A letter of Protest to the the Editor The Daily Star

Dear Mr.Mahfuz Anam,

Your Editorial of 19th October 2008 refers.

As has been the unfortunate situation with your newspaper, misinformation and myths appear to creep into all your reporting's and it now seems is spiraling upward to your Editorials.

Let this be recorded that there are historically - no known ‘images’, photographs or statues in existence of our venerated sAGE anywhere in the world, and a lithograph going about (and often seen in Posters/Tee shirts and even Newspapers) is NOT that of our sHAIJI!

Indeed if at all - it is a representation of bAUL’s - any bAUL for that matter.

Yours is probably the only newspaper that continues to write that a figurative representation of /\Fakir Lalon Shah was among 5 sculptures demolished by bigots last Wednesday opposite the Dhaka Airport. It is far from the truth, and most disturbingly lends credence to the bigots claims - that there was an attempt to raise an ‘idol’ of sHAIJI - a misinformation of devastating consequence, because idolatry is prohibited in the bAULs agnostic belief system.

We worship the gREAT gOD in MAN - indeed all mANKIND.

I hope you will be sensitive to the feelings of your audience and the bAUL fraternity at large, and ask your people to do some more research and study on bAULs and /\Lalon Shaiji.

Peace

/\ jOI gURU

Maqsoodul Haque - Mac