Dhaka University and Our Literary Culture

I have already spent the biblically allotted three score years and ten on this planet, and of these, roughly two-thirds have been associated with Dhaka University, first as a student and then as an academic. When I went up in 1969, both the campus and the country at large were convulsed by the onset of the mass upsurge that, within a couple of years, would deliver a blood-soaked, new-born nation-state. I will not go into the history of the Liberation War in which so many of us played small roles—it has been written about by many and will be written about by many more. I have been asked instead to highlight the role of the university in the development of Bangladeshi literary culture.