From cultural beacon to battleground: The DU English Department at 100
Review of ‘Dhaka University’s English Department: Centenary Perspectives’ (University of Dhaka, 2022) edited by Nevin Farida et al.
Imagine that a 104 years after its inception, the Department of English of Dhaka University wakes up on a July morning to see its rain soaked campus abuzz with young men and women walking past the Aparajeyo Bangla, a reminder of the 1971 Liberation War, their heads drooping with the onslaught of moral policing and insurgence of reactionary student politics! Why would someone even think of such a dystopian future? The university that was once called the Oxford of the East, and was established to nurture critical thinking and state of the art knowledge, has now fallen prey to philistinism and mobocracy. The campus grounds have been polluted on several fronts since the Partition of India in 1947.
Prior to the independence of Bangladesh, the suppression of Bangla language by West Pakistan and eventual killing of students who stood against such oppression had soiled the verdant greens of the university in 1952. Mass killing of students again made the grounds gory in 1971. In post-independence Bangladesh, many were killed because of political reasons. The bankruptcy of Bangladeshi politics has been soiling the haloed ground of Dhaka University and affecting its student life for decades. Despite these onslaughts, there has been nurturance of critical thinking and humanism from the inception of the university in 1921 through the departments that began their journey from the very first year.