Badruddin Umar was one of the foremost faces of the Left in Bangladesh who never wavered in his resistance to oppression. The death of the uncompromising writer, Marxist thinker, and leftist leader at the age of 94 is an irreparable loss to the progressive and revolutionary movement of Bangladesh. Throughout his life, Umar fearlessly raised his voice against the ruling class, imperialism, and reactionary forces.
Born in 1931 in Bardhaman, Umar came from a political family. His father, Abul Hashim, was a major organiser of the anti-British movement, a campaigner for a united Bengal, and a recognised leader of the progressive wing of the Muslim League. In 1950 Umar became actively involved in the Language Movement of 1952 and later emerged as a pioneering researcher of that movement. After completing his studies at Dhaka University, he went on to Oxford, where he earned degrees in politics, philosophy, and economics. Upon his return, he began teaching at Dhaka University and later played a key role in establishing the Departments of Political Science and Sociology at Rajshahi University.
He stood at the forefront of education and research in Bangladesh and was widely regarded as the most rigorous theoretician of revolutionary politics in the country. In the 1960s, his writings on communalism reflected what he termed the “return of the Bengali Muslim to their homeland.” At a time when the Bengali Muslim middle class needed intellectual coherence and confidence to assert itself against Pakistan’s ruling class, his work had a significant influence. From the late 1960s, he began his extensive research on the Language Movement. Without institutional support, he completed his monumental three-volume work The Language Movement and Contemporary Politics of East Bengal, which synthetically linked social, economic, and political contexts. Over the decades, he published more than a hundred books in both Bengali and English.
Umar’s role as a theoretician was inseparable from his political practice. While writing on communalism in the 1960s, he faced repression under the Ayub–Monem regime, which forced him to leave academia and devote himself fully to politics. He deliberately stepped away from the university to escape state surveillance and to work independently, exploring society, state, and history while formulating a revolutionary political path.
Before independence, Umar was a leading figure in the East Pakistan Communist Party (Marxist–Leninist), where he provided both theoretical and organisational leadership against imperialism, military rule, and communal politics. He stood at the forefront of student and workers’ struggles, playing a key role in the 1969 mass uprising and in broader democratic movements. His writings carved out a distinctive intellectual space in Bengali society. Works such as Sampradayikata (1966), Sanskritir Sankat (1967), and Sanskritik Sampradayikata (1969) exposed the oppressive structures of Pakistani rule and the dangers of communal division. His research on the Language Movement and East Bengal politics remains among the most comprehensive historical accounts. In The Emergence of Bangladesh, he explored the Liberation War through the lens of class struggle. His five-volume autobiography Amar Jiban blended personal experience with the social and political history of Bangladesh.
During the Liberation War of 1971, Umar wholeheartedly supported independence, interpreting it within the framework of socialist transformation. After independence, he became General Secretary of the Communist Party of Bangladesh (Marxist–Leninist) and later played leading roles in the National Liberation Council. In 1974, he launched the monthly journal Sanskriti. After only a few issues, it was banned under the emergency regulations of that year, along with other publications. Restored in 1981, Umar continued to edit and contribute to it until his final days.
On September 7, 2025, Umar passed away at Bangladesh Specialized Hospital in Dhaka. His funeral prayer was scheduled for September 8 at the Dhaka University Central Mosque, followed by burial at Jurain graveyard. Even in his final years, despite illness, he remained active, writing, debating, and mentoring new generations.
Umar’s life was one of continuous struggle, combining the roles of thinker, organiser, and revolutionary. His death is a mortal loss for the Left in Bangladesh, but his writings and teachings will continue to guide future movements. He never spared the ruling classes in his critique, exposing how both the Awami League and BNP upheld systems of capitalist exploitation and imperialist domination. His writings became instruments of resistance for workers, peasants, and ordinary people. He constantly challenged opportunism, sycophancy, and intellectual stagnation, while his analysis of exploitation, oppression, and inequality remained sharp and uncompromising. For Umar, intellectual labour and the politics of liberation were inseparable, and his honesty, integrity, and resolve marked his entire life.
He believed that the people’s ongoing struggle represented the unfinished liberation struggle of 1971. To him, rejecting defeat and bondage was the precondition for advancing the fight for freedom. He consistently exposed the failures of building and sustaining revolutionary organisations in Bangladesh, a nation of 180 million still dominated by ruling-class dictates.
Umar never accepted state honours. He wrote: “During the Pakistani period I had always been opposed in principle to the system of conferring literary awards on writers and to their accepting such awards. I am still opposed to it because the practice of providing this type of material incentive to writers adversely affects their creativeness and undermines their freedom.” In 2025, he reaffirmed this principle by rejecting the Swadhinata Padak. In his statement published in The Daily Star on March 7, 2025, he said: “Since 1973, I have been offered awards from various government and non-government organisations. However, I have never accepted any of them.”
In the history of Bangladesh and in the politics of human emancipation, Badruddin Umar will remain a guiding light.
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Freelance journalist
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