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Badruddin Umar | |
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বদরুদ্দীন উমর | |
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| Born | (1931-12-20)20 December 1931 Bardhaman, Bengal Presidency, British India (nowWest Bengal, India) |
| Died | 7 September 2025(2025-09-07) (aged 93) Shyamoli, Dhaka, Bangladesh |
| Alma mater | University of Dhaka University of Oxford |
| Occupations | Marxist theorist, political activist, historian, writer |
| Political party | BSD-ML (Umar) |
| Parent | Abul Hashim (father) |
| Relatives | Abul Kasem (grandfather) Khan Bahadur Abdul Momen (granduncle) Nawab Abdul Jabbar (great granduncle) |
| Awards |  Independence Award(2025)[1] |
Badruddin Umar (Bengali:বদরুদ্দীন উমর; 20 December 1931 – 7 September 2025) was a BangladeshiMarxist–Leninist theorist, political activist, historian, writer, intellectual and leader of theCommunist Party of Bangladesh (Marxist–Leninist) (Umar).[2] His father,Abul Hashim,[3] was a prominent politician in theIndian subcontinent.
Umar was born on 20 December 1931 to aBengali family ofMuslimzamindars in the village ofKashiara inBurdwan district,Bengal Presidency, British India. Although his fatherAbul Hashim and grandfatherAbul Kasem opposed thePakistan Movement, Hashim decided to move toEast Pakistan and settled inDhaka in 1950.[4] Umar received his MA in philosophy fromUniversity of Dhaka and his BA Honours degree inPhilosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) fromUniversity of Oxford.[5] Umar began his academic career as a teacher at University of Dhaka on a temporary basis. In 1963, he joinedRajshahi 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 thenEast Pakistan governorAbdul Monem Khan to become increasingly more active and engaged as a full-timeleftist political activist andpublic intellectual to fight for the cause of oppressed peasants and workers inBangladesh.[6]
As a follower of Marxist–Leninist principles, Umar began writinganti-colonial articles from the 1970s. In the 1960s he wrote three groundbreaking books—Sampradayikata (Communalism, 1966),[7]Sanskritir Sankat (The Crisis of Culture, 1967), andSanskritik Sampradayikata (Cultural Communalism, 1969)—that theorise the dialectics of the political culture of 'communalism' and the question ofBengali nationalism,[8] thus making significant intellectual contributions to the growth of Bengali nationalism itself. In 1969, Umar joined theEast Pakistan Communist Party, and from February 1970 to March 1971, Umar edited the mouthpiece of the East Pakistan Communist Party—Shaptahik Ganashakti—which published essays and articles about the problems and prospects of thecommunist movement in Pakistan. He was president of both Bangladesh Krishak Federation (Bangladesh Peasant Federation) and Bangladesh Lekhak Shibir[9]—the country's oldest organisation of progressive writers, intellectuals, and cultural activists. He was President of the Jatiya Mukti Council[2] (National Liberation Council).
Umar died on the morning of 7 September 2025, at the age of 93.[10][11] According to Jatiyo Mukti Council secretary Faizul Hakim Lala, his health deteriorated that morning, and he was taken to a specialised hospital in Shyamoli,Dhaka, where he died. He had previously been hospitalised on 22 July 2025 with respiratory distress and low blood pressure. After receiving treatment for ten days, he returned home the previous week.[12]
Umar wrote nearly 100 books and countless articles. The majority of his books discuss the problems and possibilities of the democratic and socialisttransformation of class society. He lucidly and thoroughly exposes thelumpenbourgeoisie's political culture inBangladesh.In his books he discusses a wide range of issues including thepolitical economy and culture of capitalism, world socialist movements,communist movements in Bangladesh, the phenomena ofmilitarism andmilitary dictatorships in theThird World, criminalisation of politics, business, and so on. His book titledPoverty Trade engages with the ideas of Dr.Muhammad Yunus and provides a critique of his concept and practice of micro-credit.[13][14] Umar also researched onBengali language movement and published a book on this topic.
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