Shahidul Alam (English)

Where dreams come from is a podcast featuring successful people from different walks of life around the world, people who have pursued their dreams to arrive at a station in life. I'm your host Sanjeev Chatterjee, today's guest scheidel alum is a Bangladeshi photojournalist activist and institution builder. I recorded our conversation in 2019 in Salzburg, soon after his release on bail from a Bangladeshi prison where he had been incarcerated, ostensibly for speaking truth to power and criticizing the government for violently suppressing student protests. The International call for child's release was, in my opinion, of indication of his worldwide reputation as an advocate for the powerless and as a photojournalist, after his arrest in mid 2018. And the outcry that followed, Time magazine included scheidel in their list of persons of the 2018. Shall Welcome to where dreams come from. So happy to be here. I'm a dreamer. I wanted to start, wherever you think the beginning is. I was born in Taka in middle class neighborhood colossian poor. And my mother was a schoolteacher, my father was adopted. I'm told that I was an accident at a candid moment, my mother revealed to me that I'd been in an accident. Essentially, when my father's eldest sister passed away, she left they were these children, she sort of knew that her husband would probably marry again, and had entrusted the children with my father. So at that time, we had a family of two children, my elder brother and my sister, suddenly, it was a family of six children. My mother, my parents had both been in Kolkata, and came over after partition, she had wanted to set up a school for girls in as input. No one was interested. So she bought a tent from one of my cousin's for 10, Taka visited in the middle of a playground. And with 14 kids started this school, which now is one of the best known schools and colleges for girls in the country. She passed away a few years back, but that's the sort of environment I've grown up in, looking back that particular exam example of your mother setting up a tent, with what vision who knows what impacted it leave, as you look back, I think my parents have had a huge effect on me. And not just my parents, I think we've lost a generation, that a sense of value that we have perhaps not been able to preserve. But I think the reason behind that was that they had a belief that they were building something they'd been under British rule. When it was Pakistan, obviously, they they felt there was post colonial times. This was their time to build something. After 71. They got an independent Bangladesh. And that too, was another opportunity. We had gotten rid of the grids. We had gotten rid of the Pakistanis, this was our own nation. We were going to build it and every person had to play his or her role. And that's what they were doing. They were both educationist, my, my father, as a medical professional, set up the Institute of Public Health set up the first oral cell line plant of the country. They both built for the future. What did it mean for you in action? I think they were people who were very progressive, very broad minded, but also open to being questioning. And that for me was the interesting, my brother was much older than me seven years older than me. But at some point, the two of us felt that we needed to have an identity of our own, but we would didn't want to be known as the children of famous parents. So we approached our parents had said we wanted our names change. Now, that's not a usual thing to happen. So they did ask why. And we explained that we wanted our own identity, and we wanted to be known for who we were. And they thought this was a reasonable request. So while I didn't choose my name, which shahidul lm as it was, then was witness of the world, which is quite appropriate for being a photographer. But the fact that I have a name, which is different from my parents, and it was taken on because I wanted an identity for myself, which they were comfortable with, I think shows both the openness they had, and the confidence they had in ourselves and us being able to feel fill our own vision, I had a strong interest in life sciences, and perhaps was at least slightly removed from that I graduated in biochemistry and genetics, and then went on to do a PhD in organic chemistry. But that was the time when I got involved with the Socialist Workers Party in Britain. I got very involved with the leftist movement with gay rights with race rights with class rights, I was very involved in this solid down up movement for Poland. And as a conscientious activist, I was looking for the tools I might use, I was always, always going to go back home, there was never any question of it. And I sort of thought to myself whether Bangladeshi Bangladesh needed yet another research chemist and I found, or at least I felt that if I was to fight for social justice, which is where my interest was, I was to use the most powerful tool available photography for me was it I didn't at that time know if I could make a living as a photographer, but I thought it was worth giving it a go to in 84. Having finished my PhD, I came back to Bangladesh. At that time, I tried to make a living as a photojournalist, but that wasn't working out. I didn't have a track record as a photo journalist. I had never worked for a newspaper, I didn't have the connections in the media world. But I did have technical skills. And I teamed up with some business people, investors, basically who, together we set up a company, and we were doing corporate work, advertising, fashion, industrial photography, making good money, but not doing the type of photography I was interested in. When I left Bangladesh, in 72, I had left behind an independent nation in turmoil, in a difficult situation, but still full of hope. When I came back, I realized that my country was in the grips of a dictator, a military dictator. So I along with many others, we were activists in the streets trying to bring bring down this general, and I was photographing our movement. It was very much a personal project, the work I was doing at this agency of the studio, which what kept me going, but it was as an activist in the streets, smelling the tear gas, smelling the gunfire, that I was practicing what I come here to do, just in the course of this short period, in this conversation, I am getting the sense that even as you were pursuing your degree in chemistry, and before that there was a seed of photography somewhere. Yes, there was, it wasn't so much because of photography. It was I was in awe of what this medium was capable of. I was practicing photography, I was taking pictures, but it was how those images related to me. I looked at the work of these great photographers, I saw what a transformative role it had played. I didn't at that time know that I could do something similar. But I wanted to have a go. And I actually started working professionally in London. It was in a small studio, taking pictures of kids, I would stop people in the streets. If they had kids try and make an appointment, go to their home and take happy, smiling pictures of their children. I made a decent living I was selling pictures. I was a star in the in the studio. But I knew I wasn't really doing the type of photography I was interested in. And they sort of joke with me say what are you talking about? You are a staff photographer, you make more money than anyone else. Everyone's raving about you. And I knew that I'd gone into photography for something very different. So I decided to make a very clean cut. I gave up that job, I saved what I had came over to Bangladesh with the idea that I would be a documentary photographer. But in Bangladesh, that reality was also different. I had to survive. It was through that I fit activism that I got my opportunity. This conversation, of course is about where dreams come from. And I'm trying to zero and have a seat perhaps of where it arose the idea of what has been called to use photography as a flame thrower. That was why I took up photography. That is why I changed my profession. That was what I was going to do when I came back to Bangladesh. But I think the seeds were also from the war of liberation. We had gotten ourselves in independent nation. We had fought very hard for it. A lot of people had sacrificed a lot. There were those dreams that our founding, parents had dreamed about what they'd sacrifice for. They have left this nation for us and it was for us to realize those dreams. What we were up against were the power structures. The fact that photography challenged those power structures was what made photography and photographers dangerous. So from that period onwards, during their shadow regime, I've had a loaded gun pointed in my face. This is one of eight knife wounds I got during the BMP regime, that army league had been jailed. And pretty much all these governments, despite their rhetoric, want to cling on to power, come what may, and we are the thorns in their path. Hence, they've have continued to try and make life difficult for us. I am fortunate to be in the field of education. And young people in America, the ones that are so inclined, who want to have media as an agent for change, always imagine that they're going to somehow use the media to change the world. After these, many are 40 plus years of experience, how do you look at that particular impulse to go out and change the world? Certainly changing the world is a grand concept, it has to begin by changing yourself. And often we forget that and that we are the carriers of the seeds of these big ideas. And that you have to live the life that you believe in, is something that's fundamental. But what I have done essentially, is be very strategic over this time. I've looked at the political system, I want to have an intervention in that space. But at a time when not just in Bangladesh, perhaps the world over money and muscle are such big factors in political ascendancy. I felt that if I were to join mainstream politics using those tools, I would be giving up the very beliefs that I had started with. So my plan was to use three areas of intervention, media, education and culture, to exert pressure upon the political space. Politicians could not get away with the indiscretions. And I've done that not only through my own practice, but by building the platforms that will be available to a future generation. So the agency three, the school of photography, Bachelor, and the festival, chubby mela are the three entities that work in those three years of intervention. When we had our festival recently, the decision to have the festival was taken while I was in jail. And we decided to go ahead, we held the festival was very successful one, we, under this very repressive regime, we began with a session which talked about freedom of thought and expression and South Asia. And we ended later with the conversation between our empathy Roy and myself, again, talking of those ideas about fundamental freedoms, that we were able to do that, at this time, with so little resources meant a lot for the people of Bangladesh. And I have since been approached by very many people who saw the festival not as an art event, but as an act of defiance. And they have looked at events such as this as the role models through which they can express dissent. At this point, in your career, can you give a shape to the dream you had and to what extent you've been able to live it? I think what I need to think about is continuity, you know, one can only achieve so much within one's lifetime. But if one is able to plant the seeds that continue once one has gone, then there is hope for the future. The biggest challenge for me now is to ensure that the institutions that have been building are robust enough to withstand the pressures they will invariably sustain once I've gone to ensure that there is the next layer of leadership to make sure that they're governed by bodies that have that level of integrity and trust, that they will continue to guide these organizations in that way. I was the founder principal of the school. Now I beat up the student from the first batch is the new principal. I was the founder of the festival, Francine will have another former student has just taken over as the new director of the festival. I'm hoping to bring about similar transformations within the agency. Not all of its going to be easy and they will be mistakes. They will be stumbling blocks, but I think those are part of the terrain. We have to take on. How do you adapt to the changing ground reality of what the majority actually thinks and how that shifts over time? And has that been something of a concern? Or has that been something that you had to adapt to? One of the realities we had to recognize is that not everyone will have the same aspirations and people's reality temper their aspirations. I think the challenge today is to ensure that people do not give up hope. We are in a repressive environment, on the face of it, it's a democratically elected government that we know that this government has no legitimacy that the elections were rigged, and the democratic institutions that were meant to be in place have largely been destroyed. So we have a population that lives in fear, before they can realize their dreams. what they must do is to overcome that fear, to believe, again, to hope, again, to dream again. And I believe it is the task of those of us who are more privileged to provide those dreams to rekindle those hopes and to nurture the beliefs that are still inside. The institutions that I've talked about will perhaps do that to an extent. And while I do not believe single leaders are what it's about, I think collectively we do have a leadership role. How was Bangladesh's ambition to be a nation on its own different from Pakistan's vision? Certainly the division at that time was based on demography and religion. But there is a big difference between Pakistan and Bangladesh. I mean, though we are the same religion, a culturally different ethnically and linguistically different. And I am now no longer convinced that religion itself can be the basis of a nation state or the basis for the union between nation states components of a nation state, Britain, Germany and France are largely Christian communities. They are very different cultures, very different entities. One would never imagine that they would be one country, they might work together, that's a different issue. Bangladeshi said Pakistanis are as different culturally, as you can imagine, though, we had a shared religion, we still do. The interesting thing was that it was religion that is used as a means of suppression. Pakistan, during the genocide actually labeled us as Hindus justifying their oppression. But the interesting thing about Bangladesh is that while Islam is by far the majority religion, it is not only politically but also socially and culturally a very secular nation. I'll give you simple examples. The Christian community is less than 1%, the Buddhist community is a fraction of a percent, the Hindu community is less than 10. We don't know exactly what that is. So it's by far Muslim majority country yet our national holidays include with the Poornima, the major poojas, for the in Christmas, as well as of course the eat during those religious events. The head of state greets the minority groups in my country. And as I've grown up, I have always been very pleasantly surrounded by this extremely secular, tolerant culture I'm embedded in. However, more recently, politicians have begun to use religion for their personal gains, and if shot Zia before him, a sharp turn towards religion. Today, religion plays a much more divisive role than it ever did before. And it is politicians with their short term goals using religion to divide people. I put together an exhibit, which was a photographic exhibition inside a mosque. There are the conservatives who believe that photography is haram that did not write for photography to be used within an Islamic environment. I went back to the life that the Prophet had left the fact that the Prophet's mosque in Medina was not merely a place for prayer, but also a hospital, a community center in Education Center at artspace. And that the Prophet had seen the mosque as playing a far bigger role than simply being a place of prayer. So I put together an exhibition based on that idea, convinced the people in the mosque that it should be inside a mosque and that became a very significant example of that appreciation of that aspect of Islam. The show has also have been used by the Commonwealth initiative for freedom of religion and belief to talk about, again, religious harmony and tolerance, and I believe will be shown in New York, when I have my retrospective there this November, at perhaps the Jamaica mosque or the New York University mosque, we haven't decided yet. What is your dream for the institutions that you've built, particularly the four, brick, pachala, chobi, mela, and of course, majority work. To me, institutions have no meaning unless they carry his value systems that they were built upon. And I think the institutions are robust, and they will continue to play a role. But the material form of the institution isn't so important, though. We have now built a building, which will house both Rick and Bachelor together and will also support the other entities. But I really see institutions as collectives of people. And I believe and I hope that the institutions will be nurturing environments, and that they will provide an umbrella for a new generation of people who will fight the fight that we have been fighting, and continue to dream. What is your overall advice to young people who are really unable to look beyond the borders of this circumstance? I think some of the finest attributes of youth are creativity, curiosity, a certain element of risk taking, sadly, as they grow up, our education system is like a sponge that takes out all that vibrancy from their lives, I hope that vibrancy stays, and I hope they believe in that vibrancy. And I hope that that self belief is something that they will never lose. But in the end, it is about the greater good or the public that cannot be undermined or underrated in any way. I think a lot of what happens happens, because we live in a very consumer oriented world where we are taught of the value of acquisition and material things, I do not put them down, I think they there is value. And certainly people may aspire to material comforts, but that there is a greater purpose in life. And I think at some point, we need to question why we are on this earth if all we've done is been born and grew up and acquire material acquisitions, and then die, we've not really lived. Our footprint has not made a change to this planet of ours. And I believe it is the responsibility of each one of us to ensure that we leave behind the planet better than we found it. And the youth owed was powerful people who can do that. I would like them to believe in themselves, and to believe in a planet that they can leave behind for their children. More than other impediments the child on faced, he was faced with a jail sentence and is currently as we had this conversation, he spent 100 days in jail and now out in bail with the possibility of a 14 year sentence. Does that dampen the dream? I think my jail experience was something which was a huge learning experience for me. Firstly, I discovered an aspect of my state my society, which I was not aware of to that level, and met tremendous people who have been wrongly imprisoned in jail. I saw the resilience of the prisoners, I felt the warmth of the love that they gave me. And I shared our collective goal of Bangladesh that we really aspire towards. I think my jail experience is something that really invigorates me, certainly I tried to do as much in jail as I could, along with my fellow prisoners to change the lives of us all. And I continue to be doing that I continue to be working with them in terms of jail reform. But also while I was in jail, I met very fine people who I had great access to because of the circumstances. Now, I am in a sense, far more invigorated by what one is able to do by how even small interventions can make a difference to other people's lives. So while I would not recommend jail to people necessarily, I myself feel That it was a chapter in my life that will hold me in good stead. And I remember that period, I remember my fellow prisoners, and I remember that they too, had dreams. And I hope I can lift them for whatever you left behind and jail, a part of me over 35 murals that are painted all along the walls, it's like a gallery out there. for adult literacy classes, we started the musical band, the 40 songs they've written since the other people we've been able to help get bail because of what we did, the vegetable patch that continues to nourish them, and the belief that they have. But more importantly, what I'm trying to do now now that I'm out is worked with many other organizations on jail reform to ensure that the in justices that are perpetrated by the states cannot continue. Shall I'm Thank you very much. It's good to be here. I hope to be back