Rashidul Hasan

Rashidul Hasan, (Bengali: রাশীদুল হাসান;1932 – 14 December 1971) was a Bengali Educationist. He was born in the district of Birbhum, West Bengal. In 1949, he migrated to Bangladesh, or at the time, East Pakistan.^[1]

Education and career

Rashidul Hasan obtained BA(Hons.) and MA in English from DU in 1957 and 1958, respectively. He taught at various colleges including Narsingdi, Pabna Edward College, and Krishna Chandra College of Bhirbhum in West Bengal. Finally, he joined the English Department, DU, as a lecturer in 1967. He was a liberal democrat and a lifelong fighter against fundamentalism and communism.^[1]

Death

On the 20th of September 1971, the Pakistani occupation army took Hasan away, but with the help of a friend of his he returned 12 days later unharmed. On the morning of 14 December, just two days before independence, Hasan was taken together with his close friend Anwar Pasha from the same flat within the Dhaka University campus by the Al Badar forces. The two families were then living together in a flat in the Isa Khan Road area.^[1] After 22 days of his disappearance, his decomposed body was found in the Mirpur killing ground, along with the dead bodies of the best sons of this soil.^[2]

On the 3rd of November 2013, Chowdhury Mueen-Uddin, a Muslim leader based in London, and Ashrafuz Zaman Khan, based in the United States, were sentenced in absentia after the court found that they were involved in the abduction and murders of 18 people in December 1971 - nine Dhaka University teachers including Rashidul Hasan and Anwar Pasha, six journalists and three physicians.^[3]

See also

• 1971 Bangladesh atrocities

References