Kabir Chowdhury, a storehouse of knowledge and ideas
DOT Desk
December 13 marked the seventh death anniversary of educationist, translator and author Kabir Chowdhury. He was also one of the pioneering figures of the movement against fundamentalism in Bangladesh, reports The Daily Observer. 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.
Kabir Chowdhury has written extensively on world’s famous writers and painters. He has also written extensively on peace and conflict resolution through discussion and has tried to promote these values by his work as a teacher and as an administrator. He taught at the University of Dhaka as a Professor of English for thirty years. He has worked as the Secretary, Ministry of Education, Cultural Affairs & Sports, Government of Bangladesh before his voluntary retirement from government service. He was inducted as National Professor of Bangladesh in 1998.
Kabir was a member of the Presidium of the Bangladesh World Peace Council and headed the Bangladesh-Soviet Friendship Society for over a decade. He was the president of the Bangladesh Vidyasagar Society and chairman of the Advisory Council of Ekatturer Ghatak Dalal Nirmul Committee (Committee for Resisting the Killers and Collaborators of 1971). In all the above capacities he has significantly contributed to the dissemination of secular ideas and democratic values. His ideology is materialism. He has written extensively on anti-fundamentalism, religious fanaticism and communalism, and has stressed the need for developing broad human values and for realising the importance of cultural diversity, and the imperatives for developing a pluralistic society.
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.