They are three

Those who were martyred in 1971 were many in number; we often say three million. Among them were the martyred intellectuals, who were selectively targeted and killed. They were murdered because they stood for Bengali nationalism; some of them were socialists. Four of them were very close to me. I have written elsewhere about the martyred Munir Chowdhury, and I will write about him at length again. Here, I speak of three: Jyotirmoy Guhathakurta, Rashidul Hasan, and Ghyasuddin Ahmed.

It must be acknowledged that there was a wide gap between Jyotirmoy Guhathakurta and Rashidul Hasan. In age, habits, and tastes, they differed more than they resembled each other—at least outwardly, that is how it appeared. Yet both were students of English literature and colleagues in the Department of English at the University of Dhaka.

Still, they were close—very close—in humility, and even closer in their love for their country. In the plain, unadorned setting of ordinary lives, they became extraordinary through two qualities that seemed simple but were, in fact, rare.

Professor Jyotirmoy’s name was listed in that Military Intelligence register where only extremely dangerous individuals were recorded. He first realised this when he applied for a passport to travel to Kolkata. His elderly mother was gradually losing her eyesight, and it was her wish to see her eldest son. For this reason, Professor Jyotirmoy was deeply anxious inwardly, though he never showed it outwardly.

He was always very reserved about such matters. He tried repeatedly himself, and others tried on his behalf as well; but no one could secure a passport for someone whose name appeared in the military register as a “communist.” He was the provost of Jagannath Hall. The army was reportedly enraged by a fabricated claim that students of that hall were engaged in anti-state military preparations, and it was rumoured that the provost might have been arrested even before 25 March, had a comparatively more decent individual not been appointed provincial governor.

On the night of 25 March, the invaders shot him. With timely medical treatment, he might have survived; but even if he had survived March, it is highly doubtful that he would have survived December—just as Santosh Bhattacharya did not, and just as Jyotirmoy Guhathakurta’s own student, Rashidul Hasan, did not.

Rashidul Hasan’s name, too, was in the military’s secret register. In the third week of September, armed men raided the university area in search of him and took him away from his room at the Arts Building. He had never imagined himself important enough for armed soldiers to come looking for him, yet the army found him with ease. When the Al-Badr forces came again in December, he was still in the university area. He had nowhere else to go in the city. He had come as a refugee from West Bengal.

Both of them were national teachers. Professor Jyotirmoy was my teacher, as he had been Rashidul Hasan’s teacher before me. Many of my ideas about life and literature came from him. The debt I owe him is greater than I can fully know. Professor Jyotirmoy was an incorrigible rationalist—he wanted to analyze an issue before passing judgment on its value. For that reason, I often argued with him. In truth, he loved debate and was democratic to his core. He invited disagreement, encouraged argument, and above all, respected differing opinions—respected them in a way I have seen very few people do in our largely undemocratic society.

I knew Jyotirmoy Guhathakurta long before I became his direct student. When I was barely out of school, or perhaps still in it, I had read something he wrote—a book review—in a monthly magazine of the time called Mukti.
On the anniversary of MN Roy’s death, Professor Jyotirmoy once organised a very small discussion meeting—many years ago, when we were students.

He told me, “Come, and if anyone else wants to come, bring them along.” When my friend and I arrived at the Friends’ Centre building, we saw him standing alone at the doorway. Smiling, he said, “Come in, I’ve been waiting for you.” He was waiting for us—then, and later as well—so that we would come, share our views on something, and argue with him. This was his generous and warm invitation to all students. The door remains, but he is no longer there; yet does that door itself still exist?

I cannot imagine Rashidul Hasan in any profession other than teaching. It is not that I had known him for a very long time. By the time we arrived as students, he had already left the university and returned as a teacher some years later. In the intervening period, he, too, had been teaching—first for some time in Pabna, and then in his birthplace, Birbhum. He wrote as well: essays, and occasionally poetry. I came to know him during his teaching career at the university, in 1969, when a sweeping mass movement was raging across the country. We had not met before that, because when he joined the Department of English, I was away on educational leave for some time.

Neither Jyotirmoy Guhathakurta nor Rashidul Hasan was ever, under any circumstances, involved in any form of covert violence. They did not make bombs or explosives; but they had hearts—living, beating hearts. And for the ruling class, a living heart can be more dangerous than bombs and ammunition. They loved Bangladesh. Did all the country’s intellectuals share this love? No, they did not—certainly not. Many possessed the character of informers. Even among those who were patriotic, many were not as forward or as committed as Jyotirmoy Guhathakurta and Rashidul Hasan. Yet, in that old and familiar irony of fate, both of them were virtually without shelter or protection.

Professor Jyotirmoy used to tell us, half in jest, that in Pakistan you would be second-class citizens, while we Hindus, simply because we were Hindus, would be third-class. He said it jokingly, but the reality was no joke—it was tragically real. In what was then East Pakistan, Jyotirmoy Guhathakurta had almost no relatives.

He had an excellent opportunity to go directly from England to Calcutta; after the 1965 war, there was no reason for him not to realise, even while in Britain, that East Pakistan had become far more alien and hostile to people like him. The situation was extraordinary, yet no—Dhaka University was calling Jyotirmoy Guhathakurta; Basanti Guhathakurta was being called by the Manija Rahman Girls’ School in Gandaria (it was from one of her writings that I came to know of the Dholai Khal, even before I ever saw the canal).

They returned. As soon as the period for which Professor Jyotirmoy was obliged to stay to complete his higher studies ended, they bought their plane tickets and came back.

Rashidul Hasan was from West Bengal. He had come to Dhaka as a refugee; later, after completing his studies here, he returned once to his birthplace for work. But after the 1965 war, he had to come back again. He had almost no relatives in Dhaka, or in East Pakistan at all. His closest friend was, it seems, Anwar Pasha—who was taken away by the killers along with him, to be murdered. At the same time, from the same house.

The Pakistanis wanted to eliminate all possible centres of resistance. That is why Jyotirmoy Guhathakurta and Rashidul Hasan were taken away, along with many others, in the Pakistani army’s campaign of exterminating intellectuals. They also took Ghyasuddin Ahmed.

I studied alongside Ghyasuddin Ahmed at school, college, and university, and later worked with him at the University of Dhaka. Now I remain; he does not. Ghyasuddin never left the university, and my own position was much the same. I loved the university; he, I believe, loved it even more. Otherwise, why would Ghyasuddin have stayed behind in 1971, when so many of us left the university area and virtually disappeared? In that terrible time, whatever classes were held were nothing but a farce.

Ghyasuddin was a house tutor at Mohsin Hall. At the time, a few helpless students were living there—students who had been attacked by the occupying forces more than once. And there was Ghyasuddin, with his love and his sense of responsibility. On 14 December, as the defeat of the occupiers drew near, Ghyasuddin went out to see whether a problem in the water supply could be fixed, having noticed that the distressed students were not getting drinking water. It was then that the Al-Badr men seized him. He never returned.

In the eyes of the Pakistani occupying forces, both the Dhaka University Teachers’ Association and the Teachers’ Club were extremely dangerous institutions. They were convinced that teachers regularly engaged in seditious activities there, and they also believed that teachers were directly responsible for students going astray.

That is why, on the night of 25 March, they attacked not only the student dormitories but also teachers’ residences and their club, using tanks and artillery. There were no teachers in the club at the time—nor should there have been—but the invaders were so frenzied that they made no distinctions.

They killed several innocent staff members who had been sleeping in the building. That night, they showed no hesitation or discrimination in killing students in the dormitories and entering teachers’ homes to murder teachers. Ghyasuddin knew all these events in detail; yet he did not leave the campus. He was bound by a chain of duty.

The loss Bangladesh suffered by losing its martyred intellectuals is immeasurable and irreparable; and along with that loss is the unbearable pain of losing loved ones.

#Serajul Islam Choudhury
Emeritus Professor, University of Dhaka