Luminaries we lost this year
While the pandemic ravaged the country, the deaths of institutions who succumbed to other causes, hit no less heavy.
The year began with the loss of feminist harbinger Ayesha Khanam, a loss that left the infantry fighting for gender equality, bereft of its matriarch. Even when she was terminally ill with cancer, Khanam lent her voice to the every-day cases of sexual violence and gender discrimination – cases that would otherwise have fallen below the radar.
Immediately prior to her death, one of the issues that Khanam was most vocal about was the political enfranchisement of women.
She pushed the political parties to achieve their diversity quotas, and insisted upon reforms in the existing system of keeping reserved seats for women in the parliament. Women parliamentarians should not be treated as placeholders, but formidable democratic forces, she had argued.
Every time Syed Abul Maksud entered a gathering, in his legendary garb of unstitched white cloth, the crowd fell quiet. Maksud never minced his words regarding some of the most critical concerns of state and society, most prominently, environmental concerns. He never shied away from lambasting the powers that be, and it was that voice that is needed now more than ever, that fell silent due to respiratory problems in February.
Not known by many is the fact that Syed Abul Maksud boycotted stitched garments in 2003 to protest the US invasion of Iraq – and he held up this personal insignia till his last breath, choosing to don only two pieces of unstitched white cloth.
Interviews given to the media by close ones, speak of how master storyteller Hasan Azizul Huq succumbed to the isolation that came with the pandemic.
A teacher and a man whose daily life consisted of tilling young minds, the closure of educational halls speedened Huq's ailments. Philosophy professor Mahendra Adhikary told a Bangla daily that he used to visit Huq every week. When the lockdown first began, a lonely Huq told Adhikary to "damn care" [not care] about those and keep up the visits.
But as the crowds thinned, in November, the "firebird" author best known for his novel "Agunpakhi", burnt out his flame.
This year, saw the extinguishing of two political institutions of opposing ideologies, who both dedicated their lives to the nation.
The prime minister lost her political advisor, Hossain Toufique Imam. Popularly known as HT Imam, he was one of the last of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's legions still standing.
Imam served the Mujibnagar government during 1971 as cabinet secretary, and served Awami League with devotion till his last day, March 4, 2021.
Similarly Barrister Moudud Ahmed was a pillar of an era gone by for the Bangladesh Nationalist Party. Moudud showed that come what may – service to the country comes first. His political career started with Sheikh Mujib, but then he went onto to become a deputy prime minister to the General Ziaur Rahman-led government, and then again, he joined hands with Jatiya Party to become the prime minister.
After the reinstatement of electoral democracy, Moudud reverted back to his allegiance with the BNP and remained there as an institution till his last breath, taken on March 16.
One of the last deaths of the year was that of Mushtari Shafi. Shafi is a trailblazer of her time, who ran an all-female press and monthly magazine called Bandhobi during the 1960's. Even at present, gender diversity in newsrooms skews more towards inequality – and so Shafi's bold choice to give women writers and journalists a platform at an age when most stayed home, was way ahead of her time.
As Shafi later on narrated in her memoir "Shwadhinota amar rokto-jhora din", the idea of an all-women press was so fearful to the Pakistani army, that they blew it up with dynamites in 1971.
If there is one person who dedicated his life to keeping alight the flame of National poet Kazi Nazrul Islam, it is Professor Rafiqul Islam. He became the first Nazrul Professor at the Bangla Department of Dhaka University, then onto becoming the first director of its Nazrul Research Centre.
Professor Islam was an active firebrand in the 1952 Language Movement, and this fire he carried throughout his life, becoming a historian of languages; he wrote more than 30 books on the subject, before turning the lights off on November 30.
As the prime minister said in a condolence message about Islam, "With his demise, I have lost my teacher and a guardian. Inspiration and guidance from my favorite teacher on nationally important matters have given me the strength to go ahead."
From the 1940's, till the day of her death on January 3, 2021, writer Rabeya Khatun forged a path for women with a voice.
At a time when women were kept home, a young teenage Khatun wrote "Proshno", a short story that questioned the notion of gender violence.
While some of her contemporaries had a supportive family, Khatun was not one of them, and had to fight for her right to hold the pen.
While her elder sister get married at the age of 12, Khatun turned a deaf ear to the gender trappings of society and instead went on to author over 50 novels and 400 short stories.
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