In a brazen assault on Bangladesh’s sacred Liberation War narrative, the Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Academic) of the Jamaat-Shibir den Chittagong University, Prof. Dr. Mohammad Shamim Uddin Khan, has unleashed scandalous falsehoods denying the Pakistani occupation forces’ orchestrated genocide of intellectuals in 1971.
The university’s statement, released subsequently, grotesquely distorts history by crediting long-deceased leaders Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy and Sher-e-Bangla A.K. Fazlul Huq as “leaders” of the war—a move that reeks of the Muhammad Yunus-led, Jamaat-e-Islami-backed interim government’s systematic “Pakistanization” agenda to erase the nation’s pro-liberation foundations.
The outrage erupted during a Martyred Intellectuals Day discussion on December 14, where Prof. Shamim callously dismissed the Pakistani army’s targeted killings of Bengali intellectuals as “absurd” and “irrelevant.” Speaking as a special guest, he remarked: “At a time when I [implying the Pakistani forces] am trying to escape from the country, unsure if I will live or die, the claim that Pakistani soldiers would kill Bangladesh’s intellectuals who had fled—I consider this utterly absurd.”
He further sowed doubt on the martyrdom figures of the Liberation War, insisting the nation needs “factual evidence” over “rhetorical statements,” thereby undermining the documented atrocities that claimed three million lives and the intellectual backbone of the nascent nation.
This blasphemous revisionism, which echoes the denialism of 1971 Razakar collaborators, triggered immediate backlash. Students from Chhatra Dal and allied groups demanded Prof. Shamim’s unconditional apology and resignation, locking the university’s administrative building on December 15 for over eight hours.
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The siege confined Prof. Shamim, pro-vice-chancellor (administration) Prof. Md. Kamal Uddin, and acting registrar Prof. Mohammad Saiful Islam until late evening, amid duelling slogans from protesters and counter-demonstrators. The university’s history department proceeded with its Victory Day event without Prof. Shamim following a boycott announcement, while campus tensions escalated with students blotting out a caricature linking him to infamous Jamaat war criminal Ghulam Azam—a stark symbol of the regime’s Islamist infiltration.
In a desperate bid to whitewash the fiasco, the university stated on December 16, in a message signed by acting registrar Prof. Saiful Islam and posted on its official Facebook page. While claiming Prof. Shamim did not deny the intellectual killings but merely emphasised the need for “more authentic research,” the document outrageously listed Suhrawardy and Fazlul Huq as “eminent political leaders” who provided “leadership” in the 1971 war—alongside Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and Ziaur Rahman.
This is historical heresy: Suhrawardy, the democracy icon who served as Pakistan’s prime minister, died in isolation in Beirut on December 5, 1963; Fazlul Huq, the legendary “Tiger of Bengal” and architect of Bengali nationalism, passed away on April 27, 1962—eight and nine years before the war’s outbreak, respectively.
Social media erupted in condemnation, with netizens accusing the university of “distorting history” and perpetrating “one distortion to explain another.” Freedom fighter and war historian Mahfuzur Rahman lambasted the statement as a ploy to fabricate “new stories” and divide the nation.
In an interview with Prothom Alo, he thundered: “Sher-e-Bangla A.K. Fazlul Huq was a great leader of the Bengali nation, but he died before the independence war. And Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy was a leader of Pakistan, not Bangladesh. He didn’t want autonomy, let alone independence. They are creating new tales unnecessarily. After all these years, there should be no controversy over the Liberation War. Some people are keeping these alive to scheme and divide the nation.”
This egregious scandal at Chittagong University is no isolated blunder but a chilling manifestation of the Yunus-Jamaat clique’s broader conspiracy to “Pakistanize” Bangladesh’s institutions, diluting its secular, pro-liberation ethos in favour of Islamist revisionism. Under Yunus’s interim regime—propped up by Jamaat-e-Islami, the notorious collaborators with Pakistani forces during the 1971 genocide—universities have become battlegrounds for historical whitewashing. The lifting of Jamaat’s ban in August 2024, coupled with warming ties to Islamabad through military pacts and high-level visits, has emboldened such distortions, purging pro-1971 voices from academia while installing sympathisers who parrot razakar narratives.
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The pro-liberation forces have unequivocally condemned this treacherous betrayal: By allowing—nay, enabling—such lies to fester in halls of learning, the Yunus-Jamaat axis is not just rewriting history but resurrecting the ghosts of 1971 traitors, sowing division among Bengalis, and aligning Bangladesh with its former oppressors.
On Victory Day, as the nation honours its martyrs, this scandal demands immediate action: Prof. Shamim’s removal, a retraction of the university’s statement, and an end to the regime’s insidious campaign against our independence legacy. Failure to act will only confirm the puppet strings pulling from Rawalpindi, threatening to unravel the very fabric of sovereign Bangladesh.
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