A.S. Mahmud: A man of vision remembered

Photo: A.S. Mahmud

I remember a man who really loved his country -- who fervently believed in the strength and the independence of Bangladesh. Most importantly, he also believed in its future and in the tremendous potential of its people and their ability to bring about change where before there had all too often been only isolation, inequality and despair. That man was the late A.S.Mahmud.
Abu Sayed Mahmud died on January 22, 2004. He should not have died in England, so far away from his homeland. This would have been the last place he would ever have wanted to die. So why did it happen? Because he dared to dream and because he had the courage and the commitment to realise that dream: Ekushey Television.
Twelve years ago, it was the very success of ETV, with the huge reach of its news, information, cultural and entertainment programmes (40 million + audience) and its ability to open up the world and build a bridge between all the peoples of Bangladesh, that was, in the end, its downfall.
Little more than two and a half years after Ekushey Television went on air, A.S.Mahmud and his family had little choice but to leave the country as those determined to bring down ETV moved in.
In many ways, the special place that Bangladesh has assumed in my life was shaped by my work as a journalist here during the liberation struggle in 1971-72. But it was when A.S. Mahmud brought me back again to help him and his son Farhad to build, develop and manage Ekushey Television that I was really able to play my part.
And it was with the encouragement of Mr. Mahmud, his belief in our abilities and the willingness to learn of the 300 young people who came to work at ETV, that inspired us to take on the somewhat daunting task of building and making a success of the country's first independent national terrestrial television network.
From the beginning, A.S. Mahmud, the Chairman and CEO of ETV, was involved in every aspect of shaping Ekushey Television; its philosophy, its content, its image and its overriding commitment to help bring about change in the country.
Farhad Mahmud remembers: "My father was an ardent believer in equity, justice and secularism and hence the founding values of our country resonated strongly within him. He wanted Ekushey Television to be built around those values and I believe that these values struck a chord among the young and helped make ETV so immensely popular."
ETV was indeed vision of a new and modern Bangladesh.
There were many days when Mr. Mahmud would remind me of the need to ensure that our news and our educational programmes reached out into the rural areas. That they not only showed the rest of the world the life and struggle of the small farmer and the village businessmen but that we helped make them feel a real and contributing part of their own country. That is the power of a fair and balanced electronic media.
What gave him his greatest satisfaction was to know that people throughout the country, in villages where roads and electricity were still not in place, would be gathering around a TV set powered by car batteries to watch the ETV News and quite often, proudly, live musical evenings broadcast from rural areas not unlike their own.
Mukto Khabor, the news and information programme produced and reported by children (some as young as 10), was another of his favourite programmes. He would often spend hours sitting with the young people listening to their ideas and encouraging them about the stories they planned to report.
And another was Deshjure, the programme that travelled throughout the country with the aim, eventually, of putting life in every district and village on television (more than 900 were featured before ETV was forced to go off-air).
ETV was in many ways the natural culmination of A.S. Mahmud's career as a businessman and entrepreneur. Farhad Mahmud describes him as an "egalitarian to the extreme, a person completely devoid of prejudices who believed in a classless society and felt very strongly that inequity in our society stifled the potential of so many."
Farhad recalls that his father started his career in 1957 working in the multi-national oil company Shell, in what was then East Pakistan. "He later joined the Pakistan Oil Company but he made it clear to us that he found it very difficult to deal with the prejudices of the West Pakistanis who ran the company. Like so many others at the time, in early 1971, he began actively working against the interests of Pakistan.
As the man in charge of oil supply operations in the then East Pakistan, he understood that the so-called power-sharing talks in Dhaka were going terribly wrong when he noticed that huge amounts of logistical resources and manpower was suddenly being deployed under the direct command of the army in preparation of what we now know as the crackdown of March 25. He instructed the Fatullah Oil Terminal not to serve the army tankers, the terminal was closed and he soon found himself under the gun of the army and in late March he escaped with his family to London."
A.S. Mahmud returned to the newly independent Bangladesh in 1972 and later went on, in 1977, to be a part of Transcom, the organisation with which he stayed until 1995/6. At the same time, he became Chairman of Phillips Bangladesh, which was bought by Transcom.
He was also president of the Dhaka Chamber of Commerce and Industry for four consecutive years and a member of the governing body of Brac until he died.
His first foray into the media was when he started, as its Founder Publisher and Managing Director, what is now the immensely successful English-language The Daily Star.
By all accounts, A.S. Mahmud was a unique man with uncommon beliefs. People in the world of arts, culture and literature knew him as "one of their own" and as an active supporter of new and innovative artists such as the filmmaker Tarek Masud and the young director Abu Sayed.
Television was the natural follow-on to these interests and beliefs. And it was when the then Awami League government of Sheikh Hasina let it be known publicly that they were considering granting a license for the country's first independent national network, that Mr. Mahmud went to work.
There were many applicants and the tender process was a hard-fought competition between many good submissions. It was perhaps one of the most rewarding moments in Mr. Mahmud's life (and in many ways in mine too) when Ekushey Television won the license. The rest, as they say, is history.
The birth of Ekushey Television was the perfect illustration of what Mr. Mahmud had believed in all along -- that the potential of young people in this country can be embraced and harnessed to help lift the future of their country to new and higher standards. And it was the energy of those 300 people employed at ETV that made the network the success it became, nationally and internationally.
If there is a living tribute to the dream and to the memory of the late A.S. Mahmud, it is that the doors that Ekushey Television once opened would never again be fully closed. Successive governments have been encouraged to grant a number of new licenses and many of the ETV staff have gone on to become the experienced and professional backbone of a new and dynamic independent electronic media in Bangladesh.

© Simon Dring 2012