Rashed, a student of philosophy at Dhaka University, was asked by one his teachers to read a rare novel as part of a course.
In the afternoon on December 22, he went to the Central Public Library at Shahbagh in the capital and found the book among the collection. He took it out, sat at a desk and started reading it.
The chair was not occupied but there were several job recruitment guide books on the desk.
A signboard that hangs right outside the entrance to the reading room lists a set of 10 rules that everyone should follow while using the library. It is clearly written there that nobody is allowed to bring any book from the outside.
Around half an hour later, a young man came and asked Rashed to leave the chair. His name is Sohel, a former student of the capital's Jagannath University, now making preparations for taking a Bangladesh Civil Service (BCS) recruitment examination.
Sohel claimed that the desk was his for the day because he had come here even before the library opened at 8am, studied till 1pm and went outside for lunch and prayer, leaving his “belongings” on the desk.
The list of rules also suggests that nobody can keep a chair or a desk occupied and stay outside.
In a few minutes, a crowd gathered around Rashed. They all were like Sohel, gobbling up multiple choice questions from recruitment guide books that they had brought with them to the library.
To this Dhaka Tribune reporter, who was present there, it appeared that there was no room available for anyone who wanted to study anything else; nearly all the chairs were occupied and there were piles of guidebooks on all the desks.
Having failed to grab a chair, many people, including elderly persons, could be seen sitting on the ground in the alleys between bookshelves.
Rashed kept on refusing to give up the desk and the crowd started growing bigger as more government job seekers joined in; apparently oblivious to the rules of the library, they were more sympathetic towards their fellow.
In the meantime, this reporter also noticed that many people – all studying for BCS – were sleeping with their heads down on the desks.
One rule from that list says that nobody is allowed to sleep inside the library. It also asks everyone be nice enough to let others sit there and study.
So, the crowd decided to take the matter to the authorities as Rashed said he would only leave the sit if someone responsible asked him to.
Sohel, who appeared to have no idea that he had by then broken two important rules of using the library, complained about Rashed to Librarian Jillur Rahman, the most senior officer present there at that moment.
If the rules were to be followed, Rashed was a clear winner in the dispute; but Jillur Rahman did not want to take the trouble of going against the majority.
So he said: “Everyone has the right to use this library. I think you can easily solve it mutually.”
He also said: “You [the readers] have been coming here with your own books and we have been overlooking that. You can look up on the Internet; libraries in no other country in the world allow that. Not even the Scandinavian countries such as Norway, Sweden and Finland who have best library services in the world.”
When asked who told them to overlook the breach of rules, the senior librarian could not give any satisfactory answer.
“Many senior citizens have complained to us that they had to go back because could not find a chair to sit. All were occupied by BCS aspirants. Unfortunately, we have not been able to do anything in this regard,” Jillur said.
Seeking anonymity, a staff of the library said the authorities cannot take any action against the “seat grabbers” because they are very organised.
“We have stopped bothering them years ago when some of our colleagues were literally beaten by the BCS people when they tried to remind them the rules,” he said.
This reporter found out that the BCS aspirants, many of whom have been breaching rules of the library for years, have formed a team of volunteers from among them. That team reportedly looks after the “discipline” at the library.
A BCS aspirant named Kanchon is the self-proclaimed president of the volunteers. He is originally from Jessore and has a post graduation degree from the Dhaka College. He describes himself as a “senior reader” because he has been reading in the library for the last five years – from 8am to 9pm everyday.
“We can enforce the rules any day. But if we do that, there will not be a single reader here,” Jillur told the crowd and Rashed.
Rashed realised that the authorities were not going to do anything and so he decided to leave the place sensing that his opposition was very organised and sympathetic towards each other.
When contacted, Md Hafizur Rahman, director general of the Central Public Library, said: “We take it positively that people are coming to read in the library. If they did not come here, they could have wasted their time in doing bad things.”
Asked about the current situation, he said: “We have tried several times to change this; but readers do not obey our rules. Some of our colleagues were insulted by students in the past. That is why our stuff do not pretest.”
He also said: “We have a shortage of seats here. We are trying to solve this problems by building a new 13-storey building very soon.”
