Jamiruddin Sircar dies

It was not only his brilliance that people remembered, though he possessed it in abundance — a double graduate of the University of Dhaka who went on to earn his Barrister-at-Law from Lincoln’s Inn.

Nor was it the high offices he held, including, albeit briefly, the presidency of Bangladesh.

As Barrister Jamiruddin Sircar was laid to rest, those who knew him spoke instead of something far rarer: that throughout nearly seven decades of public life, no shadow of dishonesty or misconduct had ever been cast over his name.

In death, as in life, he was remembered not merely for the positions he held, but for the integrity, dignity and honour with which he served the nation.

“The nation has lost a great politician, jurist, and a man of pure heart,” Speaker Hafiz Uddin Ahmad told parliament on Sunday, his voice carrying the particular weight reserved for men who are rare.

“I watched him conduct the House with great skill. He was a man of such integrity that I never heard a single complaint against him.” Sircar died at 4:18am on Sunday at a specialised hospital in Dhaka’s Shyamoli, after years of age-related ailments finally caught up with him. He was 94.

His story started far from the corridors of parliament, in Nayabari village in Panchagarh’s Tentulia upazila, where he was born on December 1, 1931, the son of Maulvi Muhammad Aziz Baksh.

It is a story that, in many ways, traces the story of a nation still finding its shape — a young man who came of age amid the political ferment of the subcontinent and never quite stopped believing that public life was worth the trouble.

He joined the Student Federation in 1945, drawn first to left-wing politics, later finding his way to the Student Union and the National Awami Party under the towering figure of Maulana Abdul Hamid Khan Bhashani.

He became a founding member of the Awami Muslim League, standing close to Bhashani in those formative years.

It was a political education built on conviction rather than convenience — and it would take him, decades later, to a very different destination: as a founding member of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, and a lifelong presence on its highest policymaking body, the National Standing Committee, a seat he held until the day he died.

Local Government Minister Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, recalling that arc on the floor of parliament, said Sircar had risen through merit and was deeply loved by the people he represented.

He traced the journey — from the idealism of student politics, through JAGODAL, into the BNP under President Ziaur Rahman — as evidence, he said, of a man’s steadfast loyalty to liberal democratic ideals, even as the political ground shifted beneath him.

The lawyer who defended the powerless
Long before he became Speaker, Sircar built a reputation in courtrooms. He enrolled as an advocate on May 27, 1960, and over the following decades became one of the Supreme Court’s most respected minds in constitutional, civil and criminal law.

Opposition Leader Shafiqur Rahman, addressing parliament, remembered him as a man who often stood up for oppressed politicians in court — using his legal gifts not merely to build a career, but to shield people who had nowhere else to turn. It was a thread that ran through his life: competence in service of principle.

That reputation carried him onto the international stage as well. Between 1977 and 1981, President Ziaur Rahman sent him to represent Bangladesh at the United Nations General Assembly — not once, but five times.

Six days as acting president
History rarely announces itself in advance, and for Sircar it arrived in the summer of 2002.

When President Prof AQM Badruddoza Chowdhury resigned during the BNP government, it fell to Sircar — then Speaker of the 8th National Parliament — to step into the role of acting president.

From June 21 to September 6 of that year, he carried the responsibilities of the nation’s highest office, a caretaker chapter in a career built on being trusted with exactly that: care.

BNP MP Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain called him a distinguished lawyer and politician.

Home Minister Salahuddin Ahmed put it more simply: Sircar was a gentleman against whom no allegations were ever heard throughout his long career.

A House in mourning
Parliament suspended its regular business on Sunday to honour him. The day had begun as any other — a question-and-answer session, a standing committee report — before the House turned instead to remembering the life of the man who had once presided over it. Members observed a minute of silence. Prayers were offered.

BNP MP Mahbub Uddin Khokon, Jamaat-e-Islami MP Nazibur Rahman and NCP MP Akhter Hossen all rose to speak of a colleague whose decency had somehow survived a lifetime in politics intact.

Barrister Mahbub Uddin Khokon, president of the Supreme Court Bar Association, was the one who first confirmed the news to the world. “Sir has left us,” he said simply.

“He had been receiving treatment at the hospital. He had been suffering from various age-related complications for a long time.”

The New Nation publisher and wife of Barrister Mainul Husein, Saju Hosein expressed deep condolence over the death of Barrister Jamiruddin Sircar.

“Barrister Jamiruddin Sircar and Barrister Mainul Husein shared a long-standing professional and political relationship built on mutual respect.

Both were veteran figures in the country’s legal fraternity who led the Supreme Court Bar Association at its highest level, and stood together on the same side during various national crises in defence of the judiciary and democracy,” she said.

Home, at last The funeral prayer was held at 5:40pm on Sunday, at the entrance tunnel of the National Parliament’s main building — a fitting return for a man who had once walked those halls as its presiding officer.

President Md Sahabuddin sent his Military Secretary, Major General A S M Bahauddin, to lay a floral wreath on his behalf.

Prime Minister Tarique Rahman came in person, placing a wreath both in his own capacity and on behalf of the BNP, flanked by the party’s Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir and other senior leaders.

Before the prayers, Speaker Hafiz Uddin Ahmed, Deputy Speaker Barrister Kayser Kamal, Chief Whip Md Nurul Islam, Opposition Leader Shafiqur Rahman and Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir each spoke, asking forgiveness for his soul and remembering what he had given the country.

Then it was his son’s turn. Barrister Naushad Jamir, the eldest of Sircar’s three children and himself the sitting MP for Panchagarh-1, stood before the gathering — the same seat, in a sense, that his father had once occupied in the House, now speaking not as a politician but as a son. He asked only for prayers, that his father’s soul might find forgiveness and peace.

Home Minister Salahuddin Ahmed, Finance Minister Amir Khosru Mahmud Chowdhury, Minister of Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Iqbal Hasan Mahmud Tuku, and BNP Standing Committee member Dr Abdul Moyeen Khan were among those who joined the funeral prayer, before Sircar’s body was taken to a designated area within the parliament premises for burial — laid to rest, fittingly, within sight of the institution he had spent so much of his life serving.

He is survived by his daughter, Nilufar Jamir, and his two sons, Naushad Jamir and Naufel Jamir.

Ninety-four years, one long and improbable arc from a village in Panchagarh to the acting presidency of a nation — and at the end of it, the thing people chose to remember was not a title, but a character. A man, as the Speaker said, of pure heart.