The future actually looked bright for the young Daud Haider, who was born into a large and wealthy family of poets and writers in what was then East Bengal, and now .
A rising star of the local poetry scene, in 1973 one of his works won “The Best Poem of Asia” award handed out by the London Society of Poetry.
But just a year later, a single poem criticizing religion, which led to allegations of offending people’s religious sentiments, forever changed the life of the then 22-year-old Haider.
He was arrested and a few months later put on a plane to Kolkata in
He lived the rest of his life under the shadow of a fatwa.
Haider became one of the earliest and most prominent authors from South Asia to have faced the wrath of religious groups, long before his and .
The pain of having to spend his life in exile for over 50 years, and the longing for his homeland, never left him.
Moving from Kolkata to Berlin
During his stay in Kolkata, Haider continued his writings, studied and built a life for himself, said journalist Abdullah Al-Farooq, an old acquaintance of the Haider family.
Haider lived in Kolkata for 13 years, until he was forced to leave after the Indian government refused to extend his visa in 1987.
The case even grabbed international headlines, with members of the writers’ association PEN America, namely Susan Sontag and Kurt Vonnegut, requesting the then Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi to extend Haider’s visa — in vain.
Haider’s woes then caught the attention of who was living in Kolkata at the time.
Grass wrote a personal letter to the German Foreign Minister at the time, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, requesting that Haider be given asylum in
After the German government approved the asylum request, Haider moved to Berlin in 1987.
Initially, there was a lot of interest surrounding Haider. He received scholarships, invitations and requests for interviews. But the interest slowly vanished, and Haider was confronted with everyday challenges and financial worries — until one day Deutsche Welle (DW) approached him.
Al-Farooq, the journalist and old acquaintance from Bangladesh, was looking for staff for the newly founded Bengali editorial team at Germany’s international broadcaster. And he managed to rope in Haider, who was still a household name in his home country.
Haider wrote his first articles for DW in 1989, focusing on homeland and homelessness.
He was passionate about everything he did, be it as a poet, as a journalist or as a dissident, said Al-Farooq.
The ‘sin of being born in Bangladesh’
Debarati Guha, director of Asia Programs at DW, says she remembers the many lively conversations she had with Haider.
“He said that being born in Bangladesh was his sin. A sin because he had expressed criticism of Islam. But he had only committed the sin out of love for his country. He carried this dichotomy with him until the end of his life, and it gave Daud a special sensitivity when he wrote poetry or worked as a journalist for DW,” she said.
Haider wrote around 30 books while in exile in Germany, most of which were published in India, and some in Bangladesh.
Only a few of his poems were ever translated into German.
Despite living in Germany for decades, he never really felt at home in the European country.
He also turned down the German citizenship that was offered to him, instead holding a special UN visa that identified him as “stateless (Bangladesh),” which was how Haider viewed his identity.
One of Bangladesh’s most important poets
Although Haider spent more than five decades in exile and was never allowed to return to Bangladesh, he is still revered there.
After he died in Berlin on April 26, 2025, numerous obituaries were published in Bangladeshi and Indian newspapers, paying tribute to him and his work.
Amit Chaudhuri, an Indian writer, musician and literary critic, wrote: “His departure leaves us a strange world behind.”
This article was originally written in German.
The post A life in exile: On the death of Bangladesh poet Daud Haider appeared first on Deutsche Welle.
