Rafiq Azad

Early life and education

Azad was born on February 14, 1942, in the remote village of Guni in Tangail district, a central region of Bangladesh. He was the youngest of three children of Salimuddin Khan and Rabeya Khan. He received his primary education, under the British Indian education system, from Sadhuty Middle English School in Tangail. He earned his bachelor's and master's in Bengali literature from University of Dhaka in 1965 and 1967, respectively.

Literary

Azad was widely regarded as one of the most prolific young poets in the post-Liberation War period. He had 45 books to his credit, including an autobiography. His first book of poetry, Ashombhober Paye, was published in 1973. Since then, he had experimented with language and poetic form, where surrealistic approach was conspicuous.

He described himself as a 'lover of humans, nature and romance'. He depicted love, romance, poverty, sufferings, injustice, urban and rural life through his poems. Many of his love poems, including ‘He Doroja’ and ‘Bhalobashar Shonga’(Definition of Love), have been used and quoted many times in movies, TV dramas and other media in Bangladesh. He became widely famous when his controversial poem “Bhaat De Haramjada” was published in 1974. At the time the country was going through its worst famine. It was an angry poem about a starving man lashing out in impotent rage- “Bhaat De Haramjada, noile manchitro khabo” (“give me food, bastard! Or I will engulf your map, your geography!”). The indication was -if the newly independent country cannot even feed its own people, then what good is the liberation? The poet quickly became the center of a controversy. The Sheikh Mujib administration found the poem to be incendiary and an attack on the ruling party, while his readership hailed it as a rebellious and courageous outburst. In an attempt to settle the debate, Azad explained to the administration, by writing a long analysis of how his poem only reflected the great literary tradition of Bengal and the poem intended no animosity toward the government. He eventually averted potential trouble with the government. Years later, Azad expressed his regret over the controversy but remained unapologetic about the theme of “Bhaat De Haramjada”. “I believe the whole incidence (famine) was artificial, man-made, and at the time, as a poet, I could not hold back at the news of such an ill-fated occurrence,” he said in an interview.

Professional

Throughout his professional life, spanning 50 years, Azad had many roles. He began his career as a lecturer in Kagmari College (now Govt. Maulna Mohammad Ali College) in Tangail in the late 1960s. The year 1971, changed the course of the poet's life, as he traded his pen with a wooden rifle. After March 25th crackdown by Pakistani Military, Azad joined Kader Siddique’s ‘Kaderia Bahini’, a civilian guerrilla force, to fight against the occupying army in the Liberation War. He soon received the necessary arms and equipment from the treasury, provided by then finance secretary Khondokar Asaduzzaman.

After the war, Azad resigned from his teaching post at MM Ali College when he became recruited in the first batch (1972-1973) of the Bangladesh Civil Service (BCS). He joined Bangla Academy in 1972 and worked there until 1984, as the executive editor of Uttaradhikar, a monthly magazine. He was also the editor of Robbaar, another popular weekly in 1980s. Azad was the director of National Book Center (Jatiyo Grontho Kendro) of Bangladesh for many years. He briefly served as the deputy general manager of BJMC(Bangladesh Jute Mills Corporation). Azad returned to Bangla Academy in 1995, for a brief period, to help assist the ‘Young Writers Project’, taking up the role of poetics instructor. He took a keen interest in the culture and traditions of tribal ethnicity of Bangladesh and was appointed as the director of the Upajati Shangishkriti Kandra(Tribal Culture Academy) in 1996. Later he went back to teaching and became a visiting professor of literature at Jahangirnagar University in Savar. In the recent years, he had been working in a daily called Amader Shomoy.

Awards

Books

Personal life and death

Azad married Adila Bakul in 1969 and together they had four children - Lopa, Rahul, Deepita and Rajeev. In 1983, the couple separated and later that year he married Dilara Hafiz. Together they had two sons - Ovinna and Obyoy. Azad suffered a stroke in January 2016 and remained hospitalized for almost 8 weeks. He died on March 12, 2016, in Dhaka. His body was entombed in Martyred Intellectuals' Cemetery in Mirpur.