He Travelled and He Wrote

Taught by the eminent Rabindranath Tagore himself, this man has been a successful writer who played with wit and humour in his stories while having a knack for travelling. Combining both his interests of writing and travelling, here's the story of the absolutely delightful— Syed Mujtaba Ali.

A Man of many qualities; Image Source: Dhaka Courier

While travelling and writing do sound like his thing, Syed Mujtaba Ali was a man of many hues as people have claimed him to be. He was also an excellent scholar, linguist and academician. Ali was born on 13th September 1904 in the Sylhet district of Assam province. He had always been a rebel of his own world and many events of his life would make his father (who was a sub-registrar) worry about the result of his acts.

One such act happened when young Mujtaba Ali was studying at Sylhet Government Pilot High School and the renowned Rabindranath Tagore paid a visit to their school. This day later became a major highlight in his life. His fourteen-year-old mind got immensely inspired by the speech that Tagore gave regarding goals and aspirations.

The impact that Tagore left on him was so much that he ran off to write a personal letter to him without his parent's permission asking "What does one need to do to set higher personal goals in life?". Tagore replied delightfully and in exchange asked him to come study at Shantiniketan.

Since then, Ali set his eyes on Vishwa Bharati and thus went to Shantiniketan for his further studies post matriculation. Here he got the golden ticket of getting taught by Tagore directly! The rebel within him had also made him participate in India's fight for struggle. One can say he was a very zealous and rebellious person in his own self. Ali graduated with a B.A. degree in 1926 and was among the first batch to graduate from Vishwa Bharati.

After spending a brief time in Aligarh University, Ali left for Kabul where he worked as a professor. This was the beginning of Mujtaba Ali's travelling spree and his habit of picking up the best memories for writing in his books later. Staying in Afghanistan made him experience the revolutionary rule of King Amanullah Khan and his wife, whom he later incorporated through anecdotes in his book Deshe Bideshe.

Ali spent two years in Kabul then later packed his bags to go study in Germany. He earned his PhD. in religious studies from Bonn University. But as much of a traveller as he was, Ali again left for Cairo to study at the Al-Azhar University from 1934-35.

Roaming around the world gaining knowledge, Ali had become an expert in the field of linguistics. Along with his mother tongue, i.e. Bengali, he was also fluent in Greek, English, French, German, Italian, Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Hindi, Sanskrit, Marathi and then later in Gujarati and Pashtu after he shifted to Baroda as a college professor.

India's partition led him to stay in East Pakistan for a while but his constant changing of locations again brought him back to India in 1949. In the same year, Ali wrote his brilliant piece of work Deshe Bideshe. It is considered to be one of the best Bengali literary works to exist even in today's time. He spent a year teaching at the University of Calcutta and by 1950 had become the secretary of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations and editor of its Arabic journal Thaqafatul Hind.

Mujtaba Ali also worked for the All India Radio at New Delhi, Patna and Cuttack from 1952 onwards. During this year, he released his collection of stories which is the famous Panchatantra tales.

These stories that he compiled so admiringly were all bits and parts taken from his travel experiences in Kabul, Cairo, Berlin and Baroda. Thus with his talents and love for travelling, Mujtaba Ali produced path-breaking works of literature for the country that we are still fans of. Ali then lived in Calcutta till 1972 but post the Liberation of Bangladesh, moved permanently to Dhaka with his family.

He is still known as a legendary scholar and writer whose works have been vastly read and loved by many. His legacy remains to live on among the many Panchatantra tales he left for us to grow up with.