Jahanara Imam's personal books from Bangla Academy appear on Facebook for sale

Books from the personal collection of Shaheed Janani (Mother of Martyrs) Jahanara Imam, preserved at Bangla Academy, are being sold online. 

The Facebook page Pustok Zone, which deals in old books, posted on 22 September about selling Plays Unpleasant by George Bernard Shaw, published by Penguin. Later, on 28 September, the page posted another book for sale titled Ochena Diganta (Unknown Horizon). Inside these books were stamps of the Bangla Academy and "Jahanara Imam's Personal Collection."

Subsequent investigations revealed that at least 20 Bangla and English books from Jahanara Imam's personal library had been sold by Bangla Academy by weight as scrap.

Multiple online platforms that sell old books are reportedly involved. One seller said he had bought nearly a truckload of old books from various parts of Dhaka, including Nilkhet. Among them, he found two Bangla and five English books signed by Jahanara Imam.

Regarding the issue, Bangla Academy Director General Professor Mohammad Azam told The Business Standard: "In 2014, a committee was formed to decide which books should remain in the Bangla Academy library and which should not. The books from Jahanara Imam's collection that were kept were placed in cabinets, while those marked as discarded were stored in the warehouse."

He added, "This happened a long time ago — 11 years back. The warehouse contained discarded books from the Bangla Academy library, as well as books collected from the annual book fair that were later deemed unnecessary. As the warehouse became full, those books were sold off through auction."

Among the books now drawing attention is Sangsaptak by Shahidullah Kaiser. The old-book platform Bichitra Bichitra Boi listed the book on Facebook for at least Tk1,00,000. The sellers also announced that if they did not get that price, they would not sell it but keep it locked away instead. The book's special value lies in the fact that on 4 March 1967, Shahidullah Kaiser personally gifted it to Jahanara Imam and her husband, Sharif Imam, signing his name below the inscription.

It has been learned that after the deaths of Jahanara Imam, Ahmad Sharif, and Syed Abu Zafar, their families handed over their personal book collections to the Bangla Academy.

The 2014 committee decision mentioned by Bangla Academy was made under the chairmanship of the late Emeritus Professor Anisuzzaman. The meeting, held on 10 June that year, was attended by members of the subcommittee formed to review the library's collection — Professor Hayat Mamud, retired Bangla Academy Director Subrata Barua, Professor Bishwajit Ghosh, and Bangladesh Shishu Academy librarian Rezina Akter.

Minutes of the meeting show that while a decision was made to weed out books, the specific titles to be discarded were not clearly listed. The responsibility for final selection was left to the library department of Bangla Academy.

Currently, on the second floor of Bangla Academy's new building, books from the personal collections of Jahanara Imam and several others are kept in cabinets labelled with their names.