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Badruddin Umar (Bengali: বদরুদ্দীন উমর; 20 December 1931 – 7 September 2025) was a Bangladeshi Marxist–Leninist theorist, political activist, historian, writer, intellectual and leader of the Communist Party of Bangladesh (Marxist–Leninist) (Umar).[2] His father, Abul Hashim,[3] was a prominent politician in the Indian subcontinent.
Umar was born on 20 December 1931 to a Bengali family of Muslim zamindars in the village of Kashiara in Burdwan district, Bengal Presidency, British India. Although his father Abul Hashim and grandfather Abul Kasem opposed the Pakistan Movement, Hashim decided to move to East Pakistan and settled in Dhaka in 1950.[4] Umar received his MA in philosophy from University of Dhaka and his BA Honors degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) from University of Oxford.[5] Umar began his academic career as a teacher at University of Dhaka on a temporary basis. In 1963, he joined Rajshahi University as the founder-chair of the political science department. He also founded the department of sociology at the same university, but he resigned from his university positions during the hostile times of the then East Pakistan governor Abdul Monem Khan to become increasingly more active and engaged as a full-time leftist political activist and public intellectual to fight for the cause of oppressed peasants and workers in Bangladesh.[6]
As a follower of Marxist–Leninist principles, Umar began writing anti-colonial articles from the 1970s. In the 1960s he wrote three groundbreaking books—Sampradayikata (Communalism, 1966),[7] 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,[8] thus making significant intellectual contributions to the growth of Bengali nationalism itself. In 1969, Umar joined the East Pakistan Communist Party, and from February 1970 to March 1971, Umar edited the mouthpiece of the East Pakistan Communist Party—Shaptahik Ganashakti—which published essays and articles about the problems and prospects of the communist movement in Pakistan. He was president of both Bangladesh Krishak Federation (Bangladesh Peasant Federation) and Bangladesh Lekhak Shibir[9]—the country's oldest organisation of progressive writers, intellectuals, and cultural activists. He was President of the Jatiya Mukti Council[2] (National Liberation Council).
Badruddin Umar claimed in an interview that he had left Islam.[10] In that interview he said,
The misery of humans can't be explained if there is an all knowing, all seeing, all powerful Allah... Once a mother went to the hospital leaving her child outside. Coming out of the hospital she saw that her child is dead. What kind of test from Allah it was that He needed to kill that child? What was His intention? He testes the poor only... He gives the rich everything He wants in this life and all He wants to give to the poor is left due for afterlife...
Umar died on the morning of 7 September 2025, at the age of 93.[11][12] According to Jatiyo Mukti Council secretary Faizul Hakim Lala, his health deteriorated that morning, and he was taken to a specialised hospital in Shyamoli, Dhaka, where he died at 10:05 a.m. He had previously been hospitalised on 22 July 2025 with respiratory distress and low blood pressure. After receiving treatment for ten days, he returned home the previous week.[13]
Umar wrote nearly 100 books and countless articles. The majority of his books discuss the problems and possibilities of the democratic and socialist transformation of class society. He lucidly and thoroughly exposes the lumpenbourgeoisie's political culture in Bangladesh. In his books he discusses a wide range of issues including the political economy and culture of capitalism, world socialist movements, communist movements in Bangladesh, the phenomena of militarism and military dictatorships in the Third World, criminalisation of politics, business, and so on. His book titled Poverty Trade engages with the ideas of Dr. Muhammad Yunus and provides a critique of his concept and practice of micro-credit.[14][15] Umar also researched on Bengali Language Movement and published a book on this topic.
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