The 135th birth anniversary of Justice Radhabinod Pal has been celebrated at his birthplace Kakiladaha village in Mirpur upazila of Kushtia on Thursday.
A discussion meeting was organized there on the initiative of Radhabinod Pal Model School. The cake is cut at the end of the discussion meeting. Various personalities of the area were present.
Dr. Radhabinod Pal (26 January 1886 – 10 January 1967) was a lawyer, teacher, judge and vice chancellor of the university. He is a man of Kushtia. Kushtia is proud for this man. He authored several books on law.
Justice Dr. Radhabinod Pal is one of the few Indians who know the names of many Japanese born in the forties or earlier in the last century.
After Japan’s defeat and surrender in World War II, the US-led Allies formed the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal to try the Japanese war crimes in the form of the Nuremberg Trials.
Dr. Radhabinod was one of the judges of the court. Binod was a judge of the Calcutta High Court and later Vice-Chancellor of Kolkata University.
Interestingly, although all the other judges of the tribunal convicted Japan of war crimes, Justice Paul ruled “not guilty”. In his view, that war in Japan was not an aggressive war, but a war of self-defense. This was a matter of great concern at the time, although it was not possible to ignore the logic and substance of his long eight-hundred-page judgment.
He has a reputation as a “Japan-friend”. There has a museum, a road and a statue named after him in Japan Tokyo city, a research center at the University of Japan. He is the recipient of Japan’s highest honour, the Kokka Kunsho.
