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In the course of a long, sustained career, Abdul Latif constantly added spice and substance to the culture of Bangladesh. His pre-eminent role in music is a long tale of achievements, a veritable history of the heritage of a country encapsulated in the sensibilities of an individual. It is for reasons such as these that the passing of Abdul Latif arouses in us a huge sense of loss. Latif and the likes of him belong to a generation of men and women to whom we owe the resurgence of our cultural traditions, indeed the nationalism which inspired us all into throwing ourselves heart and soul into the struggle for political emancipation and eventual sovereignty in the 1960s and early 1970s. There are the credentials upon which certain lives are based. Abdul Latif’s were those that were sparked in the heady days of the Language Movement of 1952, when he played a supremely active role in the agitation that would soon create a wider canvas for an expression of Bengali political and cultural feeling. As the first musician to set the song, ‘Amar Bhaiyer Rokte Rangano’, to tune, albeit a somewhat martial one, Latif demonstrated what increasingly larger numbers of Bengalis were coming to believe in those early days — that sooner rather than later the imperatives for a liberation of the soul and the land would make themselves manifest.
   It is in remembrance of that spirit that we recall the life and achievements of Abdul Latif today. His versatility went beyond the narrow confines of selective performance, for he was everywhere. Whether it was bhawaiya or bhatiali or jaari or shaari or marfoti or revolutionary, Latif’s prowess in music making was always phenomenal. His was a voice that became instantly recognisable every time he sang. Back in the early days of 1971, as the nation found itself inexorably moving toward an armed struggle for liberation, Abdul Latif’s ‘Shona Shona Shona Lokey Bole Shona’ served as one of the strongest catalysts behind the build-up to the struggle. As a patriot well aware of the clear choices before him, he renounced an award conferred on him earlier by the Pakistani authorities as the movement for political liberty expanded. Like thousands of others, he was not willing to do anything that would militate against his conscience. In subsequent years, Abdul Latif lived up to his principles. He perceived music as an expression of the popular voice. That was why he became truly immersed in the job of carrying the flavour and essence of gono shongeet from door to door in the country. There was rural Bengal, in a particularly evocative manner, in the songs Abdul Latif sang or composed or set to music. It was performance par excellence which characterised his long career. As a government employee attached to radio, Latif did not let the encumbrances of bureaucracy undermine the life force of music he symbolised. The tenor in his voice remained strong till the end. He spoke with conviction; and when he sang, he did so with a gusto reminiscent of some of the most moving moments in Bangladesh’s history.
   We pay our humble tribute to Abdul Latif. He made a difference while he lived. Without him, our world of culture will be a whole lot different. A long silence now casts a pall over the vibrant world of our aesthetics.

Price of private education

President Iajuddin Ahmed speaks for all of us when he asks the nation’s private universities to make education affordable for all. Indeed, it is a point that we at this newspaper have made from time to time out of our feeling that education ought not to become an elitist affair. And yet the reality has been one of the private universities helping to develop a system where the poor and middle classes find the doors locked to further education. If the principle behind the opening of private universities was one of providing the young with wide opportunities for higher education, given the pressure on the public universities as also the political straitjacket they are often in, one can say with some disappointment that the principle has not been lived up to.
   In a country where a majority of the population struggles to make ends meet and within this struggle tries to educate its children, it is inconceivable that higher education at the private universities will continue to be a show for the well-to-do and the affluent. But when one observes the expenses involved in teaching the young at these universities, one cannot but comprehend the social barriers that a very large number of the young are up against because of their families’ inability to cough up the kind of money needed for their education in the private universities. The result is then not only a sense of deprivation for these non-affluent young but also the creation of conditions where those who can afford such education are often not the best intake at these universities. Allegations have persisted that a very large number of students given admission into the private universities would not be able to qualify for classes at the public universities. It is such feelings that the private universities will need to push away through demonstrating their ability to put students through a rigorous admission process rather than looking to the issue of financial gain. More importantly, the thought must be held uppermost in mind that a provision of higher education is more an application of intellectual abilities than an infusion of money in the classroom.
   We will expect, in the days ahead, an overhaul of the teaching process at the private universities to the extent that it will make things easier for the under-privileged and academically deserving young to walk the corridors of these universities. In poverty-driven societies, anything that gives off the odour of elitism can only lead to misery.

We have all been going through a bad patch. Erudition is a dying art. It all relates to the state of our health, reading-wise. Let me translate that for you. We are, as a nation, today severely handicapped where reading is concerned. There are books which lie on the shelves, unread. And there are the journals which are only flipped through, for want of attention on our part. As for newspapers, most men and women around us appear to be interested in skimming through news of crime and reports of what the politicians are saying about one another. But ask them about the death of Arthur Miller or the passing away of Abdul Latif. Try engaging them in a conversation over the future of Europe or the problem of Aids in Africa. There is a probability that you will come away unsatisfied. 
   No, this is not an indictment of society around us. At least, we do not intend it to be an indictment. All we are saying is that when organisations such as Grameen Phone and Bishwa Shahitya Kendro take it upon themselves to organise book reading competitions among school children, we are somewhat made conscious of the steep decline to which reading has fallen in this country. And, of course, reading is an art. At the same time, it is a prop on life, a spur to intelligent conversation. There used to be a time in this country not long ago —- you can measure that in terms of three or four decades —- when men and women of all ages made it a purpose in life to read, and then read more. There were teachers, in schools and colleges, whose vast expanses of knowledge as they revealed themselves in the classroom sent their students rushing off to the nearest library. Given that heritage, when these days you are accosted by academics, some of them in these ubiquitous private universities, informing you that they have prepared some good articles (the adjective is their own, come to think of it) and that they would like to have those published in newspapers, you marvel at their arrogance. Not a whiff of an idea is there in you that these people have been in teaching. There is a painful awareness of these individuals having accommodated themselves in a situation where self-promotion is in order. 
   And that is where you note once again the fall in the figures for reading. Look beyond reading as a pleasurable activity. Has it ever occurred to you that not many of our people in the medical profession care to read up on the latest in medical science? You may fret and fume about people going off to India or even Singapore and Thailand for purposes of treatment. But then you might ask yourself if they have any choice. Here there are doctors who will inform you that there are blockages in your heart. You panic, you see the twilight about to envelope you in its sinister tentacles. And then you go, praying all the time, to India for a second opinion. That Indian physician does not even look at the papers you carry from that local doctor here; and he soon tells you that there is nothing wrong with you. So why do these things have to happen to us, in this country? And can you imagine the price the poor, the not so privileged, the unable to go to India have to pay in terms of medical care? Their life span is short and swift and they do not have the means to sue for malpractice. Then again, there are many fortunate people, in terms of financial solvency, who find themselves in dire straits at the hands of doctors here. A retired diplomat is sent home, despite his family’s protests, after an excuse of an examination; and as soon as he steps inside his home, he collapses, to die minutes later on the way back to hospital. There is too the case of the man whose heart by-pass operation at a television-advertised private hospital results in a painful swelling of his legs. Not a single surgeon knows what is happening. But they do know that this man has to be sent home as fast as possible. No discharge order is given, despite the entreaties of the patient’s family. The hospital would like the man to get out of its way. Please note that more than two hundred thousand taka have already been consumed by this hospital as expenses for the man’s treatment. As we speak, the man with the swollen legs lies in another hospital, battling to have the legs saved from amputation. 
   It all boils down to reading, or the lack of it. Medical practitioners, indeed people in all professions based on the public interest, are expected to keep reading up on developments in their areas of activity. Not much of that sort seems to be happening here, even in such crucial areas as politics and journalism. When a newspaper editor reads the biography of Lee Iacocca and then goes around talking about it for years, you know he has had little time for reading anything else. That is pretty heart-breaking. Back in the late 1990s, the president of the republic exhorted all citizens to keep themselves abreast of global affairs through reading. A couple of days later, the prime minister enlightened the country on the variety of books she had been reading. That was quite refreshing. But then you wonder how many other politicians are there who do make it a point to read. Jawaharlal Nehru read voraciously and Mohammad Ali Jinnah was always browsing through books, as were Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy and A.K. Fazlul Huq. In our times, or times closer to ours, journalists of impeccable quality have been quite a few, men we have admired immensely. And we did that because they brought a scholarly, analytical attitude to life and to their profession. Or turn your gaze to the civil servants of the old class. You might not appreciate their snobbery, their terrible sense of elitism. But you cannot ignore the profundity that defined many of them as they went about reading and engaging, even in drawing room fashion, in good, deep conversations on men and matters. How many Badruddin Tyabjis and Syed Najmuddin Hashims can you spot around you these days? 
   Ah, but we are lamenting the passing of an era that might never again be, aren’t we? Perhaps, but surely that can be no justification for the pit we all seem to have fallen into these days. You are certainly inspired by the huge amount of reading material that makes its way to you through such means as the Ekushey book fair. But then you step back, remember the youth of the 1960s and their idealism and you shake your head ever so sadly. For a large segment of the youth you see around you today simply do not match that earlier generation of the young in intellectual prowess or in the depth of idealism. There were causes the youth of the 1960s fought for, all based on principles reinforced by good reading. There are no causes today, unless you wish to describe politically partisan attitudes as principles to be fought for. So this poverty of reading and therefore of profundity of thought we speak of is a malaise which encompasses the country. Men who read and think will never dream of doing all those things which put citizens into a state of discomfort. But when a businessmen’s organisation blocks off an entire stretch of a public road only because it has its elections to go through, you know how much of disrespect our nouveau riche capitalist class flings at all citizens. When you spot the vehicle carrying a minister of state creeping slowly forward, despite that red traffic light in Gulshan, before finally going ahead even as all those other drivers in all those other vehicles are observing the rules, you ask why this country has to put up with public figures who go looking, endlessly and notoriously, for opportunities to humiliate the republic. That minister of state has not been reading books. If he did read, he would think twice before violating that most elementary of traffic rules.  
   There is, let us say again, a deep malaise abroad in the land. It is in the tens of thousands of villages of this country where you spot the lengthening shadows of darkness coming all over the canvas of life. The sounds of reading we heard those long years ago are conspicuous by their absence today. The young men and women who went looking for books in the little libraries of their unions or thanas have passed on into middle age. Those who have come after them do not read, for the libraries have gone into oblivion. There are far too many madrasas than your community needs. And where a little village can do with a single mosque, there are now four, all the result of fierce competition engendered by the arrival of men with new money and little sense of philanthropy. 
   Reading, we fear, is progressively getting lost to us as a serious intellectual activity. As art, it belongs to times that have flown. The consequences have been horrible. Our lives lie in bits and pieces around us.
   E-mail: bahsantareq@yahoo.co.uk