The poet’s role in liberation war
BANGLADESH POST
Kamal showed her bravery several times. Once General Ayub Khan, the military ruler of Pakistan, at a meeting with social elites of Dhaka, commented that ordinary people are like beasts and as such, not fit to be given franchise. Sufia Kamal at once stood up and remarked, “If the people are beasts then as the President of the Republic, you are the king of the beasts
When the news of the ‘killings’ of Kamal and Dr Nilima Ibrahim by Pak Army after the crack down on 25 March 1971 was broadcast on Akashbani, a radio station of the Indian state West Bengal, it drew criticism internationally and countries across the world put diplomatic pressure on the then Pakistani military government for clarification. The Pakistani government was forced to broadcast an interview with the poet on radio only to prove that Sufia Kamal was still alive.[8]
Zillur Rahman, the then regional director of Radio East Pakistan, forwarded a paper to Kamal to sign with the statement “In 1971 no massacre took place in Bangladesh.” When she refused, Rahman threatened, “If you don’t give your signature then it might create a problem both for you and your son-in-law Kahar Chowdhury.” She told him that she didn’t care for her life. She said, “I would rather die than put my signature on the false statement. She actively but secretly helped freedom fighters of the Liberation War.
In 1971, several people in Dhaka including professor Ghyasuddin Ahmed and writer Shahidullah Kaiser collected medicine and food and delivered those to the posts of Sufia Kamal’s house, from where the freedom fighters picked those up for their training outpost.[9] From July 1971, she used to go to the hospital with food and medicine for the injured people of war. At that time there was an acute crisis of food and medicine in the hospital. She used to give food and medicine to certain rickshaw pullers at the Science Laboratory, Dhaka. They would take the food and medicine to the freedom fighters. She was able to establish closer contact with the freedom fighters such as Abul Barak Alvi, Shafi Imam Rumi, Masud Sadek Chullu and Jewel in August.
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Love-Timid
by SUFIA KAMAL
Even now the night’s intoxication has not passed,
eyes filled with passion;
the string of ?iuli-flowers in the parting of my hair
has wilted, the world is overwhelmed with scent.
I have kept the window-shutters open,
extinguishing my lamp –
so the dew may enter and cool
the fearful outcry of my heart!
Dream’s intoxication in my eyes, in my breast
a message of hope –
the distant woodland song, birds’ twittering
will enter here I know.
Rising with a sudden start I see: my heart’s monarch,
leaning in silence against my thigh – bedecked with flowers.
He has bestowed heaven on my heated thirst;
my weak and timid heart has trembled,
pounding full of love.
(Translated by Carolyne Wright with Ayesha Kabir)
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Sufia Kamal : Her journey towards freedom
by MOFIDUL HOQUE
Sufia Kamal, born on 20 June, 1911 and died on 20 November, 1999, lived a long life. She not only witnessed great changes in society and history but also influenced the positive transformation of the status of women as well as the Bangladeshi society. Her life was, in the truest sense, a long walk to freedom but not a journey of a loner, rather of one who has equated her fate with those of all the women in her society. Her cherished goal was not personal but social emancipation. In that sense her journey still remains unfinished; death has not put an end to it, on the contrary, even after her demise she is very much a part of the greater struggle of the nation and will always remain so.
She was born in the aristocratic Muslim gentry, but not as someone with a golden spoon in her mouth. Fate played a cruel game with her and she had to struggle hard for every little achievement in her life. To understand the full extent and significance of her struggle, it is necessary to focus not only on her personal life but also on the social reality and upheavals that influenced her.
Unlike other families in the aristocrat Muslim gentry, Sufia Kamal’s family was quite well educated and many of its members were successful professional people in administration, legal affairs and bureaucracy. Sufia Kamal was the second child of her parents but her father became a Sufi saint and left home in search of Allah, never to come back again. At that time she was only a child of seven months, her elder brother was aged three and a half years. The young mother of Sufia had to go back to the fold of her parents with two little children as she had no other alternative. The extended family lived at a palatial house with a very rich library. But education, schooling, and reading — all was carried out in the male’s domain. Even learning anything other than religious texts was considered immoral for the girls. There, however, were winds of change blowing, especially after Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain embarked on a mission to open the doors of education for Muslim girls. But that opportunity was confined to the large urban areas; in greater part of rural Bengal female education especially for Muslims was like the forbidden fruit.
Sufia Kamal as a child went to a Maktab, a mosque based religious learning center where one can learn to read the Arabic scripture without knowing its meaning. After a short while even that was discontinued as she was considered to have grown up. The boys of the family went to the district town to get admitted to high schools whereas the girls remained within the confines of the palatial building till their marriage was settled.
Even within the four walls, denied of all opportunities, Sufia Kamal as a child could feel the resonance of a greater world of art and literature. She wrote, “From my uncle, I used to get information about the world outside. At night after saying prayers, all the aunts used to sit around him and he would read aloud from Bengali novels. He also knew Sanskrit quite well. He used to render in Bengali translation the stories from Sanskrit classics like Agni Vamsa, Meghdut, Rajtarangini etc. I was a little child at that time, but I still carry in my heart the pleasant sound of his reading. He also used to recite English, Bengali, Arabic, Persian and Urdu poems. He used to subscribe to various journals and I remember the horror story of ‘Bunip’ that was published in Bombay Chronicle which scared me to death.”
Sufia Kamal was taught to read and write Bengali by her mother. This opened a new world to her and the family library proved to be a treasure trove where she could spend considerable time. Whatever little learning all these highly disorganized, non-formal methods offered; Sufia Kamal took full advantage of those. At the age of 12, she got married to Syed Nehal Hossain, her cousin.
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