Mohammad Azam, Director General of Bangla Academy, has remarked that Badruddin Umar — writer, researcher, politician, and president of the Jatiya Mukti Council — was one of the rare few who, during that extraordinary decade of the 1960s, most profoundly captured what he called "the unconscious of the age, the sleeping undercurrent of the times."
Azam made the comment at a seminar on Badruddin Umar held at Bangla Academy this Friday afternoon at 3pm. Professor Anu Muhammad had been scheduled to chair the seminar but was unable to attend due to illness, and Mohammad Azam presided in his place.
In his address, Azam said: "The reason he was able to grasp it is that he was prepared. We should see his knowledge of Marxism as part of that preparation, his reading of Western philosophy and theory as part of that preparation."
"It was precisely because he was ready that the unconscious of the age — as it had revealed itself to a handful of others — revealed itself to Badruddin Umar as well."
He further observed that Badruddin Umar was one of the central figures in what could be called the modern era of intellectual life, theoretical discourse, and Marxist thought in Bangladesh.
The keynote paper at the seminar was presented by Firoz Ahmed — member of the political council of Ganasamhati Andolon, former president of Bangladesh Chhatra Federation, and member of the Constitution Reform Commission.
In his remarks, Firoz Ahmed noted that Badruddin Umar never considered a mass uprising alone to be sufficient.
"He showed that Bangladesh has seen popular uprisings of various scales, yet without a political party that has an active programme, a vision for transforming the country, and a clear imagination of what the state should look like — without such a party, the old state can return even after an uprising and reassert the same grip of domination over it."
The seminar was also addressed by Sumon Rahman, poet, fiction writer, and faculty member at the University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh.
