During the period stretching from the early sixties to the seventies, the Ramna-Green Road-Nilkhet area in Dhaka was filled with a placid beauty, which few of today's youths would be able to comprehend. The whole ambience was still replete with the solitude, albeit a little spoilt by urban bustle, which Poet Buddhadeb Bosu immortalised in his reminiscences of the city in the late twenties of the last century. In our childhood and the days of adolescence, Dhaka had all the mesmerising and comely charm that makes one fall in love with a city.
The tranquillity that pervaded Dhaka used to get disrupted on Sundays, the weekly government holiday. On this day, some spots in the greater Ramna area would come alive with scores of activities. The New Market, then the only middle-class shopping centre, would be filled with shoppers. The nearby Balaka cinema sucked in and belched out film buffs at 'show-times'.
In the afternoon, the Race Course area at Shahbag would see a different type of clientele -- clad in their best with perfume wafting about, yet tense and fidgety. They were the people betting on racing horses.
Introduced by the British colonial civil servants in the 19th century, and patronised by the Nawabs of Dhaka, horse race had become an integral part of the city's popular culture by the sixties. The then Race Course ground and the race itself had an irresistible appeal for its connoisseurs. We, the school-going boys, remained content with the excitement of the racing horses.
The jockeys, seated tightly on the horse back, a little bent, and whipping the speeding horses to spur them into running faster, appeared like heroes to us. Preparing horses by the jockeys with oil-massage for race under banyan and Shaal trees was a common sight in the Shahbag area on Sunday mornings and noon. The gambling-laced sport was declared banned by the post-independence government in 1972. The Race Course was given the new name of Suhrawardy Udyan.
In the post-independence Dhaka, time has passed by at a mind-boggling speed. Everything appears to have changed overnight. The area from Nilkhet to modern Ramna, especially the Shahbag neighbourhood, has been no exception. The whole place is now chock-a-block - with people jostling, jeering and caught in a mad rush. And, of course, there is the omnipresent traffic chaos.
We shift our focus a little, and to our utter amazement and surprise discover that the erstwhile Race Course ground still holds a lot of charm for the people living nearby.
In our boyhood days, we used to wander aimlessly in the sparsely-grassed ground. The vast expanse was encircled by the race track. The nearly barren ground was monotonous. The Dhaka Club-owned eye-soothing round patches of golf used to bring us some relief. And there was the Ramna Kali Mandir, which stood like a small, peopled savannah in the vast ground. In our early university days, this ground made history by hosting the 7th March speech by Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in 1971. We witnessed the surrender of the Pakistan occupation army to the victorious joint command of the Mukti Bahini and the Indian Allied Forces on December 16 the same year. Ironically, in 1948 the Race Course ground had witnessed its first-ever public meeting, with Pakistan's Governor General Mohammad Ali Jinnah on the dais.
The historic ground has long been turned into a sprawling garden, with sprinkling of medium-height trees, dense bushes --- concrete benches surrounding them. Let's take an afternoon stroll around today's Suhrawardy Udyan. But it won't be easy. The place is now a vibrant cultural hub, pulsating with myriad types of creative activities ranging from painting shows, display of books, open-air dramas and a lot of other events.
As the evening descends, film activists install their giant video screens. Images begin coming to life, with them the sound track. Here you might chance upon the screening of a film, an off-beat one which you have missed. If you are a music lover, saunter along the stone-slab walkway across lush green carpet of grass. Going past snacks corners, small addas -- all silhouetted in foggy-yellow street lights, there, deep in the middle of the ground, you find a session of mystical songs. It is not the only music spot, turn your eyes around. You will find many other similar musical sessions in the area. In some, everybody is singing at the top of their voice creating an auditory surreal effect. You like poetry? Turn right, towards the TSC-side gate of the Udyan. There, right under a light-post, a budding unpublished poet is reading out his freshly composed poem. The audience is poor. But the poet is unfazed in his reading. He is weirdly dressed, hair unkempt.
Well, in the ground you'll come across some young social dropouts, drifters or vagabonds. Out of desperation and a rage that has no cogent reasons, these youths at times become fierce and might seem frightening. But all this is a part of an outer garb. Inside, these poor souls are too weak and helpless to become any real threat. Many of them are disastrous failures, being the victims of neglect on the part of the unapproachable establishment.
With Dhaka's once-vibrant cultural life waning fast, Suhrawardy Udyan remains alive with the continued blossoming of creative dissent. The first lesson the activists take here is learning how to say 'no'. They do not go the conventional way, because they hardly feel its need. Be he or she a painter, an obscure poet or a short film maker, institutional exclusiveness has little value for them. What they cherish the most is freedom. And the audacity to dream big. The paintings at their open-air gallery are damaged, bullies let loose by vested interests harass them, or the forces of darkness spit venom on them from safe distance. They know well, all these filths will be swept away in time.
After all, it is the historic ground, where Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman made the grand call to the nation: "The struggle this time is for emancipation, the struggle this time is for independence."
In fact, Suhrawardy Udyan, the former Race Course, is a metonymy for freedom.
shihabskr@ymail.com
Race Course: A radical rebirth as Suhrawardy Udyan
Shihab Sarkar | Published: July 11, 2014 00:00:00 | Updated: November 30, 2026 06:01:00
A street theatre festival at the amphitheatre of Suhrawardy Udyan.
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