Professional and Literary Life
Azad was born in the village of Rarhikhal, Munshiganj district. He earned BA degree in Bengali language and literature from University of Dhaka. He obtained his PhD in linguistics from the University of Edinburgh in 1976. He later served as a faculty member of the department of Bengali language and literature at the University of Dhaka. His early career produced works on Bengali linguistics, notably syntax. He was regarded as a leading linguist of the Bengali language.
Towards the end of 1980s, he started to write newspaper column focusing on contemporary socio-political issues. His commentaries continued throughout the 1990s and were later published as books as they grew in numbers. Through his writings of 1990s, he established himself as a freethinker and appeared to be an agnostic. In his works, he openly criticized religious extremism, as well as Islam, the major religion in Bangladesh.
In 1992 Professor Azad published the first comprehensive feminist book in Bengali titled Naari (Woman). Largely akin to The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir in contents and ideas, Naari became a best-seller and earned Humayun Azad popularity as an author. In this work Azad painstakingly compiled the feminist ideas of the West that underlie the feminist contributions of the subcontinent's socio-political reformers and drew attention to the anti-women attitude of some acclaimed Bengali writers including Rabindranath Tagore. The work, critical of the patriarchal and male-chauvinistic attitude of religion towards women, attracted negative reaction from the conservatives. The Government of Bangladesh banned the book in 1995. The ban was eventually lifted in 2000, following a legal battle that Azad won in the High Court of the country.
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