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Originally Posted by Sohel NR
Thank you for sharing those memories Puck. When it comes to your father's personal fondness for Sheikh Shaheb, as he was known in our family and has been ever since, I can certainly empathize with what he feels. I was in ULab when Russell was there also. Though I didn't like him very much because reasons only an 8 year old can feel that strongly about, I was crazy about his dad as most people were bound to be once they met him. Simple, charming, funny and immensely approachable, it was impossible not to fall for him. .
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sheikh shaheb it was indeed. it is all coming back to me now! my father would also refer to him as bongobondhu.
while working under sheikh mujib, having always had archival interests, he took a great interest in mujibs speeches in the pakistan parliament. i believe that this accounted to having a chance to informally interview mujib about those speeches. my father did a lot of archival work over the next twenty years as well as interviewing several political contemporaries of mujib in pakistan and in bangladesh, and subsequently published a monograph containing selected speeches just after awami league won the election in the 1990's, and when he was close to retirement.
i think the title of the book is 'sheikh mujib in parliament, 1955-58. it would have been deemed dangerous to have such publications under ones name before the regime change. in 2001 he published another monograph that contained mujib's official appointment diary and correspondance with annotations. i believe that he has been working on another book, perhaps a personal recollection of mujib which, as he has stated to me, would not be published until after his death. i have to say that even i know very little about his project!
you must be very close to the mark about mujib's personality as privately, my father criticised awami league and bnp just as much as each other but would never utter a bad word against mujib. mujib must have made quite a mark on my father to have done so much archival work over the years, especially since his personal area of research and publication had always been women and politics in mughal india, quite a far cry from mujib!
i believe that he was asked to deliver a speech in some mujib memorial where sheikh hasina was to be present. the speech basically contained a brief political sketch of mujib's life. there was one paragraph where my father had written something along the lines of, 'in 1975 mujib dissolved parliament and instigated a one party state'. this was very much objected to by his daughter, however, from what i know, the speech was delivered as he had written it without crossing out any offending bits!