Kabir Chowdhury

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Kabir Chowdhury (9 February 1923 – December 31, 2011) was a Bangladeshi academic, essayist, materialist, translator, cultural agent, and civil society activist.

Early life and education

Chowdhury was born in Brahmanbaria, now Tipperah district of Bengal Presidency, where his father was employed as a civil servant. Khan Bahadur Abdul Halim Chowdhury, his father, was a district magistrate. He grew up in a liberal ideology and secular philosophy. His family was praised from Chatkhile, Bangladesh's Noakhali district, and his father, a devout Muslim, was lauded. Many of Kabir's classmates in school were members of the Hindu faith. H.G.'s writings captivated him when he studied English literature at the Dhaka University in the early 1940s. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, Bertrand Russell, among others. During the second World War, he was greatly troubled by the Nazi atrocities perpetrated in their concentration camps, the mass killing of Jews as a means of ethnic cleansing and the demise of all democratic norms. Kabir's faith in democracy, secularism, and liberal sentiments grew stronger by the day, and he was attracted to socialist ideology.

Kabir Chowdhury, a graduate of the University of Dhaka, Minnesota, and Southern California, worked for more than half a century in education, peace, and intercultural studies, as well as numerous national and international organisations, including the World Peace Council's Bangladesh Chapter.

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Career

Chowdhury has written extensively about the world's most influential writers and painters. He has also written extensively on peace and conflict resolution through discussion, teaching these principles as a teacher and as an administrator. He studied at Dhaka College (Dhaka) and B.M. College, Barisal (as Principal), as well as a few years at the University of Dhaka as a Professor of English. Before his voluntary retirement from government service, he served as the Secretary, Ministry of Education, Cultural Affairs, & Sports, Government of Bangladesh. In 1998, he was elected as the National Professor of Bangladesh.

Chowdhury was a member of the Bangladesh World Peace Council and served as the Bangladesh-Soviet Friendship Society for more than a decade. He was president of the Bangladesh Vidyagar Society and chairman of the Ekatturer Ghatak Dalal Nirmul Committee (Committee for Resisting the Killers and Collaborators of 1971). He has significantly contributed to the propagation of secular philosophy and democratic values in all of the above roles. Materialism is central to his philosophy. He has written extensively on anti-fundamentalism, religious fanaticism, and communalism, and has stressed the importance of broad human values and acknowledging cultural plurality, as well as the challenges of creating a pluralistic society.

Chowdhury has attended numerous national and international meetings of writers, socialism, secularism, and democracy over his long career. He spoke at gatherings in Germany, Russia, USA, Bulgaria, Angola, Japan, Pakistan, and India. Nelson Mandela, Yassir Arafat, Agostinho Neto, and Kim Il Sung were among those honored to meet him. He served alongside Nobel Peace Laurel Baker and the distinguished pacifist Sean Mac Bride in a conference of the World Federation of UN Associations in Barcelona, which he attended as the representative of Bangladesh's UN Association (he served as its chairman for many years). Faiz Ahmed Faiz, India's Visam Sahni, Mahmood Dervish, and USA's Edward Albee were all close collaborators.

Chowdhury was instrumental in many movements in Bangladesh, including the anti-communal movement, the movement to establish democracy, and, more importantly, the struggle to ensure the justice of those who had committed crimes against humanity and war crimes during the 1971 Revolution of Liberation of Bangladesh.

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Awards

• Independence Day Award (1997)
• National Professor of Bangladesh (1998)
• Ekushey Padak (1991)
• Bangla Academy Literary Award (1973)
• Mohammad Nasiruddin Literary Award (1986)
• William Carey Award (1994)
• Tagore Peace Award