The Immorality of Literature

The following report was done with assistance from Tasnim Mostafa. 

On the first-page of Literary History, an online journal collection, the tragic death of Rezaul Karim is reported. He was allegedly killed by none other than his own student, who killed his mentor for teaching “immorality” through English Literature. We were asked to consider the actual reason(s) behind this attack and some answers were put forth which includes: that the ill-fated professor used to express his ideas with full freedom of opinion, that the former student was himself a conservative and breached liberal ideas … and so on. In truth, we all agreed to a point that the word “immorality” invariably pointed a finger at the invisible existence of “women”. It may happen that the fated professor used to talk of women as independent-thinking women who are/were capable of expressing their thoughts and actions in a free-spirited way. This is a bitter truth that is not always accepted by the society, which is largely represented by male-centered opinion.