By Tuni Nigar
The Department of English and Humanities (DEH), ULAB, hosted a national symposium titled La Luta Literária: Ngũgĩ and the Battle for Language and Liberation on July 31, 2025 at ULAB’s main campus. The day-long event brought together distinguished academics, writers, and public intellectuals to engage with the literary and political contributions of Kenyan writer and scholar Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, focusing on themes of language, identity, and liberation in postcolonial contexts.
The symposium began with opening remarks from Vice Chancellor Prof. Imran Rahman, Dean of the School of Arts and Humanities Prof. Kaiser Haq, and Prof. Shamsad Mortuza, Special Advisor to ULAB’s Board of Trustees. They emphasized the urgency of revisiting Ngũgĩ’s insights on decolonising the mind, with Prof. Mortuza noting that “Ngũgĩ is a reminder that liberal arts is essential to the shaping of a free and self-aware society.”
The keynote lecture was delivered by Prof. Azfar Hussain, Summer Distinguished Professor at ULAB and Director of the Graduate Program in Social Innovation at Grand Valley State University, Michigan. In his talk titled Personal Encounters with Ngũgĩ: Emancipatory Theory, Creative Imagination, and Conversations That Transformed Me, Prof. Hussain reflected on Ngũgĩ’s influence on his intellectual journey and underscored the centrality of labour, land, language, and the body in reading Ngũgĩ’s work. His session was chaired by Prof. Kaiser Haq.
Featured talks and panels throughout the day included Mr. Nurul Kabir, Chief Editor of New Age, who critiqued colonial structures in education and political thought in Bangladesh; a scholarly panel with Prof. Asifa Sultana (BRAC University), Dr. Mohammad Shamsuzzaman (North South University), and Dr. Abu Saleh Mohammad Rafi (ULAB), who discussed the implications of writing in indigenous languages; and Prof. Mahmud Hasan Khan (ULAB), whose paper connected Ngũgĩ’s vision with Heidegger’s philosophy to highlight language as both political and existential.
The concluding panel, Ngũgĩ and the Global South: The Politics of Literary Continuance, chaired by Prof. Khaliquzzaman Elias, featured Prof. Firdous Azim (BRAC University), Prof. Shamsad Mortuza (Dhaka University), and Dr. Sarker Hasan Al Zayed (IUB). The discussion offered feminist and resistance-centered perspectives on Ngũgĩ’s enduring significance to cultural survival in the Global South.
By situating Ngũgĩ’s legacy at the intersection of language, liberation, and decolonization, the symposium provided a vibrant platform for intellectual dialogue. Faculty, students, and invited guests engaged in discussions that reaffirmed the continuing relevance of Ngũgĩ’s work in shaping emancipatory futures.