Full Name: Dr. Mizanur Rahman Shelley

Affiliation: Centre for Development Research (CDR), Bangladesh

Current Position: Deceased

Date of Birth: January 02, 1943

Date of Death: August 12, 2019

Place of Birth: Bangladesh

Home District: Munshiganj

Nationality: Bangladeshi

Profile:

Dr. Mizanur Rahman Shelley (2 January 1943 - 12 August 2019) was a Bangladeshi Bureaucrat, Political Analyst, Social Scientist, Academic and Writer.He was the Founder Chairman of Centre for Development Research, Bangladesh and served as editor of a quarterly “Asian Affairs”. He was a former member of the erstwhile Civil Service of Pakistan (CSP) and also served as a technocrat minister in 1990 as Minister of Information Ministry and Water Resources Ministry in the cabinet of HM Ershad.  In a word Shelley was a scholar of multidimensional genius.

Shelley grow up to be a reputed intellectual in the later years had started finding expression in his early youth, rather adolescence, for his poems and lyrics, short stories and articles began to appear in the national daily newspapers even before he passed his school final in 1959. The promising young boy as he was then, Shelley was a topper in the Secondary School Certificate examinations while he stood first in all the next examinations that he had sat for — Higher Secondary, Bachelor of Arts as well as Master of Arts, opening a broad avenue for him to embrace a scholarly life by way of becoming a university teacher and, in the process, generating new knowledge through critical researches.

When Shelley attained his youth and entered the University of Dhaka in the Pakistani era of Bangladesh’s history in 1959 as a student of political science department, the menaces in question were in plenty, for the country, then the eastern wing of Pakistan, was being ruled by a West-based neo-colonialist politico-military oligarchy headed by General Ayub Khan. That Shelley’s youth was worth living became explicitly manifest in his rebellious political and intellectual activism in his university days, primarily when he joined a party-independent student organisation of the day, Student Force, of which he eventually became president and finally when he came forward to play a leadership role, along with the leaders of the Student Union and the Student League and a faction of the National Student Federation, in the historic student movement against General Ayub’s anti-people, particularly anti-Bengali, education policy.

After completing study from University of Dhaka Shelley joined its Political Science Department as a teacher. In 1967, he resigned from the post and joined Government Service. After joining Government Service he obtained a PhD from the University of London in International Politics. He resigned from Government Service in 1980. He was the Director of Social Welfare Department at that time.

Shelley was also the Chairman of Premier Leasing and Finance. He was the Advisory Editor of Weekly Sochitro Swadesh and Trust Chairman of the Bangladesh Times. His writings were published in national dailies of Bangladesh. He wrote books about sociology and politics. He also wrote books covering other topics. His published thoughts are available in many a title of poems, short stories, novels, columns and essays that he wrote and edited, both in Bangla and English, and obviously in the radio and television programmes that he had participated.

In 2008 Shelley received an honorary fellowship from the Bangla Academy.

Shelley died in Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University Hospital of Dhaka on 12 August 2019 at the age of 76.

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