Munier Chowdhury is the one behind the nation receiving such a great actor. He, who encouraged Ferdousi Majumdar to act, unfortunately, couldn’t see his sister’s success. “That saddens me the most. My last memory of him is from 1971 when we had moved across the border (to India). Many people had advised him to leave as well, but he would say, ‘Why should I go? I haven’t harmed anyone.’ I remember his words very clearly. It was for those very words that he was cruelly murdered. I never even got to see his body.”

The relevance of Munier’s work today is owing to how he related with his language, Bangla.

The Pakistani occupation army wrote a black chapter in the history of our War of Liberation on the 14th-15th December, 1971 by killing intellectuals in Dhaka city in a planned way.

On the fateful night of March 25, 1971, Prof Jyotirmoy Guhathakurta was dragged out of his university flat and shot repeatedly on the back by the Pakistan Army.

In 1954, when  I was admitted into the Dhaka University Bengali honours course after an interview with Dr Muhammad Shahidullah, a host of talented fellows were to be my friends in the next four years.

It was a conscious decision for Dr Mohammad Fazle Rabbee, to return to his motherland from the UK where he had gone for higher studies.

In the month of January 1971, I was a student of Class X of Holy Cross School. My par-ents and I were then living in the Dhaka University campus. My father, who taught Eng-lish literature at the university, took up the administrative post of Provost of Jagannath Hall.

The month of December is a month of joy and celebration all over the world, and in Bangladesh as well. But to me, it brings back the horrid memory of the killing of intellectuals on December 14-15, 1971,

We are celebrating the golden jubilee of our country’s independence this year. Fifty years of existence of this sovereign state called Bangladesh; the Bengali people’s thousand-year yearning for statehood finally given tangible shape and form.

Dear Opu and Topu, I am writing this letter in the hopes that you will read this someday when you’re all grown up.

Eminent novelist and filmmaker Zahir Raihan left for Kolkata after the Pakistani military crackdown in Dhaka on March 25, 1971.

Dawn broke in Bangladesh. Shudipto is an early riser, and today was no exception. But it could have been. He didn’t sleep much last night.

Whatever her worries, however enormous her anxieties, somehow as soon as she went to bed, all these would be pushed aside by the remembered face. Kadam’s face seemed to make her forget even the pangs of hunger, t

Shaheed Dr Sadat Ali was my father. He was a teacher of Dhaka University. My father was an extremely peace-loving and highly-educated person. Although the memories I have of him are vague, even those are quite rare. Today, 24 years after independence, I’ve sat down to write about those memories. They are from a time when I was a child aged between 5 and 6.

It was around 8:00pm. A sudden knock at the door of house F-1237 in Ghoramara area of Rajshahi broke the eerie silence of the wintry night in 1971. The knocking sent chills down the spines of Mir Abdul Quayum and his wife.

Dr Mahi, my former colleague, was an exemplary student, teacher, friend and, above all, a human being. On December 14, members of Al Badr militia force, which collaborated with the Pakistani military in its genocidal campaign, picked up Mahi from his house at Fuller Road, only to be shot dead blindfolded, along with many others.

students on the second floor of the Science Annex Building, but the commotion caused by some students in the verandah served as a

Tojammel Hossen was almost 10 years my junior. He had a widowed mother and two brothers. He was the oldest of them—and the apple of his mother’s eye.

Zahir Raihan is a name synonymous with the Golden Age of cinema in Bangladesh. Even though the legendary Freedom Figher lived only 37 years before his untimely death, his contributions to the country and the film industry are unparalleled. Besides filmmaking, he was also a talented novelist, journalist and writer.

Remembering the life and death of this Bengali intellectual who did not shy away from politics, this issue of In Focus brings two articles written by Shamser Chowdhury, his younger brother, who passed away in 2012. The articles reflect on the life and works of the man and reminisces the day when he was picked up.