Serajul Islam Choudhury

Serajul Islam Choudhury (born June 23, 1936) is a Bangladeshi literary critic, public intellectual, social and political analyst, activist, historian, educationist, editor, translator, columnist, and professor emeritus at the University of Dhaka. He is the editor of Natun Diganta. Considered the foremost oppositional intellectual of Bangladesh, he authored nearly a hundred books and countless essays in Bangla and English.

Serajul Islam Choudhury was born in the village of Baroikhali under the Sreenagar thana in the district of Munshigonj. His father was Hafizuddin Chowdhury. In his early life, he liked to build his career as a novelist, but his father wanted him to join the civil service after a degree in Economics. On a note of compromise, he enrolled with the English department at the University of Dhaka after an intermediate of arts degree, obtained in 1952 from Notre Dame College, preceded by his matriculation from St. Gregory's High School in 1950. He received his MA degree in 1956 and taught briefly at Haraganga College in Munshiganj and Jagannath College in Dhaka. He completed his post-graduate diploma in English Studies at Leeds University, the UK and obtained his doctorate in English from Leicester University, the UK.

Choudhury joined as a lecturer the Department of English, Dhaka University, in 1957, planning also to be a writer. He decided not to become a bureaucrat which many around him were becoming then. He stated two reasons why he wanted to be a writer: first, his work at the university, which would ensure that he would not be transferred from place to place and which would allow him time to read and write a lot; and, second, his temperament. In more than four decades that followed, he taught students, wrote essays, headed the department, became Dean, spawned off several academic and research projects, initiated doctoral dissertation guidance at the department, started periodicals, founded study centers, and remained involved in university politics. .

Choudhury first initiated to offer the PhD degree in English at Dhaka University. He edited journals, the university journals of arts and letters, in Bangla and English — Dhaka Visvavidyalay Patrika for 15 years and Dhaka University Studies for nine years. He founded the Visvavidyalay Patrika. Choudhury also founded a national viewsweekly called Somoy and co-edited it with Azfar Hussain, Zaheda Ahmad et al, from the early to the mid-1990s. He founded the University Book Centre in 1978 and the Centre for Advanced Research in Humanities in 1986. In keeping with the spirit, he now runs a centre called Samaj Rupantar Adhyayan Kendra (Centre for Social Transformation Studies), which works towards waking people up to a democracy which would mean ‘equality of rights and opportunities. Rights being equal would not mean anything unless the opportunities remain equal.’

Choudhury's books in the Bengali language:

• Anveshana (Hardcover,) [1]
• Nirbachita Prabandha, (1999)[2]
• Rashtra o Samskrti (1993)[3]
• Nazrul Islam (1994) [4]
• Bangalir Jaya Parajaya (1994) [5]
• Apanajana (1992) [6]