When our national liberation movement was shaping up in the 1960s, two cultural organisations named Sundaram and Amra Samudramukhi were very active in a district town, Mymensingh, with their acts of culture kindling people’s aspirations for liberation, much in the same way as Amilcar Cabral postulated in the high noon of decolonisation.
A young college teacher, and progressive writer, Jatin Sarkar, aided by some of his radical students, was the prime mover in launching those efforts. But the Intelligence Branch of Pakistan Police was hard on its heels to put paid to everything they were doing.
Then the principal of the local government college – a reputed institution named after the proverbial Anandamohan Basu – came forward to shield them from the menacing police gaze by presiding over all their programs and explaining in lucid terms what Bengali language and literature, the Pohela Boishakh festival, Rabindranath Tagore, and all that constitute Bengali culture meant to them.
The principal’s name was Kabir Chowdhury – a name I had heard in my boyhood from those cultural activists who were effusive about his courage, scholarship, and oratorical skills. Word soon spread that when a gang of the infamous National Student Federation (NSF) workers, led by the students’ union vice-president, had stormed into that principal’s room trying to force him to do something unfair, he had just taken out his revolver and driven them out straight away.
And, needless to say, all this happened at Abdul Monem Khan’s own town, at a time when he was the “mighty” governor of the then East Pakistan.
A year or so later, I got a copy of a book titled Prachin Greecer Birkahini that led me into a fascinating mythical world, narrating the thrilling exploits of the epic heroes and gods and goddesses of ancient Greece. The author of the book was none other than that brave and scholarly principal Kabir Chowdhury, who had already become something of a legend in the Mymensingh area.
It was only a few days before I found myself gleefully clasping a copy of Swargacharan – a book he had translated from John Steinbeck’s The Pastures of Heaven. Soon after, a couple of Jack London novels and Eugene O’Neill dramas in his translation came along to fire my imagination and boost my curiosity about him.
By then, I had come to know much about Kabir Chowdhury. Some of his radio talks on literature in the early 70s helped me take very useful lessons and accept him as my Dronacharya from afar. But, I had still a long way to go to reach him. When, in the late 70s, it came to getting into the department he was heading at Dhaka University, I often wondered worriedly if he would take me as one of his students.
Oh yes, he did. To my great relief! At long last I was his student! Happily, for me, he started teaching us Greek classics – a treasure-trove of which he had opened my eyes with long ago.
The more I saw him in the class and outside, the more I was convinced that he was cast in the Apollonian mold. He was no less handsome and wise than a Greek god. The clarity, order, and symmetry that characterised the classical worldview were his hallmarks. He had a genius for simplifying complex things and presenting them in very easy terms.
His love for simplicity tempted some pedants to downplay his scholarship, but I believe that in their heart of hearts they knew he was much superior to them.
Sometime, in 1979, I got the much-coveted opportunity to get closer to him when it fell to me to take him to my hometown Netrakona, where he was invited to a literary conference as chief guest. The memories of staying near him for a couple of days, listening to his insightful comments on life and literature, still stick in my mind.
With his record as an extraordinarily brilliant student of English
literature, which was reportedly second only to Buddhadeb Bose’s, he could have entered the Indian Civil Service or any other glamorous profession.
But he preferred to teach and write because he thought that was the best service he could render to his country. He was a deeply political being in the Aristotelian sense, and he never pretended to be neutral on issues that demanded engagement.
As this country has long turned into a battlefield of conflicting identities, he was disliked by many who took him as an ideological opponent. But the fact remains that he was always steadfast in his struggle against what we know as communalism and religious fundamentalism, and he never strayed away from what he perceived as the road to progress.
He would have just turned 92 had he been alive. I lack words to express my huge debt of gratitude to him as one of his students and readers. I only wonder what he would have done if he were still here – his country is burning, and innocent men, women, and children are being roasted every day for the breakfast of unscrupulous politicians.
Sir, we have mastered the art of looking the other way, especially when our air is thick with the smell of burnt human flesh and all kinds of perverted logic is used to condone heinous crimes in the country you wanted so passionately to be born. Would you please care to come back for a while with your revolver, and teach us a lesson the way you taught the NSF goons at Anandamohan College more than four decades ago?