My lalbodor teacher Abdullah Abu Sayeed 

By Vojon Sarkar When I first saw my teacher in the Number 6 Gallery at Dhaka College, on the very first day of class, it immediately struck me that this gentleman was a complete charlatan from head to toe.

My school teacher, Yogesh Sir (who had graduated in Bengali from Calcutta University in the 1940s), used to quote from Sanskrit literature in his Bengali classes. He once mentioned a word that is also the name of an ancient book: Kathasaritsagar. Its dictionary meaning in Bengali is “the ocean of rivers of stories.”

I remember that even back then, for some reason, this word seemed to me a perfect synonym for the pure Bengali term “chapabaj” (charlatan or smooth-talker). There is another Sanskrit equivalent: mukhen maritam jagat (conquering the world with words).

From the very first day, my teacher, Professor Abdullah Abu Sayeed, seemed exactly like that to me.

It is worth noting that there is another such charlatan. This one’s name is Dr. Salimullah Khan.

Both Salimullah Khan and Abdullah Abu Sayeed are reactionary. The difference is that Salimullah Khan is a bit raw or unrefined—like raw material, or in English, “raw material” type—but Abdullah Abu Sayeed is a more polished, Rabindric-style schemer. That’s why Salimullah Khan is easy to recognise, but Abdullah Abu Sayeed hides behind the mask of civility.

Another similarity between the two: both are extreme oppressors of women in their family and personal lives. In Salimullah Khan’s case, there is evidence through his ex-wife, which is public knowledge. But Abdullah Abu Sayeed has kept his wife so hidden from public view that, except for a few very close people, it remains unknown to others.

Anyway, the fact that Salimullah Khan is a reactionary fraud is now well-known to everyone. So mentioning it would be mere folly.

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Yet my teacher, Abdullah Abu Sayeed, has very carefully kept his reactionary face hidden behind a mask throughout his life.

That’s why he prefers to remain almost indifferent in all matters—be it the Liberation War, the rise of fundamentalism, or the aggression of communal forces.

But one’s tail can’t always stay hidden. Just as Abdullah Abu Sayeed couldn’t hide it in the early days of his teaching career. In the beginning of his professional life, progressive student organisations of that time expelled him from a college, seeing him as an accomplice to reactionaries.

After that, under the guise of silence, he practised mukhen maritam jagat or charlatanism and blended into the crowd of civil society for a long time.

He founded an ostentatious, egg-like institution called Bishwa Sahitya Kendra and posed as a promoter of the “book reading” movement through pretences like the Prothom Alo newspaper. Yet the fact that nothing substantial has been achieved is evident from the current degraded state of Bangladesh.

After 50 years, my teacher, Abdullah Abu Sayeed, woke up in July-August 2024. Having spent his time on trees, plants, rivers, or Rabindranath in his Kathasaritsagar style, he then realised that the country was now under “fascist rule.” So he wrote a column in Matiur Rahman’s Prothom Alo.

Yet from 1975 onward, every time democracy was seized, military rule came, communal forces rose, minorities were persecuted, and teachers and intellectuals were killed—none of that seemed like “fascist rule” to my teacher Abdullah Abu Sayeed.

Even Yunus’ mob terror over the past one and a half years did not seem like “fascist rule” to him.

Whether it’s pretension or publicity or a livelihood scheme, he has written countless articles on Rabindranath, authored books, and above all, taught Rabindranath’s poems, stories, and plays to thousands of students over generations.

Yet when Chhayanaut—a premier center for Rabindranath studies—was burned down by Yunus’s supported goons from Jamaat-Shibir-BNP, Abdullah Abu Sayeed did not protest even then.

Mr. Abdullah Abu Sayeed, today I have no hesitation in saying: the impression that a 16-year-old boy formed about you in that first class in Dhaka College’s Number 6 Gallery has, four decades later, gathered more droplets around that initial “chapabaj or Kathasaritsagar“—reactionary, opportunist, schemer, hypocrite, and in recent times, the most vile insult: lalbodor.