Journeys of a renaissance man
Syed Badrul Ahsan finds a scholar's life edifying
Khan Sarwar Murshid's has consistently been a voice of reason in our part of the world. And, of course, reason has underpinned the many layers of intellect in this country, to a point where those who have exercised the intellectual throughout their lives have ended up giving shape to a national ethos. Murshid has, therefore, been part of an era where the identity of a people, the definition of a society, has at more than one crossroads come from him and those who have been part of his proud generation. And the background to that story is to be had in this excellent and comprehensive examination of the life and career of an individual who has been a teacher, a diplomat, a cultural activist and, in a sublime way, a complete Bengali nationalist. That last bit about nationalism needs to be underscored by a caveat, though, in any assessment of Murshid's transformational role in the shaping of Bengali politico-historical perspectives. His patriotism, as Serajul Islam Choudhury would have us know, was not limited to an expression of sentiments but broadened out into an arena where he made himself a leading player on a canvas that was destined to get wider with the passage of time. Choudhury cites a poignant example of the strong and sophisticated views Murshid held dear in defence of his nationalistic principles. When an editorial condemning the proponents of university autonomy appeared in the Pakistan Observer, Murshid was quick to inform Choudhury that the write-up had been written by none other than his English department colleague Syed Sajjad Hossain. And, of course, a rebuttal was necessary. Choudhury was asked to write the rebuttal to the editorial, not as a letter but as an editorial in itself. For his part, Murshid would make the necessary arrangements for the item to appear in print. The writing done, Murshid and Choudhury set off with it to a spot which Choudhury discovered was the home of the young lawyer Kamal Hossain. It was an interesting assemblage of individuals present there as the two men made their way in. Kamal Hossain, Hameeda Hossain, Dr. Nurul Islam, Rehman Sobhan and Salma Sobhan were there. The most prominent presence, however, was that of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Presently the group was joined by Tajuddin Ahmed. The editorial was printed in full in the Ittefaq a couple of days later. Murshid's determination not to let an offensive write-up go unchallenged had worked out well. In a bigger sense, though, Murshid's career remains the story of a man who has relentlessly and endlessly stayed away from compromising on the values he believed were an integral part of living. His journal New Values, which had a pretty long run from 1949, when it was founded, until 1965, when it out of circulation, was symbolic of the principles Murshid has always believed should bring out the best in life and thought. That New Values was a refreshingly different proposition, that it carefully stayed away from conforming to the spurious 'Pakistani nationalism' espoused by many at the time was noted by the schoolboy in Serajul Islam Choudhury. There was richness in the journal. And richness, or call it an affluence of aesthetics, has been part of Murshid's career. His use of English and Bengali --- in pronunciation, intonation and the like --- has been impeccable. You could call it fastidiousness, of the sort that Murshid would apply in the selection of articles coming in for his journal and in what he wrote himself. And as he went through that enormity of experience, he found it necessary to remain self-effacing in his search for scholarly splendour. It is a trait Mohammad Anisur Rahman spots cheerfully in Murshid. At Harvard and during the War of Liberation and later, Murshid was forever a man of commitment. Rahman loved the sessions of Tagore music at Murshid's residence. It is, when everything has been said, a rounded character which subsists in Khan Sarwar Murshid, in that very literary sense of the meaning. Mofidul Haque and others point to the depth of involvement in literature Murshid has always epitomised. His classroom lectures were more than enumerations of Shakespeare or English literature as a whole. They were, in a very remarkable way, careful explorations into the world of the reflective mind. And the mind, again, has been for Murshid that broad landscape which is home to an entire panorama of ideas straddling the various regions of human interest. Kabir Chowdhury informs us that Murshid is more than a literary man. He is at home with works relating to an entire range of music and art in the West. On his shelves have rested the biographies of such shapers of art as Da Vinci, Botticelli, Van Gogh and Goya. Murshid's links with music have been intense, as Chowdhury would know. And why not? At Murshid's home, Kabir Chowdhury has had the sheer pleasure of imbibing the music of Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert and others. As a modern man, Murshid has been acutely conscious of the importance of heritage. And in upholding heritage, he has not flinched in the face of the ferocity let loose by such machines as the Ayub Khan dictatorship in Pakistan. The observance of Rabindranath Tagore's birth centenary in 1961 remains proof of the courage leading Bengali intellectual lights brought into a reassertion of national culture. These were the men and women who would, in plain and direct manner, defy the regime, to have it know that secular Bengali culture could not be subsumed to the muddy waters of a so-called Pakistani culture. Murshid was in the forefront of that barricade of courage. To him the politically partisan was of little consequence. But that politics is a powerful calling geared to the welfare of a collective mass of people is a core belief he never abandoned even as he travelled all across the valleys and plains of the literary imagination. Which is a potent reason why he had no second thoughts as he plunged into the War of Liberation in 1971. The academic, he seemed to be suggesting, had no business inhabiting an ivory tower; he needed to be a symbol of active resistance to the enemy. And since it was Bengali self-esteem which had come under attack, it was the moral responsibility of all Bengalis across the spectrum to make the forces of anti-history run for their lives. In the way Andre Malraux and Charles de Gaulle put up resistance against the Nazis and their local collaborators in the 1940s. And Malraux understood, in 1971, the travails Bengalis were going through. He asked to be allowed to lead a brigade of freedom fighters in the war against Pakistan, for to him as it was to others there was hardly any difference in the brutality of the Nazis and that of the Pakistan state. Malraux was Bangladesh's hero, as he had been France's hero. And it was this heroic man Khan Sarwar Murshid welcomed to Bangladesh in 1973. At Rajshahi University, Murshid notes, the Frenchman --- philosopher, writer, soldier, aesthete --- threw a question at his audience, at the world in general: where is the point in going to the moon if we persist in self-destruction? Can Sheikh Mujibur Rahman give shape to a new nation-state? The question goes from Murshid to Malraux. The aging scholar's response is sharp, rapier-like, crisp: 'Sure, if you educated people, intellectuals, do not kill him.' And then comes a missile: 'You are a cynical lot. Don't kill him like one of those tribes which kill their leaders and eat their flesh.' Anisuzzaman has, if you will, the last word on Khan Sarwar Murshid. The man for whom values have always had meaning is an individual whose links with art, with society, with politics both at the national and international levels have had the quality of the intrinsic; a man who has felt the world passionately in his soul. Murshid was deeply troubled by the murder of Patrice Lumumba, was convinced that Moise Tshombe had a hand in the ill deed and drafted a telegram to be sent collectively by Bengali academics to the United Nations in protest. Nothing came of the telegram, for one of those academics was not quite sure that Tshombe had been involved in the killing. If no unanimity could accompany the protest, if no courage could come into censuring a crime, there would hardly be any point in sending off a missive of indignation to the world body. Murshid tore up the draft telegram.
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