Like the short story writer Hasan Azizul Huq and the scholar Anisuzzaman,
Badruddin Umar, too, outstanding in his own way, crossed over from West to East, from Burdwan to Dhaka. Not in the traumatic year of 1947 but in 1950 when fumes of religious bigotry choked Bengal again.
Umar’s father was Abul Hashim, a redoubtable leader of the Muslim League, who nurtured a clear Leftist leaning. The son never tired of narrating his father’s desperate effort in 1947 along with Sarat Chandra Bose, the towering leader of Bengal Congress, to carve out a sovereign Bengal unattached to both India and Pakistan. They failed but their engagement proved that Umar grew up in a vibrant political family where shades of all politicians came, except the Hindu Mahasabha. Both father and son were actively engaged in the historic Language Movement of 1952.
After completing his studies at Dhaka University, the brilliant Badruddin went to Oxford, where he attained a tripos in political science, philosophy and economics. Upon return, he first joined Dhaka University as an academic and then he was offered the assignment of establishing the faculty of social sciences at Rajshahi University in 1963. By then, he had severed his Islamic anchor and had turned into a committed Marxist-Leninist.
A cosy, academic career beckoned him but he spurned it because his ideals did not permit him to follow the prescriptions of the authoritarian regime of the then governor Abdul Monem Khan, who came to dictate from West Pakistan. Badruddin decided, once and for all, that he would not serve a second master again. Instead, he would devote himself totally to politics and write books. This absolute disdain for material uplift in the urban-bourgeois milieu of Dhaka wedded to calculation and compromise gave him a unique dimension.
Umar joined the East Pakistan Communist Party in 1969 and edited its mouthpiece Ganashakti. He wrote three interrelated masterpieces on communalism and culture: Samprodayikota or Communalism (1966), Sanskritir Sankat or Crisis of Culture (1967) and Sanskritik Samprodayikota or Cultural Communalism (1968). All three exposed the compulsive machinations of the West Pakistani rulers to suppress Bengali identity and culture in the name of their brand of Islam.
The rebellious students on the campuses imbibed his message. In Crisis of Culture, he proclaimed, “You cannot be a Bengali unless and until you have read Charyapad, Vaishnav Padavali, Michael Madhusudan and, above all, Rabindranath.” This resurgence of Bengali identity led to the Liberation War and the emergence of Bangladesh in 1971.
Umar established himself as the most resplendent commentator and analyst of the society of East Bengal and beyond. His classic text on Bengal Renaissance Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar O Unish Shataker Bangali Samaj or Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar and 19th Century Bengali Society (1974) revealed the effulgence and darkness of that historic phase with exemplary clarity in just 100 pages. He wrote more than 100 books in English and Bengali, and among these, the two very best are his volumes on the Language Movement and the emergence of Bangladesh.
But it would be a travesty to confine him to texts only. He remained an activist par excellence. He debated, disagreed and even quarrelled with his comrades while dissecting the reality around and formulating political programmes. He broke ranks, formed new units and ultimately functioned as the president of the Jatiya Mukti Council and editor of the journal Sanskriti.
Umar felt at home in the socioliterary club Bangladesh Lekhak Shibir where he conversed animatedly with remarkable creators like Hasan Azizul Huq, Shaukat Ali and, above all, Akhtaruzzaman Elias. Elias was not a practising politician, so there was no scope for any tussle. In fact, his masterly epic Chilekothar Sepai or Sentry of the Attic (1986), transcribed Umar’s political vision into a deathless onmarch where the subaltern protagonist Khijir led the people’s rebellion and urged the middle class to follow by erasing its vacillation. That was Umar’s dream — people’s uprising championed by the exploited after forging rocklike, revolutionary unity.
His advice to his juniors was “Read Lenin, his What Is To Be Done.” But why? Because, in his words, “Marxism Leninism is not mere theory or philosophy but relentless praxis.” On innumerable occasions, he led rousing processions and protest marches in Dhaka, Chittagong and Rajshahi. Standing right in front, he held aloft with
others huge banners condemning “imperialism, semi-feudalism, neo-liberalism, fundamentalism and communalism”. None dared touch him, not even military dictators, because he had attained an impregnable prestige.
He remained the harshest critic of his society till the very end. In August 2024, he greeted the latest people’s revolt as it had brought down the Sheikh Hasina-led Awami League regime. But when the movement desiccated all too soon, he gave a series of scathing interviews condemning the “student leaders” and “fundamentalists” who had been given a fresh lease by the interim administration. He departed an irrepressible critic, nursing his salvationary dream.