Veteran politician Badruddin Umar no more

Badruddin Umar, a writer, researcher and prominent leftist intellectual, has died at the age of 94.

He passed away at 10:05am on Sunday at Bangladesh Specialized Hospital in Dhaka after a long struggle with age-related complications.

Communist Party of Bangladesh (CPB) General Secretary Ruhin Hossain Prince confirmed the matter to the media. He said Umar fell ill at his residence in the morning and was rushed to Bangladesh Specialised Hospital, where doctors declared him dead at 10:05am.

Badruddin Umar was a leftist politician and political theorist. Beyond politics, he was also a writer, researcher, and intellectual. Throughout moments of political transformation and crises in Bangladesh, he often emerged as a skilled analyst.

Umar began his career as a part-time lecturer at Dhaka University before founding the Department of Sociology at Rajshahi University.

He was president of the Bangladesh Krishok Federation and served as central coordinator of the Gonotantrik Biplobi Jote.

A longtime Marxist thinker, he was once a member of the central committee of the Purba Banglar Communist Party.

In 2003, Badruddin established the Jatiya Mukti Council, where he served as president until his death.

During the 1960s, Badruddin Umar’s writings on nationalism, religion, and politics had a profound cultural impact on Bangladesh’s struggle for independence.

In the 1960s he wrote three groundbreaking books—Sampradayikata (Communalism, 1966), Sanskritir Sankat (The Crisis of Culture, 1967), and Sanskritik Sampradayikata (Cultural Communalism, 1969)—that theorise the dialectics of the political culture of 'communalism' and the question of Bengali nationalism.

Umar was born on 20 December 1931.