Remembering Prof Kazi Shahidullah

Looking back at our more than five decades of friendship and the times we spent together, I guess I can say that our getting closer and closer year by year was inevitable. To begin with, though Shahid—Prof Kazi Shahidullah—and I came to know each other well only when we became students at the University of Dhaka, we were temperamentally very close to each other in many ways. Both of us had gone to leading English medium institutions run by Catholic missionaries—he to the then already famous St Gregory’s School, and I to the relatively new in the 1960s but increasingly esteemed St Joseph’s School. This meant that whenever we met, we would talk about friends we had in common, as well as studies and sports. Since we would often read the same English newspapers, magazines and books, listen to similar songs on the radio, and watch English sitcoms on television and English films at Dhaka cinema halls regularly, we would share our responses to what we had read or seen whenever we met for adda animatedly in a kind of patois, a mixture of Bangla and English. Certainly, Shahid had a gift for friendship, and made most of his batch mates his dear ones in no time at all. Wherever he went, whether at home or overseas, his and his dear wife Shammi’s warmth and hospitality would touch people who had the opportunity to come close to them almost instantly.

Our friendship, however, really began to deepen in our final undergraduate years and as MA students. We would meet in the Arts Building corridors, the library, or in front of Dhaka University’s football and/or cricket fields. Our enthusiasm for sports would lead us to watch our favourite football teams play in Dhaka stadium as often as we could. But we also played a lot of cricket, football and table tennis together. Eventually, we ended up as tennis buddies; for almost 25 years, we played the game together on the Dhaka University Club’s tennis court. Unlike me, however, Shahid was intensely competitive and would never like to lose any game. Even in examinations, he felt he had to be among the best students; he made the merit list in the matriculation and intermediate examinations easily and came first class first in his BA (Hons) and MA examinations. He was always among the best—in whatever he did!

Shahid had photographic memory. Every once in a while, I would request him (just for fun!) to recite from memory a poem or a whole question-answer of the Bangla paper he had memorised for his matriculation or intermediate examination in the 1960s, and he would do just that—easily and smilingly! While most of us “serious” students would sweat it out—sometimes literally—in the DU library month after month, he would read a handful of the key textbooks and the notes on them he had written or collected and spout them out in the examinations. He would do so seemingly effortlessly and, no doubt, always to the point.

Both Shahid and I had initially focused on a career in civil service. But because there were no examinations being held for them when we were graduating, and also because we had both by then become addicted to higher studies and academia, we joined the University of Dhaka as lecturers at the end of 1975. Like me, Shahid became fully committed to the institution. He served it with great dedication as a teacher (1975-2017) and an administrator—for he was chairman of the Department of History (2002-2005), the university’s dean of arts for three successive terms (1997-2003), and a supernumerary professor after retirement. Quick to grasp any upcoming academic situation and exceptionally adept at managing people and finances, he would go on to become the vice-chancellor of National University (2009-2013) and chairman of the University Grants Commission (2019-2024). There were no controversies and ample praise for his work in these directorial positions and ample evidence of his management skills and hands-on and efficient style of administration in all these places. Always, his academic outlook and sharpness would merge seamlessly with his administrative skills. Almost till the end, and till ill health prevented him from doing so, no matter what administrative position he held, he would not give up teaching at DU. Not only its history department but also undergraduate students of its Institute of Business Administration benefited from his love of history, the classroom, and teaching.

Another aspect of Shahid’s academic career that must be emphasised is his international exposure and cosmopolitanism. He did MA in history from the University of British Columbia (1977-79); that led to a book based on his dissertation titled Literacy in Mid-Nineteenth Century Devon and Suffolk (Dhaka University Press, 1986). The expertise on the history of education he had acquired in the process resulted also in a doctoral dissertation written when at the University of Western Australia (1980-84), which was eventually published as Pathshalas into School: The Development of Indigenous Elementary Education in Bengal, 1854-1905. As an academic, he would steadily publish papers in academic journals till the 1990s, when administrative work took him away from such publishing. Both his scholarly expertise and administrative understanding increased from the postdoctoral stints he pursued, first as a Nuffield fellow and then as a Commonwealth Academic Staff fellow in Britain, and from post-doctoral research work as a visiting fellow at the Indian Ocean Centre for Peace Studies in Australia.

There are other aspects of Shahid’s life and works that need to be remembered. For instance, he was very involved with his siblings in working for a trust fund named after his departed parents—the reputed businessman and philanthropist Kazi Mahboobullah and Begum Zebunnesa. The fund has been very active in providing scholarships to needy students from Faridpur. But the fund has kept alive their names after their passing also through an annual ceremony where awards are given to individuals who have contributed significantly to Bangladesh’s education, sports and culture.

There are other aspects of my dear, dear friend Shahid’s perspective on life, his academic work and his warm personality I could have written about, but let me conclude this tribute to him by saying that he will be missed intensely by his family and friends, his colleagues and the students who came close to him, everywhere he went or studied or taught or worked. Shahid passed away on March 19, and all we can hope now is that he will rest in peace forever. May Shammi and his children and siblings, as well as the rest of us who came to know him well, find the strength to cope with this immense loss.

Fakrul Alam has retired as professor of the Department of English at the University of Dhaka and is adjunct faculty and adviser there.

Views expressed in this article are the author’s own.