At 91 years old, Badruddin Umar is a fount of knowledge and brazen candour, whose life has run parallel to some of the most formative moments in the history of this subcontinent.
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