December 20 marks the 89th birthday of Badruddin Umar. Bangladesh s foremost Marxist revolutionary one who has been speaking truth to power for more than six decades now Umar is the author of more than a hundred books and countless articles. His three-volume work on our Language Movement of 1952 called
Purba Banglar Bhasha Andolon o Tatkaleen Rajneeti (The Language Movement in East Bengal and Contemporaneous Politics; 1970, 1976, 1981) is trailblazing, while his
tour de force also includes his two-volume work titled
The Emergence of Bangladesh (2004, 2006), published by Oxford University Press.
Indeed, we are yet to assess the entire range staggering as it is of Umar s contributions to studies of politics, culture and history, among others. I had the privilege of working with Umar closely for several years in the 1990s, as I worked as the General Secretary of Bangladesh Lekhak Shibir the country s oldest national organisation of writers, artists and activists on the left an or