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Interview of Muhammad Ahmedullah, by Nandini Chatterjee
Interview
- Media metadata | Métadonnées multimédias
- interviewer | interviewer
- Nandini Chatterjee
- interviewee | interviewé
- Muhammad Ahmedullah
- took place on | a eu lieu le
- 2 December 2023
- took place at | a eu lieu dans
- Online
- right held by | droit détenu par
- Muhammad Ahmedullah and Nandini Chatterjee
Nandini Chatterjee
So, good morning. So nice, Ahmedullah, to be doing this interview with you. I have already said your name, but following the format of our interviews, which is for the Cast in Stone Project, I will introduce myself first and then invite you to introduce yourself. So I am a professor Nandini Chatterjee, I am the PI (Principal Investigator) of the project Cast in Stone for which you have kindly agreed to do an interview in connection with colonial statues, especially the statues of Robert Clive.
So can I please invite you to tell me your name and your profession?
Muhammad Ahmedullah
My name is Muhammad Ahmedullah. I work for Stepney Community Trust as a project coordinator and I've been involved in many heritage related projects.
Nandini Chatterjee
Thank you very much. Maybe as the Interview proceeds, we can talk about these other heritage related projects as well and but for now, let us start by bringing attention to the Clive statues and as we know, there's more than one statue of Robert Clive, the colonial individual, but two of them that are foremost in our attention are in London and in Shrewsbury. So can you please tell us how you came to be interested in these statues? What brought it to your attention?
Muhammad Ahmedullah
Uh, well, regarding the statue at Shrewsbury, I only found out about it relatively recently, but regarding the statue in London at ... near Whitehall, I think it was, I think I first found out in 1999, probably around that time. A gentleman called Nurul Haq, you know, he was the first Bangladeshi councillor, independent councillor at Tower Hamlets Council, right, London borough of Tower Hamlets, and he was very nice man. Very, very welcome, very helpful and supportive. He had a very good, positive uh reputation, right? Now, sometime in the late 1990s, he decided to organize an event every year to commemorate the Battle of Plassey, 23rd of June 1757.
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And I went to the first one in 1998, I think ... nit it might have not been the first might even the second one, I don't really remember. I think I've been to two or three of his annual events and in one of them he invited me to speak and I was, you know, [a] young man, I didn't have much knowledge, but I did what I could. The following year 1999, I think it was, a large meeting took place, you know more than a hundred people attended at the Kobi Nazrul Centre and somebody from the audience, you know during audience participation and Q&A and so on. And he got, he started shouting, not shouting, you know, like a rousing speech. And he was saying he's going to organize a demonstration, the campaign to smash up Clive statue. And he wanted people to join them. And everybody in the audience supported him. And so that's when I first I think I first became aware of the statue, but I heard nothing after that, you know, about any campaigns or any efforts, any organization to friend dismantle or bring down, you know, this or get the authorities to bring down. But later on, when Nick Robinson appeared in the scene. From our point of view, in 19 nine so 2006, 2007. And he was passionate about uh, the need for this statue to come down.
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And he made, you know, lots of interesting and strong arguments, you know, for this, you know, this statue. What Robert Clive did or he represents, shouldn't be celebrating, you know, in a place like that, this was a celebratory kind of statue. And he argued for many years. The last thing I like to say, or not necessarily the last thing, but I think the next.
You know, when the National Maritime Museum Traders Gallery was established? I think it was established in 2011 if I'm correct or could have been 2012. I don't around that time. You know, they had a series of kind of events, you know, discussion. We went to the opening and in one discussion there were some distinguished people participating in the panel and the question was should the statue be brought down, what should happen to the statue. And the fourspeakers, and among the four speakers two white speakers wanted the statue to be brought down and two non-white speakers, you know, one Black and one Bengali. You might know him. He something writes for the Guardian. He is quite radical on the left. Uh, I think he's Aditya or something. Do you know him?
Nandini Chatterjee
No, I don't. But I will look it up. Is it Aditya or Adwitiya?
Muhammad Ahmedullah
I don't know how to pronounce right. It could have been either right, but he he you know, so the, the, the two white panelists, they were very in a more strong on, you know, they thought they statues should be brought down but the two non-white, they were bit more nuanced, you know, right? And one of them argued they shouldn't be brought down. And the other one is bit more kind of sophisticated. Anyway, I don't remember exactly what, but then they had a vote and the vote was overwhelmingly to bring it down, you know, from the audience, right?
[Incomplete transcription]
Linked resources
 1998, Nurul Haque organises a larger conference on Plassey |