Munier Chowdhury (25 November 1925 – 14 December 1971), born in 1925 at Manikganj, Dhaka, hailed from Noakhali,He was a Bangladeshi educationist, playwright, literary critic and political dissident.
Education
Chowdhury graduate from Dhaka Collegiate School in 1941. He attended Aligarh Muslim University and later studied English literature for his Bachelors degree (with honors, 1946) and Masters (1947) at the Dhaka University. In 1954, he finished a second Masters degree, summa cum laude, in Bengali. He was fervently devoted to Bangla language and culture, and courted imprisonment in 1952 for his participation in the Bangla language pressure group, wherever he had, along with some others, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman as his prisonmate. While in jail he carefully deliberate Bangla language and literature, appeared at the MA examination in Bangla from inside the jail and came out first in the first class.[3] In 1958, he obtain another Masters in Linguistics from Harvard University.
Munier Chowdhury is survived by his wife Lily Chowdhury and three sons Ahmed Munier, Ashfaq Munier and Asif Munier. Ahmed Munier works as the Chief assignment Support for the United Nations Integrated Peacebuilding Office in Sierra Leone (UNIPSIL). Ashfaq Munier (known as Mishuk Munier) was a medium specialist. He died in a tragic road accident in Dhaka on August 13, 2011 at the age of 52. Asif Munier is a human rights activist in the country and was a creator member of Projonmo Ekattor, a human being rights anthology in Bangladesh, which initiated the structure of the Rayer Bazar Smriti Shoudho (Rayer Bazar Memorial) in Dhaka. This monument was built on the barren land on which the Pakistani army dumped the bodies of the intellectuals after murdering them. Projonmo Ekattor also campaign for the experiment of war against the law of 1971. Asif Munier also runs his own theatre group, Bongorongo, from side to side which he stages his fathers plays regularly
Career in culture
Munier Chowdhury started his career in teaching at Brojolal College in Khulna and worked there between 1947 and 1950. Later he worked for some time at the Jagannath College in Dhaka in 1950. behind that, he joined the Dhaka University in 1950 and taught both in English and Bengali words departments between 1950 and 1971. He became Reader in 1962 and Professor in 1970 and the Dean of the faculty of arts in 1971. Educated in the university of Aligarh, Dhaka and Harvard, he first permanent a name as a fine teacher of English literature. On his release from custody, he started teaching Bangla at the further education college of Dhaka, later becoming the Chairman of the division and the Dean of the Faculty of Arts, which posts he detained till his heartrending death in 1971. Students flocked to his class, many from other departments, as he lectured in his inimitable style on Meer Mosharraf Hossain, Bankimchandra and Rabindranath, in the middle of others. To this day he is fondly remember as an extraordinary teacher who was able to kindle in his students a authentic love for great literatures.
Political movements
Munier Chowdhury actively participated in the Language Movement of 1952, and was captive by the Pakistan administration. He wrote his famous symbolic drama, Kabar (The Grave) in Bengali during his incarceration. 'Kabar' is a shadow of Irwin Shaw's 'Bury the Dead' written in English. He also fought against any type of artistic repression during the late 1950s and 1960s. In 1967, he protest the Pakistan government's ban on Tagore songs on radio and television. In the late 1960s there was a movement in Pakistan to replace the Bengali language alphabet with the Arabic alphabet. As a linguist and writer, Munier Chowdhury protest this move to weaken the native talking of East Pakistan. He actively participate in the non-cooperation movement all through the early part of 1971 and renounce his award Sitara-e-Imtiaz (awarded by Pakistan Govt in 1966).
Important works
- Kabar (The grave), 1952 – a one act play about the Language Movement
- Raktakta Prantar (The bloody meadow), 1959 – play about the Third Battle of Panipat Mir-Manas, 1965 – literary critique of Mir Mosharraf Hossain's literature
- Munier Optima, 1965 – a Bengali keyboard layout design
- Ektala-Dotala (First ever Bengali drama telecast on TV), 1965
- Dandakaranya, 1966
- Chithi (The letter), 1966
- Palashi Barrack O Anyanya, 1969
- Tulanamulak Samalochana (Comparative critique), 1969
- Bangla Gadyariti (Bengali literary style), 1970
Awards
- Bangla Academy Prize, 1962
- Daud Prize, 1965
- Sitara-e-Imtiaz, 1966, awarded by Govt. of Pakistan
Death
After the Pakistani army crackdown in 1971 in the Dhaka University area from which Munier Chowdhury luckily runaway like many, he moved to his parents' dwelling, near Hatirpool. He become a completely dejected and out of order man. Many of his student-like well-wisher requested him to come to the open-minded region But unfortunately Munier Choudhury couldn't mentally regulate to the idea of flee from his beloved home town. He preferred to stay back and surrendered to his 'fate'.
On 14 December 1971 Munier Chowdhury, the length of with a large number of Bengali intellectuals, educators, doctors and engineers, were kidnapped from their house and afterward tortured and implement by the Pakistan Army and its Bengali collaborator Al-Badr, Al-Shams, only 2 days previous to the end of the Bangladesh War. His dead body could not be known.
On 3 November 2013, Chowdhury Mueen-Uddin, a Muslim leader based in London, and Ashrafuz Zaman Khan, based in the US, were sentenced in absentia after the court found that they were caught up in the seizure and murder of 18 people – nine Dhaka further education college teachers as well as Munier Chowdhury, six reporters and three physicians – in December 1971.
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