1972 to mid-1975 helped him in his task. After leaving
Bangla Academy he became the member-secretary of the first National Education
Commission set up by the government of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman,
under Dr. Kudrat-e-Khuda’s chairmanship. From there he went on to become
the secretary of Education, Sports and Cultural Affairs of the government
of Bangladesh. Both as a member-secretary of the national education commission
and as education secretary to the government he tried to incorporate secular
and democratic values in the curriculum, specially at the primary level, and
achieved at that time a certain degree of success. But all this got a severe
setback when the Father of the Nation was killed on 15th August 1975. Kabir
Chowdhury and his associates took their stand against the onrushing tide of
reaction. The regimes of Ziaur Rahman, General Ershad and later of Khaleda
Zia moved away from the principles of the war of liberation and, in one way
or another, encouraged fundamentalism. Kabir Chowdhury and his associates
tried to stem the growth of communalism and religious fundamentalism by organising
meetings, rallies and seminars not only in the metropolitan city of Dhaka
but also in several outlying cities of the country. In these activities Kabir
Chowdhury provided inspiring leadership. He headed several organisations that
worked for secular democracy, such as the “Committee for Resisting the
killers and Collaborators of 1971”, better known as “Ekattorer
Ghatak Dalal Nirmul Committee”, “Citizens Social Rights Movement”,
and “Citizens United Front”. He worked closely with the late Jahanara
Imam in trying to bring to book the killers of 1971 as war criminals. Along
with several others he helped in setting up a People’s Court which found
Golam Azam, the Ameer of Jamat-e-Islam, and some other colleagues of his guilty
of war crimes, and urged the government of Bangladesh to try them in a properly
constituted tribunal. But the then pro-fundamentalist government, instead
of during that, declared Kabir Chowdhury and 23 other distinguished/colleagues
of his as traitors to the state and instituted a formal case against them.
The case was withdrawn later during the caretaker regime headed by retired
Chief Justice Mohammad Habibur Rahman.
After the emergence of Bangladesh as an independent nation-state its association
with many socio-cultural organisations of various countries rapidly developed
at non-government level. Branches of many such organisations were formed in
Bangladesh, namely, Afro-Asian Writers Union, World Peace Council, Afro-Asian
Peoples Solidarity Organisation and several friendship Societies. Kabir Chowdhury
acted as Chairman of the Bangladesh Afro-Asian Writers Union for many years.
He was also a member of the Presidium of the Bangladesh World Peace Council
and the Bangladesh Afro-Asian Peoples Solidarity Organisation. He headed the
Bangladesh¾ Soviet Friendship Society for over a decade. He is currently
the President of the Bangladesh Vidyasagar Society and Chairman of the Advisory
Council of Ekattorer Ghatak Dalal Nirmul Committee. In all the above capacities
he has significantly contributed to the dissemination of secular ideas and
democratic values. He has written extensively on anti-fundamentalism, religious
fanaticism and communalism, and has stressed the need for developing broad
human values and for realizing the importance of cultural diversity, and the
imperatives for developing a pluralistic society. The very titles of some
of his books clearly show it, for example :
Human Welfare and other essays; Who wants to live without liberty?; Unfinished
Liberation War and other issues; Bangabandhu, Liberation War and the Pursuit
of Intellectual Freedom; Let Fire Inflame Your Heart; and Taslima Nasreen
and the Issue of Women’s Liberation.
Included in his book Miscellaneous Writings are essays entitled
“The Power of Culture”, “Culture, Religion and Civil Society”,
“Thousand Years of Bengali Culture”, “Dismantling the Hostile
Images of Hindu-Muslim Disunity”, and “Conflict of ideologies”.
In his book written in English called “Of Ghosts and Other essays”
there is an essay entitled “Supremacy of the Heart” and another
called “Of Human Rights”. His book Human Welfare and other Essays
has among other articles “Communalism”, “Fundamentalism
and Fascism”, “Bengali Nationalism”, “Unfinished War
of Liberation”, and “Religion for Man, or Man for Religion”.
Kabir Chowdhury was the Chairman of the Committee that organised the South
Asian Conference on Communalism and Fundamentalism held in Dhaka some time
ago. In 1994 when the Islamic fundamentalists of Bangladesh declared poet
Taslima Nasreen a heretic and demanded her head Kabir Chowdhury strongly came
out in her defense.
In his long career Kabir Chowdhury has spoken at many national and international
meetings of writers and social activists on literature, socialism, secularism
and democracy. He has addressed gatherings in Germany, Russia, USA, Bulgaria,
Angola, Japan, Pakistan and India.
For his contribution to education, literature and civil society movement Kabir
Chowdhury has been nationally and internationally honoured. Among the numerous
awards he has received are the Bangla Academy Literacy Award, the Ekushey
Award, the Independence Day Award, Bangabandhu National Award, Mohammad Nasiruddin
Literary Award, Sher-e-Bangla Award and India’s William Carey Award.
In 1998 he was made National Professor of Bangladesh.
Now in his 81st year he continues to teach in the English Department of Dhaka
University as a part-time teacher and is as staunch a fighter for democracy
and secularism as ever.