The Independent
February, 2nd, 2013
M. Serajul Islam
Alumni
events are in vogue these days. These events are healthy additions to our
social lives as these give us the opportunity to touch base with friends and
past that we thought had faded away from our memories. However, all such events
are not happy ones. One such event left
me and many of us who attended it, sad and in tears that we had to fight hard
to suppress. It had nothing to do with the event but with what we saw of what has become of Salimullah Muslim Hall with which all of us
fell in love the instant we saw it in its majestic glory and more when we were
admitted there either as a resident or an attached student. When the university had vacations and we had
to go home, we were unhappy because we would have to leave the Hall, albeit
temporarily. There was no student who did not openly weep when he had to leave
the Hall finally after passing his Master’s examination.
That
beloved Hall has turned into a nightmare for that is what my friend Dr.
Salehuddin, the former governor of Bangladesh Bank and I saw firsthand while
visiting the rooms where we spent the best four years of our lives between
1965-1969. We were in the Hall to attend
the alumni event. From the outside, the building still stands as before but the
majestic ambiance that surrounded the SM Hall we knew has faded. The beautiful
lawns of the East and the West House are there but looked run down and untidy. We
had our first shock as we walked the passage that divide the two Houses and
looked for what was in our days, the common room where we spent so many
evenings relaxing, playing Table Tennis
and Carom. The common room has vanished for as we peeped into the room we saw
clothes hanging and shoes and sandals outside the door. Students now live there!
By then, students recognized Dr. Salehuddin and many accompanied us on our tour
of the rooms and revealed to us facts of their lives that, had we not seen for
ourselves, we would not have believed.
In
our times, most of the rooms had four beds for students with a reading table by
the side of each bed. There were a few two bed rooms and quite a few single bed
rooms for students in their final one year as an Honours student and for final
3 months as a Master’s student. That distribution
of seats is now history. In each four bed room, the authorities officially allocates
these days 8 students but in many 4 bed rooms, there are many more than eight.
Students sleep on the floor; in the balcony; in fact almost anywhere! We visited a few of these rooms. They looked
so depressing inside that only the desperate ones should be living in this Hall
and the desperate parents without any alternative forced to send their sons to
live in SM Hall, once the best residential Hall even by standards outside the
country. Some of the students moved us to tears, those who live in the balcony
saying that when it rains or the nights are cold, there situation becomes
simply pitiable.
A
couple of years ago, a friend of ours who was an inter-wing scholar from Punjab
and had lived as a residential student in SM Hall, had visited Dhaka. This
friend had an illustrious career in the Pakistan Civil Service and had retired
as the Central Secretary. While in Dhaka, he had visited SM Hall. He told us later
that he could not hold his tears to see the plight of the residential students.
We had thought that he was perhaps exaggerating what he saw. What we saw, we
thought he had in fact not described the extent of the deterioration. These
days, 2000 student are officially allocated “seats” in the Hall according to
the students who spoke with us although it cannot accommodate 1/4th
its number if we are talking of rational allocation as was the case when we
resided in the Hall.
The
strange thing we heard from the students was that the DU authorities allocate
“seats” in arbitrary grants where they do not take to account actual reality on
the ground. Thus, according to the students, living conditions in other halls
of DU were not as bad as it is in SM Hall. It is not just the living conditions
that saddened us; there was all around the Hall, an air of despair and gloom.
In our times, our dining facilities were provided by the Hall authorities.
These days, many of the students cook for themselves without any safe and
hygienic facilities for such cooking. We wondered with such living facilities
and such hardships, when did the students find time to study. The students
remain so crammed in the rooms that they cannot even place their shoes inside
their rooms. Believe it or not, there is no provision inside their rooms for
them to study!
We
asked the students whether they have made the authorities aware of the
predicament. They said they have but they are resigned to their fate for they
know the authorities neither have the will to help them or if they do, they
cannot because a nexus of evil has taken grip of Dhaka University. All we spoke with blamed the politics in Dhaka
University for the deteriorating condition in the Halls. We asked them whether
they favoured student politics. All said they did not but also said that there
was nothing that they could do. They feel that the undesirable nexus among the politicians, the university
authorities and the leaders of student wing of the ruling party is too strong
and too deeply entrenched and cannot be dismantled.
Afterwards
the SM Hall alumnis met at the Hall auditorium. The former students recollected
their days in the Hall that were in sharp contrast to the Hall’s present
predicament. I wondered what the current students who thronged the auditorium
in a large number thought when they were told of the Hall’s role in the
language movement; the in students movement of 1962 and the successful movement
against the Ayub regime that created the conditions for Bangladesh’s liberation
war. Unfortunately, those who spoke on the occasion had not taken the tour of
the Hall as Dr. Salehuddin Ahmed and I did. Otherwise, they would not have had
the mental strength to recollect their days in the Hall in the emotional and
sentimental but happy ways that they did. In the end, it was a student of the
Hall in the early 1950s, who made the most poignant point of the evening to the
new generation of students of the Hall when he appealed to them to unite for
academic causes and shun the politics of violence and conflict that was
destroying the academic environment of the university that was once proudly
acclaimed as “Oxford of the East”; a claim that, if one were to visit SM Hall
and see the predicament of its students today, would only make a mockery of that claim.
The
sad heart with which I left SM Hall on the Alumni Day has lingered. In our days, SM Hall fulfilled the dreams of
students coming from all over the country, from sections of the society by no
means privileged. They lived in the best residential accommodation and studied
in the university that was of the highest standard. These are now history. The past can be
retrieved only if Dhaka University and its Halls are freed from the country’s
conflict prone and corrupt politics.
The writer is a retired Ambassador
and Chairman, Centre for Foreign Affairs Studies (CFAS)
M. Serajul Islam
Alumni
events are in vogue these days. These events are healthy additions to our
social lives as these give us the opportunity to touch base with friends and
past that we thought had faded away from our memories. However, all such events
are not happy ones. One such event left
me and many of us who attended it, sad and in tears that we had to fight hard
to suppress. It had nothing to do with the event but with what we saw of what has become of Salimullah Muslim Hall with which all of us
fell in love the instant we saw it in its majestic glory and more when we were
admitted there either as a resident or an attached student. When the university had vacations and we had
to go home, we were unhappy because we would have to leave the Hall, albeit
temporarily. There was no student who did not openly weep when he had to leave
the Hall finally after passing his Master’s examination.
That
beloved Hall has turned into a nightmare for that is what my friend Dr.
Salehuddin, the former governor of Bangladesh Bank and I saw firsthand while
visiting the rooms where we spent the best four years of our lives between
1965-1969. We were in the Hall to attend
the alumni event. From the outside, the building still stands as before but the
majestic ambiance that surrounded the SM Hall we knew has faded. The beautiful
lawns of the East and the West House are there but looked run down and untidy. We
had our first shock as we walked the passage that divide the two Houses and
looked for what was in our days, the common room where we spent so many
evenings relaxing, playing Table Tennis
and Carom. The common room has vanished for as we peeped into the room we saw
clothes hanging and shoes and sandals outside the door. Students now live there!
By then, students recognized Dr. Salehuddin and many accompanied us on our tour
of the rooms and revealed to us facts of their lives that, had we not seen for
ourselves, we would not have believed.
In
our times, most of the rooms had four beds for students with a reading table by
the side of each bed. There were a few two bed rooms and quite a few single bed
rooms for students in their final one year as an Honours student and for final
3 months as a Master’s student. That distribution
of seats is now history. In each four bed room, the authorities officially allocates
these days 8 students but in many 4 bed rooms, there are many more than eight.
Students sleep on the floor; in the balcony; in fact almost anywhere! We visited a few of these rooms. They looked
so depressing inside that only the desperate ones should be living in this Hall
and the desperate parents without any alternative forced to send their sons to
live in SM Hall, once the best residential Hall even by standards outside the
country. Some of the students moved us to tears, those who live in the balcony
saying that when it rains or the nights are cold, there situation becomes
simply pitiable.
A
couple of years ago, a friend of ours who was an inter-wing scholar from Punjab
and had lived as a residential student in SM Hall, had visited Dhaka. This
friend had an illustrious career in the Pakistan Civil Service and had retired
as the Central Secretary. While in Dhaka, he had visited SM Hall. He told us later
that he could not hold his tears to see the plight of the residential students.
We had thought that he was perhaps exaggerating what he saw. What we saw, we
thought he had in fact not described the extent of the deterioration. These
days, 2000 student are officially allocated “seats” in the Hall according to
the students who spoke with us although it cannot accommodate 1/4th
its number if we are talking of rational allocation as was the case when we
resided in the Hall.
The
strange thing we heard from the students was that the DU authorities allocate
“seats” in arbitrary grants where they do not take to account actual reality on
the ground. Thus, according to the students, living conditions in other halls
of DU were not as bad as it is in SM Hall. It is not just the living conditions
that saddened us; there was all around the Hall, an air of despair and gloom.
In our times, our dining facilities were provided by the Hall authorities.
These days, many of the students cook for themselves without any safe and
hygienic facilities for such cooking. We wondered with such living facilities
and such hardships, when did the students find time to study. The students
remain so crammed in the rooms that they cannot even place their shoes inside
their rooms. Believe it or not, there is no provision inside their rooms for
them to study!
We
asked the students whether they have made the authorities aware of the
predicament. They said they have but they are resigned to their fate for they
know the authorities neither have the will to help them or if they do, they
cannot because a nexus of evil has taken grip of Dhaka University. All we spoke with blamed the politics in Dhaka
University for the deteriorating condition in the Halls. We asked them whether
they favoured student politics. All said they did not but also said that there
was nothing that they could do. They feel that the undesirable nexus among the politicians, the university
authorities and the leaders of student wing of the ruling party is too strong
and too deeply entrenched and cannot be dismantled.
Afterwards
the SM Hall alumnis met at the Hall auditorium. The former students recollected
their days in the Hall that were in sharp contrast to the Hall’s present
predicament. I wondered what the current students who thronged the auditorium
in a large number thought when they were told of the Hall’s role in the
language movement; the in students movement of 1962 and the successful movement
against the Ayub regime that created the conditions for Bangladesh’s liberation
war. Unfortunately, those who spoke on the occasion had not taken the tour of
the Hall as Dr. Salehuddin Ahmed and I did. Otherwise, they would not have had
the mental strength to recollect their days in the Hall in the emotional and
sentimental but happy ways that they did. In the end, it was a student of the
Hall in the early 1950s, who made the most poignant point of the evening to the
new generation of students of the Hall when he appealed to them to unite for
academic causes and shun the politics of violence and conflict that was
destroying the academic environment of the university that was once proudly
acclaimed as “Oxford of the East”; a claim that, if one were to visit SM Hall
and see the predicament of its students today, would only make a mockery of that claim.
The
sad heart with which I left SM Hall on the Alumni Day has lingered. In our days, SM Hall fulfilled the dreams of
students coming from all over the country, from sections of the society by no
means privileged. They lived in the best residential accommodation and studied
in the university that was of the highest standard. These are now history. The past can be
retrieved only if Dhaka University and its Halls are freed from the country’s
conflict prone and corrupt politics.
The writer is a retired Ambassador
and Chairman, Centre for Foreign Affairs Studies (CFAS)
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