Dhaka, Sep 16 (IANS) The University Teachers’ Network in Bangladesh strongly condemned “unauthorised and unlawful” changes to the Dhaka University Central Students’ Union (DUCSU) photo gallery, alleging that valuable historical photographs, including that of independence hero Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, were removed and replaced with a portrait of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Pakistan’s first Governor General, local media reported.
Citing media reports and findings from its own on-site visit, the network said that the removal of documents and photographs documenting the March 25, 1971 massacre and subsequent atrocities on the campus by the Pakistani military and its local collaborators, including the Razakars and Al-Badr, was “equally disturbing”.
It described the DUCSU Museum as a “protected place of the Dhaka University” and stressed that any changes to university-protected infrastructure require prior administrative approval, Bangladesh’s leading newspaper The Daily Star reported.
“Student leaders cannot arbitrarily impose changes based on personal whims, partisan motives, or extremist religious views,” it said.
The network sharply objected to the installation of Jinnah’s portrait, recalling his opposition to Bengali being recognised as a state language during the Language Movement in erstwhile East Pakistan as well as Islamabad’s continued failure to offer a formal apology for the 1971 genocide committed by Pakistani forces against the people of Bangladesh.
Placing his portrait in a memorial dedicated to the struggles and sacrifices of Dhaka University students amounted to “a grave insult to the Bengali nation”, the network said.
It further said that the removal of Sheikh Mujib’s photograph from the DUCSU Museum at a time when resentment towards his daughter and former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is being projected onto him "is not only insensitive but also a deliberate attempt to erase the true heroes from history.”
The network called the recent episode an effort by “certain extremist groups to advance an anti-liberation political agenda, which teachers and students of Dhaka University cannot accept”.
Describing the museum as a national monument rather than the property of any particular group, the network called for an independent and impartial investigation outside the university’s own probe, along with administrative and legal action against those responsible.
It also demanded a complete and transparent inventory of all removed items, along with the restoration of the photographs and memorials to their original locations.
This latest incident came after hundreds of sculptures, murals, and monuments across Bangladesh depicting the country’s 1971 Liberation War against Pakistan and other historic events were destroyed, set ablaze, or uprooted in the aftermath of the 2024 July-August demonstrations.
--IANS
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