Renowned educationist, essayist, and leading figure of the leftist movement Professor Jatin Sarker has passed away. He died at 2:30 p.m. on Wednesday at Mymensingh Medical College Hospital. He was 90 years old and had been suffering from various age-related complications.
The matter was confirmed by Dr. Zakirul Islam, Deputy Director of Mymensingh Medical College Hospital.
He said that Jatin Sarker had been admitted to the hospital’s Intensive Care Unit (ICU) since 8 August, suffering from kidney failure and multiple age-related complications.
Jatin Sarker was born on 18 August 1936 in Chandpara village of Kendua upazila in Netrokona. After passing his matriculation examination in 1954, he enrolled at Netrokona College. He later completed his undergraduate studies at the historic Anandamohan College in Mymensingh and earned his master’s degree in Bengali Language and Literature from Rajshahi University. In the same year he completed his postgraduate studies, he began his teaching career at Gouripur High School in Mymensingh.
He later joined Nasirabad College in Mymensingh as a lecturer. From this period onward, his role in the country’s cultural sphere gradually became indispensable.
Jatin Sarker was a standard-bearer of socialist ideology, a hallmark evident throughout his vast and thoughtful body of literary work. He was an activist of the Language Movement of 1952, and his intellectual contribution to the Liberation War of 1971 remains unforgettable. From a young age, his extensive writings earned him a wide readership. In 1985, the publication of “Sahityer Kachhe Pratyasha” (Expectations from Literature) created a significant response across the country’s intellectual circles.
His most widely discussed work, “Pakistaner Jonmo-Mrityu Darshan” (The Philosophy of Pakistan’s Birth and Death), was published in 2005. Among his other notable works are “Two-Nation Theory, Determinism and Scientific Consciousness,” “Culture and the Discourse of Intellectuals,” “Various Thoughts on Literature,” “Expectations of Cultural Awakening,” “Reflections from the Margins,” “Bangladesh’s Kobigan,” “The Ups and Downs of Free Thought,” “My Observations on Rabindranath,” “Conviction, Commitment, and Reflection,” and many more profound intellectual works.
For “The Ups and Downs of Free Thought,” he received the BRAC Bank–Samakal Literary Award 2017 in 2018. Earlier, in 2005, he won the Prothom Alo Book of the Year Award for “The Philosophy of Pakistan’s Birth and Death.” The state did not overlook his contributions—he was awarded the Bangla Academy Literary Award in 2007 and honored with the nation’s highest civilian award, the Independence Award, in 2010.
Throughout his life, he chose to live away from the hustle and bustle of the capital, though never detached from the country’s political and cultural struggles. Until his final days, despite physical frailty and weakening eyesight and hearing, he continued writing for newspapers and journals as much as he could.
His death has drawn deep expressions of grief from poets, writers, intellectuals, and people from all walks of life.
