Tribute K.S. Murshid: A life of the mind

Khan Sarwar Murshid was part of a dwindling band of cultured men in this country. He belonged to a generation which gave of its best to Bangladesh through being part of the historical process which went into its creation in 1971. If the nine months of the struggle for freedom were the worst time in the collective life of the Bengalis this side of the political frontier, fundamentally because of the organised killings carried out by the Pakistan occupation army, they were also the best in terms of drawing out of us the patriotism necessary for a righteous war to be sustained.
Professor Khan Sarwar Murshid demonstrated an immensity of patriotism in those dark yet soon to be illuminating months. And with that patriotism he brought into action the intellectual force that was so needed to convince the rest of the world that the struggle for Bangladesh was not a simple matter of resistance to the enemy but, in a larger sense, a demand for liberty based on the logic that at critical times is derived from history. It was within this ambience of historical grandeur that Murshid served as a significant cog in the wheel of the Mujibnagar government. As a member of the wartime planning commission, as a key aide to Tajuddin Ahmed, as one of the men articulating our aspirations before the councils of the world in that year of death and resurgent hope, Khan Sarwar Murshid, with others of his belief, was our intellectual face to the world.
In Khan Sarwar Murshid were combined a devotion to literature and a commitment to the public weal. The first he ensured through teaching, which teaching would see him preside over Rajshahi University as vice chancellor soon after the liberation of the country; and the second he put into implementation as the new nation's ambassador to Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, again in the early 1970s. The government of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman did what was required at that point of time in the nation's history: it placed cerebral men at the new diplomatic missions of Bangladesh abroad, the clear objective being to drive a potent truth home --- that Bangladesh had men who lived the life of the mind, to speak for it abroad. Azizur Rahman Mallick went off to New Delhi and Khan Shamsur Rahman was despatched to Moscow. Khan Sarwar Murshid made his way to eastern Europe. He served with distinction.
Murshid's zeal for language, for a proper application of it both in the verbal sense and in the written form, was matched by few in his times. In his Bengali and in his English, it was perfection he sought and then applied to satisfaction, his own and that of his followers. That was one way in which he asserted his adherence to values. That was also the reason why he named the journal he launched in the late 1940s New Values. The journal travelled a long way before circumstances called a halt. But the principles it upheld, the integrity of life it embodied were never to go away. In that old-fashioned sense of the meaning, Murshid was to see them at play again years later in the journal his wife, scholar and educationist and politician in her own right, would edit.
In Murshid's passing the twilight sets on an era. Within the luminosity of that era, it was starlight we basked in. The stars shone bright, back in 1973, when Khan Sarwar Murshid brought us in touch with Andre Malraux, here in free Bangladesh. As he prepared to bid farewell to Malraux, Murshid asked the French writer-philosopher if Sheikh Mujibur Rahman could turn things around in Bangladesh. Yes, said Malraux, if you do not kill him. Murshid would not forget that prescient statement. Neither would we.
Today, it is hard for us to forget the man of substance that was Khan Sarwar Murshid. He taught us, about literature, about politics, about the human condition. He shaped ideas, which ideas he passed on to us. And thus he lives on.

Syed Badrul Ahsan is Executive Editor, The Daily Star.