Kabir Chowdhury’s second death anniversary

December 13 marked the second death anniversary of educationist, translator and author Kabir Chowdhury. He was also one of the pioneering figures of the movement against fundamentalism in Bangladesh.
Chowdhury was born in 1923 in Brahmanbaria. His family hailed from Noakhali.
With a master’s in English literature — graduating in 1944 from Dhaka University — Chowdhury was the Education Secretary in 1972, immediately after the Liberation War when his younger brother Shaheed Munier Chowdhury was killed by the local collaborators of the Pakistani army.
Chowdhury was member-secretary of the first National Education Commission under Dr. Kudrat-e-Khuda and later, became the Education, Sports and Cultural Affairs secretary.
Chowdhury also played a major role as the director of Bangla Academy from early 1969 to mid-1972 in propagating secular values during the mass movements in the period. He was made the National Professor in 1998.
He headed several organisations that worked for secular democracy, such as the Ekattorer Ghatok Dalal Nirmul Committee, Citizens’ Social Rights Movement and Citizens United Front. He worked closely with the late Jahanara Imam in trying to bring to book the killers of 1971 as war criminals.
Kabir Chowdhury acted as chairman of the Bangladesh Afro-Asian Writers Union for many years. He was also a member of the presidium of the Bangladesh World Peace Council and the Bangladesh Afro-Asian Peoples Solidarity Organisation.
In his long career, Chowdhury spoke at many national and international meetings of writers and social activists on literature, socialism, secularism and democracy. He addressed gatherings in Germany, Russia, USA, Bulgaria, Angola, Japan, Pakistan and India.
For his contributions to education, literature and civil society movements, Kabir Chowdhury was nationally and internationally honoured. Among the numerous awards he received were the Bangla Academy Literary Award, Ekushey Padak, Shadinota Padak, Bangabandhu National Award, Mohammad Nasiruddin Literary Award, Sher-e-Bangla Award and India’s William Carey Award.