Humayun Kabir

Humayun Zahiruddin Amir-i-Kabir Kabir ( Bengali হুমায়ুন কবির Humāẏun Kabir ; born February 22, 1906 in Komarpur , Bengal ; † August 18, 1969 in Calcutta , West Bengal ) was an Indian writer , university professor and politician of the Indian National Congress (INC), who was a member of the Rajya Sabha from 1956 to 1962 and a member of the Lok Sabha between 1962 and his death in 1969 . In addition, he held several ministerial posts in the Union government.

As a writer, he wrote poems and short stories as well as novels and contributed decisively to the spread of Bengali thought through his essays on philosophical, educational and literary topics.

Life

Studies, university lecturer and politician in Bengal

Kabir, son of Judge Khan Bahadur Kabirud Din Ahmed, comes from the East Bengali district Faridpur and started after the visit of the Presidency College in Calcutta in 1924 to study English literature at the University of Calcutta , he with a Master of Arts graduated (MA). In 1926 he was also the editor of Presidency College Magazine . Subsequently, he began in 1928 with financial support from a grant from the postgraduate studies of philosophy , political science and economics at Exeter College of the University of Oxford , he finished in 1931 also with a Master of Arts. At the same time he was editor of the magazine Bharat in 1929 . During his studies he was also secretary of the Oxford Union Society in 1931 and of the Benjamin Jowett Society at Oxford University in 1932 .

After his return, Kabir, who joined the Indian National Congress as a member in 1931, initially became a lecturer in philosophy at Andhra University in 1932 at the request of S. Radhakrishnan , but in 1933 he switched to the University of Calcutta as a lecturer in philosophy. In addition to his teaching activities, he also began his writing career and was also involved in trade unions . In the mid-1930s he joined the Krishak Praja Party (KPP) founded by AK Fazlul Huq and was also the editor of the magazine Baromashi in 1934 .

In 1937 he was elected Member of Parliament (Legislative Assembly) of the Bengal presidency, to which he belonged until the partition of Bengal in 1947 . Between 1937 and 1945 he was deputy chairman of the CPP faction in the Legislative Assembly. He also served as President of the All India Muslim Students' Conference in 1938 and was also the editor of Chaturanga magazine from 1938 . During this time he campaigned in particular for the rights of small farmers and workers and was, among other things, President of the welfare organization in the Faridpur district in 1943, President of the Dockers' Union of Calcutta in 1944, and between 1944 and 1948 President of the Union of Railway Employees in Bengal and Assam . During this time he was also first secretary from 1944 to 1945 and then president of Nikhil Bengal Krishak Praja Samity between 1945 and 1947 .

Independence of india

Member of the Rajya Sabha and Minister of State

For several years, Kabir was one of the closest associates of Education Minister Abul Kalam Azad (left)

In 1946 he became the private secretary of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad , president of the Indian National Congress . Unlike other Muslim politicians, Kabir remained in India after the partition of India in Pakistan and India in 1947 and was one of the closest collaborators of Abul Kalam Azad, who was Minister of Education in Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru after India's independence from the United Kingdom on August 15, 1947 whose cabinet had been appointed. Kabir was both education advisor and education secretary of the government from 1948 to 1956. He also continued to work as Azad's secretary who dictated his famous book India Wins Freedom in Urdu . At the same time he was a member of the Indian Railways Commission of Inquiry between 1947 and 1948 .

He was later chairman of the commission for university funding between 1955 and 1956. In addition, he was active in 1954 as President of the Indian Philosophical Congress and in 1956 as chairman of the first All-Indian Writers 'Assembly and also a member of the Presidium of the first writers' conference in Asia, which also took place in 1956. In 1956 he was also head of the Indian education mission in the Soviet Union .

In 1956, Kabir was elected a member of the Rajya Sabha , a chamber of the Indian parliament . He was also appointed Minister of State for Civil Aviation by Prime Minister Nehru in April 1957 . He was also involved as co-chair of the East-West Philosophers' Conference that took place in Canberra in 1957 and was head of the Indian delegation at the 1957 conference of the Awami League organized by Abdul Hamid Khan Bhashani in Kagmari .

Minister and member of the Lok Sabha

Disagreements with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi led to Kabir's departure from the Indian National Congress in 1966

After Azad's death on February 22, 1958, Prime Minister Nehru Kabir was appointed Minister of Education as his successor, but shortly afterwards on March 2, 1958, Minister of Scientific Research and Cultural Affairs, while the previous Minister of State, Kalu Lal Shrimali, became the new Minister of Education. He held this ministerial office until 1963. He was also President of the Council for Cultural Relations from 1958 to 1964.

In addition, he served as President of the Bengali Society in 1960 and as President of the first Asian Congress of Historians and of the Literary Conference on the 100th birthday of Rabindranath Thakur in 1961 . In addition to his political career in 1960, he was owner of Robert Ranulph Marett - professor at the University of Oxford, and in 1961 the Rabindranath Tagore Professorship at the University of London.

In March 1962 Kabir, the Indian National Congress was elected a member of the Lok Sabha elected in which he after his reelection in 1967 during the third and fourth legislature until his death in 1969 in West Bengal located constituency 18 Basirhat represented.

After a government reshuffle, Kabir was appointed Minister for Petroleum and Chemicals in his government in 1963 by Prime Minister Nehru. He also held this ministerial office in the government of Nehru's successor as Prime Minister, Lal Bahadur Shastri , until 1966. At the same time he was 1966 chairman of the supervisory board of the Institute for Standardization ISI (Indian Standards Institution) . He was also President of the Indian Science Congress from 1964 to 1965 and of the International Congress for Orientalists from 1964 to 1967.

When after Shastri's death Indira Gandhi took over the office of prime minister on January 24, 1966, Kabir did not reappoint the government, but instead offered him the office of governor of Andhra Pradesh , which he refused. Subsequently, there were differences of opinion with the Prime Minister, which ultimately led to his resignation from the Indian National Congress in 1966 and a member of the Bangla Congress , founded by Ajoy Kumar Mukherjee in 1960 . He also supported this after Mukherjee became Chief Minister of West Bengal for the first time on March 15, 1967 , replacing Prafulla Chandra Sen from the Indian National Congress.

Most recently, in 1967, Kabir held the Herbert Spencer Chair at the University of Oxford and the Tagore Centennial Professorship at the University of Wisconsin – Madison . During his Herbert Spencer professorship, he lectured on Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell .

Writing career and awards

In addition to his activities as a politician and university lecturer, Kabir was also active as a writer and as an editor of reports and books for various domestic and foreign organizations. He made his literary debut in 1928 with the volume of poetry Svapnasadh , which was followed by works such as Sathi (1930) and Astadashi (1938). The poems in these books reflected his romance in which he followed the tradition of Rabindranath Thakur. He also translated the Musaddas of Altaf Hussain Hali from Urdu into the Bengali language .

His works as a poet, novelist and essayist included works such as the novel Nadi O Nari (1945) published in 1945, which appeared shortly afterwards as Men and Rivers in English . In it he described the life of Bengali Muslims who lived along the banks of the Padma . In 1965 the novel was filmed in East Pakistan under the title Nodi-o-Nari . A collection of his short stories and poems was also published in English under the title Green and Gold (1958). His essays on philosophical, literary, educational and sociological topics were ultimately notable contributions to intellectual thought in Bengal.

For his many years of service in politics, literature and intellectual life, he was awarded honorary doctorates from Aligarh Muslim University (1958), Annamalai University (1959), Indira Kala Sangeet University in Khairagarh (1961), Visva-Bharati University and the National and Kapodistrias Awarded by the University of Athens .

His marriage to fellow student Shanti Devi in ​​October 1932 resulted in a son and a daughter.

Publications

• Svapnasadh , 1928
• Sathi , 1930
• Immanuel Kant , 1936
• Astadashi , 1938
• Sharat Sahityer Multattva , 1942
• Banglar Kavya , 1945
• Nadi O Nari , 1945
• Marksbad , 1951
• Naya Bharater Shiksa , 1955
• Shiksak O Shiksarthi , 1957
• Mirza Abu Talib Khan , 1961
• Delhi-Washington-Moscow , 1964

in English

• Kant on Philosophy in General , 1935
• Poetry, Monads and Society , 1941
• Politics in Bengal , 1943
• Rabindranath Tagore , 1945
• The Indian Heritage , 1946/60
• Men and Rivers , 1946
• Science, Democracy and Islam , 1955
• Education in India , 1956
• Green and Gold , 1958
• Studies in Bengali Poetry , 1964
• The Bengali Novel , 1968
• Education for Tomorrow , 1968
• Minorities in a Democracy , 1969

Web links

• Biography in the National Encyclopedia of Bangladesh
• Entry on the homepage of the Rajya Sabha
• Entry on the Lok Sabha homepage
• Publications in the Open Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Abul Kalam Azad ( Memento of the original from October 15, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the homepage of Lok Sabha  
2. ↑ KL Shrimali ( Memento of the original from December 8, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the homepage of Lok Sabha 
3. ↑ Nodi-o-Nari (1965) by Sadek Khan at IMDb
4. ↑ Nodi-o-Nari (1965) by Sadek Khan at youtube.com