Dear Forum members:

Please read this article to know who called me at my office today? I was
greatly surprised, to put it mildly.

Jaffor Ullah
Honness Lane
Ithaca, New York

Apologia

Guess who called me today?

A.H. Jaffor Ullah

Round about 3:30 pm on May 15, 2006, I received an unexpected telephone call
from a person who introduced himself as M.A. Alim. His voice told me that he
was fuming mad at me for writing my rebuttal against a piece on Rabindranath
bashing by a group of people in NFB. Dr. Alim specifically called me to say
that he is upset because I was spreading misinformation about him. Read on to
know more about his jabberwocky and the way he defended himself. He said he is
not writing as Mohammad Abdullah but he helps the latter’s write-up [correcting
and editing].

Dr. Alim said he does not visit Mukto-Mona but one person had e-mailed him the
“offending” piece that I posted in our forum. He also said that he is an
extremely busy person thus he has no time to visit any forum. He was extremely
agitated as he started his difficult conversation. I never thought he would
call me because we have no commonality between us. He asked me whether he could
talk to me in Bangla to which I readily consented. After a brief introduction
in Bangla he started to talk in Banglish. He was very agitated as he asked me
to apologize for giving wrong information about him. I said to him to tell me
what I wrote wrong. Dr. Alim said he never did a post-doctoral fellowship at
Ohio State University under any Bangladeshi professor. I then remember the name
of Prof. Akbar with whom Jamal Hasan had once e-mailed to extract more
information about Prof. Alim several years ago. I told the agitated pedagogue
that I will write a short rejoinder telling Mukto-Mona forum members that Dr.
Alim never did a post-doctoral fellowship. The way he mentioned the word
post-doctoral fellowship to me, it seems as if it is a very low class work in
academia. I tried to tell him that I did not one but two post-doctoral
fellowship and this is an honorable job, but Dr. Alim was not in the mood to
listen to me. At one point during our conversation he said he initiated this
call and I should listen to him first and I obliged to his suggestion. The
bottom line of his conversation was that he is a very important person and too
busy with his work and he does not write using the name Mohammad Abdullah. He
also wanted me to know that he is the editor of NFB’s science section. I did
not however tell him that I never knew that NFB has become a science magazine or
peer-reviewed journal.

Dr. Alim then toned down his lecture to inform me that he knows some of my
family members. From that point on he discussed in detail to what extent he
knew my sister and her family. He then asked me why am I so sure that he uses
Mohammad Abdullah as his pen name but at the same time he says he is too busy
with his academic job as a professor and consultant. I told him that a person
used to write e-mails to Mr. Jamal Hasan in 1998-1999 which we tracked down to
Huntsville, Alabama. The person’s usage of English language was very similar to
Mohammad Abdullah. To this, the professor said that he edits many people’s
write-up for NFB. And it is quite possible that he may have inserted few lines
here and there in Abdullah’s article. This is the first time he is admitting
that he knows who Abdullah is. I mentioned to him at that point that he must
subscribe to Abdullah’s ideology including the anti-Rabindranath stance. He did
not answer to my question. Then I pointed out to him that a Razakar or Jamaati
won’t send me their first draft to me for correcting English; similarly, a
secularist won’t send it to him their article for editorial job. And if this is
correct, then why does Abdullah send his article for NFB to him? Again, he
abruptly changed the subject.

Later in our conversation I took the offensive to ask him a few pertinent
questions such as whether he grew up in Science Laboratory Quarter, whether his
family had migrated from Murshidabad or Nadia district of West Bengal. He did
not answer my queries. I promised Mr. Alim that I will write a rejoinder in
Mukto-Mona to the effect that he did not do a post-doctoral fellowship at OSU,
Columbus, Ohio.

There was some serious inconsistency in his telephonic talk to me. He says he
is too busy to visit Mukto-Mona or any other forum but he had ample time to
correct Mohammad Abdullah’s English alongside with correcting others article for
NFB. He also did not answer couple of my questions that would lead him to
Abdullah. In haste I forgot to ask him what the initials before his name (M.A.
Alim) stand for. I knew he would not have answered that question of mine.

His parting shots to me were – why do you read Abdullah’s article in NFB, you do
not have to read those. The other question was – does the writing of Abdullah
bothers you that much? Does it take your sleep away? In my answer I told him
that I have no problem sleeping as soon as I hit the bed. During my
conversation I pointed out that Abdullah’s repeated rants in NFB is causing
concern. To this he said I do not have to read anything that Abdullah writes.
Isn’t that odd Dr. Alim becoming a spokesperson for Abdullah? Who he thinks he
is to pull a stunt like that?

I never thought in my life that Dr. M.A. Alim would call me at my office to
clarify who he is. Although he denies vigorously that he is not Mohammad
Abdullah but he helps him to write in NFB. I never thought that the pedagogue
would go this far. I live up to the judgment of Mukto-Mona forum members to
decide who is who. The gross inconsistency in Dr. Alim’s confabulation and his
acknowledgement that he helps Mohammad Abdullah to hone in latter’s vile article
on Rabindranath speak in volume the Jekyll and Hyde personality in him.
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Dr. A.H. Jaffor Ullah writes from Ithaca, New York