Editor's Note

As every year, this year too we are commemorating the loss of the most brilliant of our journalists, academics, educationists, humanists and social workers. All of them were luminaries of our intellectual firmament. They were victims of a planned elimination strategy chalked up by the Pakistani occupation forces, and carried out by their cohorts, the Razakaars and Al-Badars, on the eve of our victory in 1971. The idea was to deprive the newly emerging nation of its brain and its soul.

Those we lost during those fateful days of 1971 cannot be replaced nor their contributions to the nation replicated in full measure. These were men and women who had been associated with the struggle for the rights of the Bengalis from the very seminal stages of our freedom struggle soon after 1947, when our rights were trampled by the might of a cruel and callous regime uncaring to the rightful demands of the majority people of the country. It is for the succeeding generations to learn from the lives of these people and draw inspiration from their sacrifices, and emulate their works as much as possible.

On this very painful day, while we pay our homage to the martyred intellectuals we would also like to convey our heartfelt sympathies to their families who have had to bear the loss personally, a loss that can never be made up, a sorrow that cannot be forgotten.

In this supplement we publish a collection of articles some of which are reminiscences, while some are accounts of colleagues and friends and very close relatives which shed light on the persona and the qualities of some of those we lost on this day forty-one years ago.

--Editor