Professor Salahuddin Ahmed was a wealth of society, not just for Bangladesh but for India too. His demise is a sad event for us all
The Indian sub-continent lost a fine scholar and humanist — and Presidency University, Kolkata, an outstanding alumnus — in the passing of AF Salahuddin Ahmed, Bangladesh's National Professor, on October 19. Prof Ahmed, who did his BA with honours in history from Presidency University, then College, and MA in the same subject from Calcutta University, also received a Masters' degrees from the College of Oriental and African Studies, london, the University of Pennsylvania in the United States and a doctorate in history from the University of london. Neither these academic awards, nor his many publications, impressive as they were in themselves, however, reflect the enormous respect in which he was held by Bangladesh's academic community and civil society. Steeped in MN Roy's philosophy of Radical Humanism, he was closely associated with the Radical Democratic Party founded by the latter.
Professor Ahmed’s voice was a voice of sanity and wisdom in Bangladesh's public life. Closely supported by his wife, Hamida Khanom, he had unfailingly taken a resolute stand against Islamic fundamentalism — indeed, fundamentalism of all kinds — and the rights of minorities. Ms Khanom, who had graduated from Bethune College, before doing her masters from Kolkata University, and who had preceded him to the hereafter, had retired as the principal of the College of Home Economics in Dhaka, and was a distinguished educationist herself.
Professor Ahmed's notable books in English include Perspectives on History, Society and Politics; Social ideas and social change in Bengal 1818-1835, Bangladesh Tradition and Transformation, Bengali Nationalism and the Emergence of Bangladesh. His well-known books in Bengali are Itihash O oitijjo Bangalir Sadhana O Bangalir Muktijuddha and Bangladesh: Jatiyabad, Swadhinata, Gonotantro. Besides, he had played an important role in the publication of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's Ashamapta Atmajiboni, which came out in English as Unfinished Memoirs.
Awards for Professor Ahmed's many-sided contributions included the Bangladesh Sadhinota Padak, the country's highest award for contributions to a multiplicity of fields including the War of liberation, the language movement, education, literature, journalism, public service, science and technology and various forms of arts, in 1999. Earlier, in 1991, he had been awarded the prestigious Ekushey Padak, commemorating the martyrs the Bangladesh's language movement killed on February 21, 1952.
Firm friendship with India was the corner-stone of his approach to foreign affairs. His philosophy, activities and role as a teacher had deeply inspired a large number of Bangladesh's scholars and public persons including Mr Shahriar Kabir and professor Muntasir Mamun. Both Mr Kabir, a prolific writer, journalist, film-maker and human rights activist, and Professor Mamun, an author, historian, scholar and translator who teaches history at Dhaka University, had played a crucial role in preserving the secular and democratic legacies of the liberation War and combating communalism and Islamic fundamentalism. Both were arrested and persecuted by the Bangladesh Government under the prime ministership of Begum Khaleda Zia, for their forthright stand against communal riots and atrocities on Hindus. Both were at the forefront of the movement for the arrest and prosecution of war criminals and played a key role in the setting up of the International War Crimes Tribunal in 2009 in which Professor Mamun appeared as a key prosecution witness in 2012.
It was courageous and relentless efforts by people like them that prevented the Jamaat and other violent Islamist bodies from destroying secularism and democracy in Bangladesh, seriously threatened when the Bangladesh Nationalist Party ruled the country in alliance with the Jamaat from 2001 to 2006, and, more recently, when the two had launched a murderous campaign to scuttle the parliamentary elections. Powerfully reinforcing their efforts was the intellectual ambience created by scholars and intellectuals like professor Salahuddin Ahmed.
Bangladesh's Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, who visited his residence in Banani, Dhaka, to pay her last respects and offer her condolences to family members, prayed for him and, dwelling on his many contributions, described him as a “wealth of society” whose passing was a great loss. She could not be more right.