Poets, writers and researchers on Wednesday said that poet Al Mahmud did not receive honour he deserved after his death as a fascist regime was in power then.
They also observed that Al Mahmud wrote a lot about villages because most of the people were connected to the rural areas, but his village was not pictorial, people survived with a lot of natural and man-made sufferings there.
They made the remarks at a seminar titled 鈥楧eshaja Adhunikata O Al Mahmuder Kobita鈥� organised by Bangla Academy to mark the poet鈥檚 90th anniversary of the birth at its Kabi Shamsur Rahman Seminar Room in the capital Dhaka.
At the seminar, researcher Fazlul Haque Tuhin presented the keynote paper while the Daily Jugantor editor poet Abdul Hai Sikdar, poet Zakir Abu Zafar and poet Hijol Jobayer spoke on the topic.
Bangla Academy director general Mohammad Azam chaired the seminar.
Fazlul Haque Tuhin said that in Al Mahmud writings, Bangladesh was reflected with its own culture, collective conscious and oriental images while he was truthful to expressing his emotion.聽
Abdul Hai Sikdar said, 鈥榃estern modernism came here from colonialism, which denied modernity of our region and the saddest thing was that our intellectuals were also slaves of the Indian hegemony.鈥�
鈥楽onali Kabin is the name of a volume of poems which was unimaginable to produce, but Al Mahmud did it. But, Al Mahmud did not receive honour he deserved after his death due to the fascist regime,鈥� said Abdul Hai Sikdar, referring to the Awami League regime which was ousted on August 5, 2024, in a mass uprising.
Hijol Jobayer said that Al Mahmud tried to explore the philosophy of his own life and existence.
鈥楢l Mahmud was inspired by Ali Shariati Mazinani, an Iranian revolutionary and sociologist who specialised in the sociology of religion and chose village as his fighting against capitalism,鈥� said Hijol Jobayer.
Mohammad Azam said that Al Mahmud wrote Sonali Kabin in 1968 carrying the spirit of the nationalist movement of Bangladesh while he used the standard Bengali language in village plots but never imposed local dialect.
Al Mahmud was born on July 11 in 1936 in Brahmanbaria and died in Dhaka on February 15, 2019.
