“In the days of the Buddhist Revolution, one sees in the Bengali lands an intense revolt against Brahminical practices….
… In the days of Islam’s predominance, the way Bengal greeted its message of individual’s identity, one doesn’t find that anywhere else in Bharatavarsha ( India ).
So, in that moment of clash and synthesis of two civilisations with opposing religious and structural ideals, one hears from the Bengalis the first chants of a religion of man.”

- Humayun Kabir (Bengali Muslim Minister of Education in independent India’s early central government) in ‘Rabindranath and the Religion of Man’, Kobita, Rabindra Number, Facscimile Edition, Vikalp, Calcutta, 2003

Dhaka, the capital city of the present nation state of Bangladesh is a bustling city of skyscrapers, slums and rickshaws. Dhaka is a city of about ten million people. It was not always like this in its history. It used to be a Mughal outpost five hundred years ago, then it became the capital of an independent Nawab ( king ), later it was a district town in British colonial India with army barracks. In all of this Dhaka got a university along the line in the early 1900s.

The university gradually attracted students from the neighbouring districts of eastern Bengal, it also attracted exceptionally talented professors. For the first decades, upper caste Bengalis from what has been traditionally referred to as the Hindu community came to inhabit the halls (student dormitories) and the professors’ quarters in a leafy green campus of a district town which itself used to be called a university town. After a while Bengali Muslims followed their Hindu upper caste neighbours in the pursuit of western knowledge. When colonial rule ended in 1947, Dhaka was a town of less than a million people and its university was a rare example of coexistence of Muslim and upper caste Hindu minds. Eastern Bengal was a Muslim majority area and so, there was a certain support for the demand of Pakistan, a separate state that was conceived as one for Indian Muslims. That did create tensions in the academic community but did not entirely rip apart the relationship between Hindus and Muslims in the university.

With the creation of a new India and a new Pakistan in 1947, Bengal got divided. Eastern Bengal came to be known as East Pakistan and western Bengal came to be known as the Indian state of West Bengal. Soon after 1947, a substantial portion of the Bengali Muslim middle class started feeling that they were treated as inferior citizens by the Punjabi Muslim dominated west Pakistan and Dhaka University became the nerve centre of a new nationalism of Bengali Muslims. Hindus and Buddhists in East Pakistan too joined hands against the imperial tendencies of West Pakistan. One of the principal demands was that Bengali and Urdu should be national languages of Pakistan and not Urdu alone. During a peaceful procession of students and intellectuals on 21st February, 1952, four students of the Dhaka university were killed by bullets of the Pakistani police. The bhasha andolan (language movement) flared up and became a mass movement. From then on till the creation of the new nation state of Bangladesh, Dhaka University’s campus remained the movement capital of East Pakistani politics. Throughout these decades students in the campus fought for the rights of themselves and the people of the country, debated ideas and formed social networks that were to create the middle class civil society of the nation state of Bangladesh.

But as much as the large majority of students at the university opposed military rule and the unitary rule of Islamabad, the student movement did not speak with one voice. Like in many post-colonial societies, in East Pakistan of the 1950s and 1960s, Marxism was a potent force. Students were influenced by the appeal of social revolution and a classless society. And, for most of the 1960s, in the run-up to the independence from Pakistan in 1971, Marxists of various hues had a great influence on student minds. Maleka Begum,  one of the most important voices in the women’s movement of the country, remembers how she under the influence of the communist party tried to unite girl students under the banner of ‘Chhatra Union’, the student wing of the communist party. But the communists could not remain united. The rift began with the India-China border conflict of 1962. Worldwide communists got divided into two camps – one supported China and one said that India was the better guy because that’s what the Soviet Union did. Mahmud Hassan who went to the university in the mid-1960s, laments “Had the Moscow-Beijing rift not occurred, the nature of Bangladesh’s freedom and the state since then would have been very different. To start with we would have had more people like Maulana Vasani who were one with the people and not the present lot of politicians who have no past of working with the people.” So, as much as the students under the umbrella of the communist party united students in Dhaka University in protest of the Pakistani regime, they also created a fissured opposition. The left voice broke up in a Sino-Soviet cacophony. At a time when cold war was playing out its main games, the left because of its divisiveness could not create a unified strong student movement in Bangladesh.

For much of the 1950s, the left in the country had gained in strength. The student left on the university campus very often went on to form the leadership of the left in the whole of East Pakistan. So, when the rift happened in the left, it affected all sections of the population. In a way it paved way for the unquestionable popularity of the Bengali nationalist leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his party the Awami league which was party of rural and urban middle classes of east Pakistan. But even though Mujib became the unquestioned leader of the Bengali nationalist uprising in East Pakistan, students in Dhaka University kept on being at the forefront of political activities in the country. So, women like Motia Chowdhury who was a prominent minister in the Awami League government between 1996 and 2001, became a popular name as a left student leader in the university in 1960s. One can discern a trend that Dhaka University has remained a breeding ground of future politicians of present-day Bangladesh. Maleka Begum who too became a household name as a leader of the women’s movement inspired by the communist party, started her political career as a student organiser.

But as much as one can see the university playing a role as the seedbed of mainstream power politics, the political ferment on the campus sowed the seeds of a pluralistic universe that has continued to question the unitary visions of society in today’s Bangladesh. Abdullah Abu Sayid comes from an earlier generation of students at the university. Sayid who runs Vishwa Sahitya Kendra, an NGO devoted to popularising reading culture and liberal humanitarian values among the students and the youth went to the university in mid-1950s. He recalls, “ In 1954, the United Front government was voted to power in the then East Pakistan. It was a moment of great flurry everywhere and so also on the university campus – martial law had ended and we felt that a new government will bring new things for us.” But unfortunately, the government could not deliver so much and then there was another spate of military rule starting in 1958. So, as much as Sayyid and his comrades were imbued with the spirit of bhasha andolan (language movement) and freedom in mid-1950s, the realisation that political democracy and hence cultural assertion was uncertain led them to a path of shunning political choices altogether towards a certain decadent trend in life and literature.  They created a “Silent Club” on the campus and earmarked a place as the “Idiot’s Corner” on the campus. But they did not stop in such sublime subversions. But Sayyid and his generation of writers and young intellectuals brought decadence and anarchism on to the table of Bengali cultural expression in East Pakistan. From 1965 for a decade, Sayyid edited Kanthashwar ( tr. Voice ), a Bengali journal where writers gave vent to a new sensibility. This was one immersed in decadence, one where morality of everyday life in a predominantly Muslim middle class society with deep links to an agrarian Muslim world was turned upside down. Sex came into the pages of literature and so did an outright refusal to believe in any single truth, be that of nation or societal commitment or ethical living. Many of those associated with Kanthaswar  - people like Abdul Mannan Sayyid are venerated literary figures in today’s Bangladesh. And, the language that Kanthaswar created was born out of the deep frustration of the here and now that Sayyid and his fellow travellers felt during their university days. So, the university not only nursed the political ambitions of future Bengali leaders, it also was the “idiot’s corner” for the future Dostoyevskys of a fast changing rural-urban middle class.

But that was not all. As Sayyid’s own life trajectory demonstrates – he went on from being a lecturer at Dhaka College to one of the most popular television presenters in 1970s and 1980s and then a harbinger of reading and literary worlds in every corner of the country. And, this flowering of civil society in Bangladesh has been lifelong missions of a good number of Dhaka University graduates. Sultana Kamal who went to the university in late 1960s is executive director of  Ain O Shalish Kendra , an NGO that specialises in legal aid for women. She picked up the fervour of political freedom in the university days and has all along been an activist of better legal governance and women’s rights. One can discern that lifelong commitment in others of Sultana’s generation. Ruby Rahman, a poet has continued teaching at a Dhaka college over the past thirty years. And, when the basic ideals of freedom, non-communalism and Bengali cultural assertion have been on uncertain grounds – those that inspired the liberation movement – she has continued her attempt to imbue students with those.

The weakening of the left and the left students’ movement in the 1960s paved way for a centrist nationalist force to gain power in Bangladesh when it came out of Pakistani rule. Over the years, the ideals that the left as well as the nationalists had have weakened. Instead of the idea of a secular Bangladesh, the idea of an Islamic Bangladesh is much more on the horizon today than it was twenty years ago.  The process of Islamisation has bred a certain intolerance for liberal values, often dubbed as western import. People who are carrying on the struggle against the closing of minds are almost always from the Dhaka university of 1960s and 1970s. Abul Momen is one of the more prominent names. Momen went to university in 1972-73. He was quite involved in the political movements even before he joined the university. But the university days were exciting for him because there was a new state at that time. Bangladesh had just come into being and young people were into various experiments. People had seen things when they were in exile in Calcutta and they were trying to do new things in theatre, in literature and generally in the area of cultural expressions. “However, soon there was Bakshal, a period of denial of political freedom and again the country and particularly, Dhaka University’s campus went into political turmoil.” Momen’s illusion with mainstream politics possibly got over at this point. He has remained a journalist and an essayist all his life, working for the media in Bangladesh. He has also tried and is still trying to make primary education more exciting for children and is trying to open up mental frontiers of teachers and students alike. As much as Momen is working to open the minds of children, Muhammad Jahangir who too went to the university in the late 1960s, is working to give media a more politically contested face. He has brought together people of opposing parties and diametrically diverse opinions on his talk shows. Once again, he took the first steps in media as a cub reporter in his student days. He covered divergent viewpoints on the campus and that gave him a grounding in impartial reporting. A supporter of left democratic values in politics, he has tried to shun clear of party politics and has, instead tried to initiate dialogue on important themes among opposing parties.

The left got left behind in the formation of independent Bangladesh. But students on the university campus in 1960s who followed politics keenly and yet did not become part of a left student group, caught up with the realities of Bangladesh much later on. Mahmud Hasan was on the campus in mid-1960s. Whereas Sayyid felt frustrated with politics, Hasan decided to stay clear of student groups but his university years nurtured an intellectual engagement with politics. While his intimate friend Abu Abdullah turned an economist and is presently the director of Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies, Hasan has been engaged in an intellectual quest for socially egalitarian political process and structures for most part of his life. He followed campus politics closely as a student and got attracted towards Marxism. Later as a graduate student in London, he worked on “Ecology and Rural Class Relations in Bangladesh” and even did a post-doctoral work on “Landless Mobilisation– Theory and Practice”. His quest finally brought him to start an NGO called Gono Shahajjo Sangstha ( Organisation for People’s Aid)which worked towards greater political participation of the rural poor in the existing democratic state structures of Bangladesh. It also created a network of lawyers to provide legal advice on disputes that affected their lives. Hasan visualised a collaboration between the have-nots and the burgeoning middle class and he went a long way to create a vibrant civil society movement in Bangladesh. In 1990s, GSS had a network of civil society actors spanning the entire country and effective bridges were built between the rural poor and the urban educated. The engagement with Marxism and the theoretical understanding of inequalities in societies started in Hasan from his days in the university. He did not take party sides on campus and in later life too his attempt has been to forge broad coalitions. The left became a divided force but it is the leftists who stayed outside the left who went on to shape life in Bangladesh well after the cacophony on the left and had died down.

And while the left divide was within the educated students of Bengali middle class, the class itself was always miles away from the ethnic minorities who inhabit lands within the political state called Bangladesh. And it has taken the energy and commitment of yet another believer in non-party left to intellectually and politically engage with the cause of ethnic minorities. Mesbah Kamal was in the university in late seventies and early eighties. Whereas Mahmud Hassan laments the break-up in the communist party, Kamal tried to unite student groups loyal to various strands of the left. Kamal kept on working at that in his student days in Dhaka and also during his life in the west as a graduate student. But more importantly, his overarching commitment to human values led him to get concerned with the violation of human rights of ethnic minorities by the Bangladeshi state. He sees that state as representing the interests of the Bengali middle class in his country. And, he asserts, “The protection of rights of hill people and other ethnic minorities should be the moral duty of the politically advanced groups of this Bengali middle class itself." Kamal has been a relentless researcher and campaigner on this issue. As a historian and a history teacher at Dhaka University he lends one of the much needed voices to the plight of ethnic minorities.

If one mulls over the trajectories of these engaged minds who got started on their life trajectories in their student days at the university, some themes come up. First and foremost is a theme of frustration with the political process. In the 1950s, students got united on the campus and demanded democratic governance and the implementation of Bengali as a national language in East Pakistan. Through a series of movements and finally the liberation struggle, the country came out of Pakistan and got Bengali as the national language but the political freedom students aspired for on the campus always eluded them and the larger society of present day Bangladesh. In the East Pakistan times, there was intermittent democracy. In the thirty years since Bangladesh too military rule has kept coming back. And when political democracy has been somewhat in place, Dhaka University has become a chaotic urban space where rival student groups are more engaged in armed conflict rather than a clash of ideas. The battle for turf is what dominates the student politics of today’s Dhaka, a far cry from the days when Maleka Begum imbued fellow students with the idea of political freedom and equality for all women and men.  So, the ideals of the liberation war of Bangladesh – a secular, democratic, sovereign, Bengali nation -   are still not on secure ground. The struggle for some of these continue in today’s Bangladesh as much as they did in the former East Pakistan. The fact of remaining as a sovereign state of a Bengali nation will hopefully remain unchallenged but all the other ideals are on shaky ground. But if the party of the left was caught in the Moscow-Beijing trap – which has lost all meaning today – the political and cultural pluralism that the campus nurtured in the 1950s and 1960s gives the sustenance to the struggles of these diverse individuals who share an alma mater.

Sayyid expressed frustration at one point in his youth and now espouses optimism in future generations. That possibly is symptomatic of the entire intelligentsia that Dhaka University produced. They still share the hope of creating a free and better world for Bangladesh is still there but the blind belief in politics and state centred processes that most students had in the 50s and 60s are a thing of the past. The hope finds assertion in  the engagement with creation of a vibrant civil society. Abul Momen takes time off from his resident editorship of a daily to create better educational reality for children. Maleka Begum attempts to look at the necessary changes among men in order to better the lives of women. Sultana Kamal tries to offer better legal protection to women. And Mesbah Kamal widens the scope of Bengali democratic politics through an assertion of the political freedom of all citizens of Bangladesh. The political actors have betrayed the hopes of Bengali middle class in Bangladesh. The inquisitive minds of 1950s and 1960s of the Dhaka University campus are groping for ways to take the society beyond betrayal and are hoping there will be a renewal of hope in civil action and the cultural liberalism of Bengali people will find a way to institutional pluralism. And, as Abul Momen quips, “The game is not yet over”.