Dhaka: Academics and litterateurs at a seminar today emphasized that the literary works, particularly the short stories of Independence Award-winning fiction writer Hasan Azizul Haque, will remain as permanent assets for Bengali literature. “Hasan Azizul Haque is the only person who established himself as a writer through his outstanding short stories…Hasan has some topnotch short stories on Liberation War along with other issues including partition,” they said.
According to Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha, the writers and academics were addressing a seminar organized by Bangla Academy in memory of fiction writer Hasan Azizul Haque at the Shamsur Rahman seminar room of the academy. Fiction writer Ehsan Mahmud presented the keynote speech titled ‘Hasan Azizul Haque: Blind composer of partition’ in the seminar, which was chaired by Bangla Academy director general Professor Mohammad Azam.
Professor Mohammad Azam highlighted that Hasan Azizul was an exceptional writer in terms of telling stories of the folks from
low socioeconomic classes in the suburbs and the countryside. In his keynote speech, Ehsan stated, “Hasan Azizul in his writings, throughout his life, highlighted human and social disasters caused by the partition. In his writings, Bangla is not depicted after the partition the way ‘Rarh Bangla’ used to be depicted during the pre-partition period.”
Ehsan further noted that Bangladesh has never been a prime subject in the literary works of Hasan Azizul Haque. He added, “Hasan Aziz has been recognized for both getting blessings from Kolkata and the quality of his literary works.”
However, the seminar witnessed a division among academics and writers over some points of Ehsan Mahmud’s keynote speech. Fiction writer Wasi Ahmed disagreed with Ehsan’s claim that ‘Bangladesh has never been a prime topic for Hasan’s writings’ by stating, “Hasan Azizul Haque wrote some short stories on Liberation War which can be considered among top short stories ever written on the liberation war.”
Wasi Ahmed also described human
displacement as a severe crisis, emphasizing that “Hasan Aziz has huge literary works focusing on other issues, not just partition. Partition has been one of the major focused issues of Hasan’s literary works. But he should not be described as a writer obsessed only with the 1947 partition.”
Writer Mashiul Alam also turned down Ehsan’s statement that ‘Hasan emerged as a writer due to Kolkata’s recognition.’ He stated that Hasan Azizul did not become familiar with the literary world just for Kolkata’s recognition; rather, he became familiar for his short stories published in little magazines, independent of Kolkata-centric literature, which was the real cause for Hasan Azizul to get recognition as a writer.