Journalist Salma Sobhan

Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen flew into Dhaka just to award certificates to 32 bright, young women aspiring to come journalists through a programme called the Salma Sobhan Fellowship in Journalism for Women taken up by BRAC and Pratichi Trust. Professor Amartya Sen said that the expectations that he had of Pratichi Trust could not be fulfilled in any better way than by having programmes such as the Salma Sobhan Fellowship in Journalism for Women. In his memorial lecture on Salma Sobhan, he described his first encounter with Salma Sobhan and registered the memory as one where he recalls Salma Sobhan to be a women of great beauty and insight. “Mixed with the great happiness I feel today, I cannot deny the great sorrow upon the profound loss over the death of Salma Sobhan” said Professor Sen. “She was a person who knew how to make something difficult very easy.” Professor Sen spoke of Salma Sobhan’s lifelong work towards enforcing human rights, and said, “She should be studied in comparison with the proponents of human Rights. Her Philosophy is closer to Mary Wollstonecraft’s, as both believe that there is no quarrel between the rights of men and women.” “There are more than one ways to uphold human rights,” Professor Sen acquiesced, speaking of Salma Sobhan’s own convictions. Professor Sen further spoke of Salma Sobhan’s deep knowledge of society and also spoke of the role of media, saying, “Everywhere in the world the role of the newspaper is indisputable.”