Today is August 19, the birth anniversary of writer and filmmaker Zahir Raihan
Had he been alive, he would have stepped into his 90th year today.
Machine-translated from Bangla. মূল খবর বাংলায় পড়ুন
Today is August 19, the birth anniversary of writer and filmmaker Zahir Raihan. Had he been alive, he would have stepped into his 90th year today. He was a novelist, short story writer, filmmaker, and a genuine voice of the liberation struggle. His novels such as Hajar Bachhar Dhore, Aarek Falgun, and Aarek Jibon have attained timeless positions in Bengali literature.
On the other hand, his film Jibon Theke Neya became a symbol of liberation, and his documentary Stop Genocide shook international public opinion by exposing the brutality of the Pakistani army to the world. Zahir Raihan believed—"Freedom is the birthright of man." But just a month after independence, on January 30, 1972, while out searching for his missing elder brother Shahidullah Kaiser, he himself went missing.
He is the first forcibly disappeared person in the history of independent Bangladesh—a mysterious chapter of our post-liberation period. "Coming spring, we will be double"—this immortal quote from the novel Aarek Falgun still inspires us as a symbol of his optimistic spirit. Today, on his birth anniversary, we remember Zahir Raihan with deep reverence—an immortal soldier of Bangladesh's struggle for freedom and humanity.
This story first appeared on the Prantik News Facebook page.