Published : 14 Sep 2026, 09:25 PM
Updated : 16 Sep 2026, 11:50 AM
A Dhaka University student has torn down three photographs of Pakistan founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah that had been put up at the Dhaka University Central Students’ Union (DUCSU) Museum as part of its “renovation”, protesting their display.
The student, Abu Tayeb Habildar, tore down the three photographs after entering the DUCSU Museum around 2:30pm on Monday.
At the time, he said: “The administration and DUCSU leaders must answer why they have displayed photographs of Jinnah, the powerful leader of Pakistan, while leaving out the real heroes of this country’s Language Movement. How can they keep the (photos of) Jinnah who wanted to take away our mother language?”
“Dhaka University (students) shed their blood starting from the Language Movement to the Liberation War. A photograph of Abul Kashem, a hero of the Language Movement, must be here. There must also be photographs of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and Maulana Abdur Rashid Tarkabagish.”
Abu Tayeb Habildar is a fourth-year student of Dhaka University’s Urdu Department. He ran as an independent for the post of vice-president in the 2025 DUCSU election.
Following renovations, DUCSU reopened its museum on Sunday. While the museum does not feature a prominent or standalone photograph of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the leader of Bangladesh’s independence struggle, it now included a widely discussed photograph of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan.
One of the photographs was from an event held at the then Racecourse Maidan, now Suhrawardy Udyan, on Mar 21, 1948, where Jinnah had declared, “Urdu alone shall be the state language of Pakistan.”
The museum also displayed a group photograph from the annual conference of the All-India Muslim League held in Lahore in March 1940, in which Jinnah appears. The third was a newspaper clipping from Pakistan’s Dawn featuring a photograph of Jinnah in a report on the 1970 election.
Bangladesh Jatiotabadi Chhatra Dal had condemned and protested the display of the “controversial” photographs of Jinnah at the DUCSU Museum.
The organisation said on Monday morning, “This Shibir-controlled DUCSU is demonstrating its covert affinity and ‘love for Pakistan’, the defeated forces of 1971, by abandoning the democratic aspirations of students and the university’s spirit of liberation.”
