Page 327 - Art and Crafts of Bangladesh

324 ART AND CRAFTS

c. Safiuddin Ahmed
Sovon Som

Safiuddin Ahmed was born on 23 June 1922 at Bhabanipur in Kolkata in a liberal and
aristocratic Muslim family. His father Matinuddin Ahmed was a sub-registrar of the
Land Office of the Government of Bengal. His mother Bibi Jamila Khatun was a
housewife. For three generations his joint family had lived in his paternal homestead
in Bhabanipur. His paternal grandfather, Aminuddin Ahmed, was a popular doctor of
Bhabanipur. He was known as Bechu Daktar by the people of that locality. The road
in front of his house was named Bechu Daktar Lane after his death under the initiative
of Kolkata Municipality. Even now it is known by the same name.
Bhabanipur was then adjacent to shahebpara Chaurangi. Although people from
different provinces lived in this area, the majority of the inhabitants were culturally
conscious Bengali Hindus and Muslims. Baliganj of South Kolkata was then in the
suburbs, populated sparsely. Bhabanipur was the most aristocratic area of South
Kolkata and located here were the homesteads of many distinguished Bengalis of that
and later times. The first twenty-four years of Safiuddin’s life was spent in this milieu
devoted to the pursuit of education and cultural activity prevalent in Bhabanipur. As a
result, Safiuddin was encouraged by his immediate environment to participate in
activities related to music, art, literature and the student movement.
In 1936 when he got admitted to the Calcutta Government Art School it was only
rarely and in very negligible numbers that children from Muslim families went to the
Art School. Mukulchandra Dey who hailed from Dhaka was the principal of this
school at that time. Rabindranath Tagore looked upon Mukul Chandra with fatherly
fig. 8.16 affection; Mukulchandra had been a student of the Santiniketan Brahmacharya School
Safiuddin Ahmed and the classmate of Tagore’s prematurely deceased youngest son, Samindranath. It
was at Rabindranath’s wish that Mukulchandra first went as his
traveling companion to Japan in 1916 and later to the USA to learn
the techniques of printmaking. Later, in 1920 he went to the Royal
College in London for higher education in Fine Arts. He studied there
under Moorehead Bone and William Rothenstein, the admirers of
Rabindranath. An Associate of the Royal College in 1928, Mukul
Chandra joined the Government Art School of Kolkata as its first
Indian Principal on returning from London. He held the post of
Principal till 1943.
In 1903 Upendrakishore Raychaudhuri of Mymensingh introduced to
this country the photographic technique of block making from
England. Until then various pictures, maps, etc. were printed in the