Amir Ahmed Chowdhury: An unsung hero
Amir Ahmed Chowdhury.
I did not have many opportunities to meet Amir Ahmed Chowdhury personally, but I got to know about him from so many people that whenever we met it felt like we were close friends. He had this strong aura about him. And he was a man of empathy and action.
Amir Ahmed Chowdhury hailed from Feni. He came to Mymensingh with his father, where he got his school and college education and spent the rest of his life. Although life offered him many opportunities to settle elsewhere with better prospects, he had no interest in leaving. That was something rare in post-liberation Bangladesh where social mobility was high, urbanisation was booming and people were easily lured by better prospects. To move from a small town to the cities was the order of the day and success could be measured by one s mobility, which also included moving outside the country to the wider world.
Bangladesh emerged as an independent nation through the unconditional surrender of the Pakistani army to the joint command of Bangladesh and Indian forces on December 16, 1971. The nine-month long Liberation War was marked by the monstrous massacre of unarmed Bengali civilians and heinous sexual violence committed against thousands of Bengali women. The jubilation of the victorious people of Bangladesh on December 16, therefore, was tinged with a sense of gloom as they faced the painful reality that the liberation of Bangladesh had been achieved at the cost of the lives of their loved ones. Describing the situation of Dhaka city after the surrender of the Pakistani army, Jahanara Imam wrote in her seminal book
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