The University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh on Thursday hosted a national symposium on Kenyan author and academic Ng眉gi wa Thiong鈥檕 at Mohammadpur in the capital Dhaka.
Titled 鈥楲a Luta Liter谩ria: Ngugi and the battle for language and liberation鈥�, the English and Humanities department of the university organised the event to commemorate the life and Ng眉gi鈥檚 large body of work that includes fictions, plays, essays, memoirs, children鈥檚 literature and political polemics.
The author recently passed away.
The conference comprised inauguration ceremony, keynote speech, two featured speaker sessions, two panel discussions and more than seventy parallel presentations about Ng眉gi鈥檚 thoughts, contributions, postcolonial theory and literature, colonial pedagogy, and cultural politics, and related topics, participated by scholars and students of different institutions from across the country.
At the inaugural ceremony, ULAB vice-chancellor Professor Imran Rahman, School of Arts and Humanities dean Professor Kaiser Haq and ULAB board of trustees鈥� special adviser Professor Shamsad Mortuza spoke.
ULAB鈥檚 English and Humanities department summer distinguished professor Azfar Hussain delivered the keynote titled 鈥楶ersonal encounters with Ng眉gi: emancipatory theory, creative imagination, and conversations that transformed me鈥� at the event chaired by Professor Kaiser Haq.
Azfar said that since his initial meeting with Ngugi wa Thiong鈥檕 in 2005, he had the privilege of engaging in a series of substantive conversations with Ngug on questions central to decolonisation, language, literature, translation, creativity and emancipatory thought.
鈥楤y critically interrogating Ngugi鈥檚 major theoretical interventions such as Globalectics and the Politics of Knowing (2014) and Decolonizing Language and Other Revolutionary Ideas (2025), I seek to foreground Ngugi not only as a major creative writer but also as a politically and philosophically engaged theorist,鈥� Azfar said, adding that 鈥榟is works remind us that decolonisation is not a metaphor 鈥� it is the return of the land, the liberation of labour, the rebirth of the body, and the reclamation of the word-and that the struggle continues to rename and remake the world.鈥�
In a featured speaker鈥檚 session, 抖阴精品 editor Nurul Kabir presented his speech titled 鈥楾he Colonial Politics of Language, Education, and Historiography: Ngugi鈥檚 Thoughts and Decolonising the 鈥淧ostcolonial鈥� Countries鈥� at the conference.聽
Nurul Kabir said that the colonial tactics were almost the same across different continents 鈥� occupy a foreign country and marginalised their language, history and civilisation.
He also stressed that although Bangladesh achieved independence from Pakistan, but it still needed to decolonise the minds of the mainstream intelligentsia to truly democratise.聽
ULAB English and Humanities department Professor Mahmud Hasan Khan delivered his speech titled 鈥楲anguage鈥� and 鈥楤eing鈥�: The Relevance of Ngugi wa Thiong鈥檕 and Heidegger in Ethnomethodology鈥� at the featured speaker鈥檚 session at the conference.