The Man I Knew

Dr Piash Karim taught sociology at BRAC University and was, to most of the country, a face from the television panels. I took his courses and knew him off the screen, and wrote this shortly after he died.

The portrait is deliberately unsentimental. His life often looked disorganised while his mind stayed clear and resolute. He could talk for an hour on almost any subject and stay relevant throughout. He was instinctively drawn to saying the things others treated as unsayable, and some called him the last true Marxist in Bangladesh, though rebel fits better.

What the piece singles out is not his politics but his manner of holding them: unwavering positions combined with a genuine willingness to hear the opposing view and treat it with respect. That combination is rarer than either half of it, and it is the reason this sits among the legal writing rather than apart from it.