Martyr’s Memorial at DU
Eroding for poor maintenance
Lack of maintenance is slowly eroding a memorial in Dhaka University (DU) built in memory of the martyred teachers, students and staffs of the university during the War of Liberation in 1971.
The memorial, popularly known Buddhijibi Chattor (intellectual square), is situated in front of the vice-chancellor’s residence and around 300 yards from the DU administrative building.
Built between 1985 and 1986 by architects Abdul Shukur and Abdul Muhaiman, it consists of 15 small stone walls, 12 of which contain terracotta tiles illustrating verses of poems and sculptures of freedom fighters.
On a visit, the tiles on four of the walls were found damaged while the others were in a vulnerable condition.
Names of 19 intellectual teachers including Gobindra Chandra Dev, Jyotirmoy Guha Thakurta, Anwar Pasha and Munier Chowdhury, 99 students and 29 employees, all slain, are also inscribed in the tiles, says sources in the administration’s engineering department.
The memorial hardly gets its due respect as students and visitors regularly sit at its base and litter. DU administration cleans the memorial only on special national occasions like victory and independence day.
On contact, AKM Afzal Haque, a superintendent engineer of DU, said, “One of our engineers visited the spot and the estimation for repairing the damage is almost done.”
The tiles would be repaired with the help of experts from DU fine arts faculty, he added.
-With The Daily Star input
