Humayun Azad Details
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| Humayun Azad |
Type of Publisher : Books
Total Book Published : 6
Humayun Azad (Rarhi Khal, Dhaka Bangladesh, 28 April 1947 - Munich, Germany, 11 August 2004) was a prolific Bangladeshi author and scholar. He wrote more than seventy titles. He was widely known for his anti-establishment, anti-religion and anti-military voice and was reputed for caustic remarks.
Professor Azad published the first comprehensive feminist book in Bengali on the subject of women titled Naari (Bangla for 'Woman') in 1992. Largely akin to The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir in contents and ideas, Naari became a best-seller and earned Humayun Azad popularity as an author. In this work Azad painstakingly compiled the feminist ideas of the West that underlie the feminist contributions of the subcontinent's socio-political reformers and drew attention to the anti-women attitude of some acclaimed Bengali writers including Rabindranath Tagore. The work, critical of the patriarchal and male-chauvinistic attitude of religion towards women, attracted negative reaction from the conservatives. The Government of Bangladesh banned the book in 1995. The ban was eventually lifted in 2000, following a legal battle that Humayun Azad won in the High Court of the country.
Professor Azad published the first comprehensive feminist book in Bengali on the subject of women titled Naari (Bangla for 'Woman') in 1992. Largely akin to The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir in contents and ideas, Naari became a best-seller and earned Humayun Azad popularity as an author. In this work Azad painstakingly compiled the feminist ideas of the West that underlie the feminist contributions of the subcontinent's socio-political reformers and drew attention to the anti-women attitude of some acclaimed Bengali writers including Rabindranath Tagore. The work, critical of the patriarchal and male-chauvinistic attitude of religion towards women, attracted negative reaction from the conservatives. The Government of Bangladesh banned the book in 1995. The ban was eventually lifted in 2000, following a legal battle that Humayun Azad won in the High Court of the country.
On February 27, 2004, he became the victim of a vicious assassination attempt by assailants near the campus of the University of Dhaka during Bangla Academy book fair. A week prior to Dr Azad's assault, Delwar Hossain Sayeedi, one of the renowned religious leaders of Bangladesh demanded, in the parliament, that Dr Azad's political satire Pak Sar Jamin Sad Bad be banned and demanded the introduction of the Blasphemy Act on the author.[3] Even though in 2006 the commander of Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) admitted to the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) interrogators that his operatives carried out the attacks on writer Humayun Azad and another teacher of Rajshahi University in 2004,[4] the official position of Azad's attempt of assassination is still 'unidentified'.
On August 11, 2004, Professor Azad died in his apartment in Munich, Germany, where he had moved just a week prior to conducting research on the nineteenth century German romantic poet Heinrich Heine. His body was brought home and he was put in his grave in Rarhikhal, his rural homeland.