Badruddin Umar


Badruddin Umar is a Bangladeshi Marxist–Leninist theorist, political activist, historian, writer, intellectual and leader of the Communist Party of Bangladesh . His father, Abul Hashim, was a prominent politician in the Indian subcontinent.

Early life, education, and career

Umar was born in Bardhaman, Bengal Presidency, British India. Although his father Abul Hashim, a clandestine Communist, opposed the creation of East Pakistan, Hashim decided to move to East Pakistan and settled in Dhaka in 1950. Umar received his MA in philosophy from University of Dhaka and his BA Honors degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from University of Oxford. Umar began his academic career as a teacher at University of Dhaka on a temporary basis. In 1963, he joined Rajshahi University as the founder-chair of the political science department. He also founded the department of sociology at the same university, but he resigned from his university positions during the hostile times of the then East Pakistan governor Abdul Monem Khan to become increasingly more active and engaged as a full-time leftist political activist and public intellectual to fight for the cause of oppressed peasants and workers in Bangladesh.

Political activism

As a follower of Marxist–Leninist principles, Umar began writing anti-colonial articles from the 1970s. In the 1960s he wrote three groundbreaking books—Sampradayikata, Sanskritir Sankat, and Sanskritik Sampradayikata —that theorise the dialectics of the political culture of 'communalism' and the question of Bengali nationalism, thus making significant intellectual contributions to the growth of Bengali nationalism itself.
In 1969, Umar joined the East Pakistan Communist Party, and from February 1970 to March 1971, Umar edited the mouthpiece of the East Pakistan Communist Party—Saptahik Ganashakti—which published essays and articles about the problems and prospects of the communist movement in Pakistan.
He was president of both Bangladesh Krishak Federation and Bangladesh Lekhak Shibir—the country's oldest organisation of progressive writers, intellectuals, and cultural activists. Currently he is President of the Jatiya Mukti Council.

Books

Umar has written nearly a hundred books and countless articles. The majority of his books discuss the problems and possibilities of the democratic and socialist transformation of class society. He lucidly and thoroughly exposes the lumpenbourgeoisie's political culture in Bangladesh.
In his books he discusses a wide range of issues including the political economy and culture of capitalism, world socialist movements, communist movements in Bangladesh, the phenomena of militarism and military dictatorships in the Third World, criminalisation of politics, business, and so on. His book titled Poverty Trade engages with the ideas of Dr. Muhammad Yunus and provides a critique of his concept and practice of micro-credit.