lit a candle 4h ago74. Just read she carried the first letter of Swadhinata in that 1971 march before she'd even finished art college. Thinking of her sister Sultana Kamal and the family tonight.
Their story
Saeeda Kamal, known to family and friends as Tulu, was a Bangladeshi painter, art teacher and freedom fighter. The youngest daughter of the poet and women's rights pioneer Sufia Kamal, she spent her life between the studio and the causes her family stood for. In 1971, as a third year…
Saeeda Kamal, known to family and friends as Tulu, was a Bangladeshi painter, art teacher and freedom fighter. The youngest daughter of the poet and women's rights pioneer Sufia Kamal, she spent her life between the studio and the causes her family stood for. In 1971, as a third year student at the Dacca Art College, she left Dhaka with her elder sister Sultana Kamal and worked as a nurse at the frontline Bangladesh Field Hospital, caring for wounded freedom fighters and injured villagers. For that service she received the Commander-in-Chief's Special Commendation. She died in Dhaka on 18 October 2026, aged 74.
She was born in Dhaka in 1952 to Sufia Kamal and Kamaluddin Ahmed. She grew up in a household at the centre of Bengali cultural and political life. Her mother edited the women's weekly Begum, led the Mahila Parishad and became one of the most respected voices of the Bengali nationalist movement. Her siblings included Sultana Kamal, who later became a human rights leader and a caretaker government adviser, the journalist and teacher Shahed Kamal, Sajed Kamal and Shoeb Kamal, and her half-sister Amena Kahhar from her mother's first marriage.
Saeeda chose art. She studied drawing and painting at the Institute of Fine Arts of the University of Dhaka, then still called the Dacca Art College, and completed her BFA in 1972. The upheavals of 1969 to 1971 pulled the shy student into meetings and processions. In a 2019 essay for Prothom Alo she recalled that on 17 March 1971, during the non-cooperation movement, the artists' action committee marched from the Shaheed Minar with posters and banners, led by four young women each wearing one letter of the Bengali word for independence, Swadhinata. She carried the first letter. Her sister Sultana carried the last.
After 25 March the family helped freedom fighters in Dhaka by passing messages, hiding weapons and delivering rations. On 16 June 1971 the two sisters left the city with a large group guided by the journalist Shahadat Chowdhury and the singer Mahmudur Rahman Benu. They crossed the border near Chandina and reached Sonamura, where Captain Akhter Ahmed was setting up a field hospital for the Mukti Bahini and wounded refugees. Neither sister had any nursing experience. They stayed from June until November, living in tents with scarce food, clothes and medicine, and later moved with the hospital to Bishramganj before leaving for Kolkata as the war intensified. "We fought for values and principles," she told The Daily Star in 2013.
After independence she built a long career as a painter. In 1987 she completed a certificate course in design at Kala Bhavana, Visva Bharati, in Santiniketan, India. She attended a landscape painting workshop at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in 1993, an international art workshop in Kuala Lumpur in 1994, and an artist residency at the Vermont Studio Center in 2001. Her solo exhibitions included shows at Artists West Studio in Waltham, Massachusetts (1993), a watercolour show at Drik Picture Library in Dhaka (1994), the Bangladesh German Cultural Centre in Hamburg (1999), Gallery Chitrak in Dhaka (2004), Cafe Mango in Dhaka (2006) and Worthing Public Library in Sussex (2008). In December 2022 Deepto News reported the opening of her tenth solo exhibition.
She also took part in many group shows, including women artists' exhibitions in Dhaka, the Eleventh National Art Exhibition at the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, an exhibition linked to the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, and the 50th anniversary exhibition of the Institute of Fine Arts in 1999. In December 2021 she was one of the artists in the virtual Victory Day exhibition Bijoy Chiro Amlan at Chitrakola Gallery. She served as an executive member of the Charushilpi Sangsad and the National Crafts Council, taught art at the Sunbeams school in Dhaka and worked from a studio at her home in Dhanmondi.
She kept the memory of 1971 alive in interviews and essays, describing the Liberation War as a war of ideals as much as of weapons, and urging younger Bangladeshis to learn its history and values.
In her last years she lived with several age related health problems. According to Sultana Kamal, she was being treated for pneumonia and kidney complications, was admitted to a private hospital in Dhaka on 17 October 2026 and was placed on life support that night. She died at around 7:30 am on 18 October 2026. Her elder brother Shahed Kamal had died in July of the same year. She is survived by her only daughter, who lives in the United Kingdom. Her family said she would be buried at Azimpur Graveyard after funeral prayers once her daughter returned from London.
Biography adapted from Prothom Alo (18 Oct 2026, English and Bangla); bdnews24.com (18 Oct 2026); The Financial Express (18 Oct 2026); Jugantor (18 Oct 2026); Bengal Foundation artist profile (2019); The Daily Star, A view .
In their own words
“I was completely inspired by my mother, poet Sufia Kamal.”
The Daily Star, A view from the frontlines, 5 December 2013
“We fought for values and principles.”
On the volunteers of the Bangladesh Field Hospital, The Daily Star, 2013
“Patriotism and devotion to the country and its people always was our priority.”
On hardship at the 1971 field hospital camp, The Daily Star, 2013
“We must encourage patriotism and knowledge about the values of our Liberation War. We must all work together to build our country.”
Message to younger generations, The Daily Star, 2013
“The Liberation War of 1971 was not only a fight with weapons, it was a fight of ideals.”
Translated from Bengali, Prothom Alo Victory Day essay, 16 December 2019
“None of us had any experience of nursing. Only one feeling united and inspired us, and its name was independence.”
Translated from Bengali, on starting work at the field hospital in June 1971, Prothom Alo, 2019
Photos
1Saeeda Kamal
by People Forever
She trained as a nurse on the spot too, no prior experience at all.