With the passing of Dr Zafrullah Choudhury, one of our finest socialist visionaries and activists has ceased to dream and act. Along with Muhammad Yunus and Fazle Hasan Abed, Zafrullah was a global persona in Bangladesh's domain of development and social change.

His socialism was: cosmopolitan (inspired by Latin-American revolutions and socialist practices, China's cultural revolution, and the radical social democracy of the 60s in Europe), pragmatic/concrete (using existing state and social institutions) and not merely oppositional or movement-centred (although he enormously contributed to these for decades – financially and logistically), and based on the proto-hegemonic radical humanist discourse of Maulana Bhashani.