Sardar Fazlul Karim came to Dhaka to study Intermediate in Arts (IA). He got admitted to the Government Intermediate College. Progressive students looked him up. Sardar was more a nationalist than a communist then. He brought out wallpapers and had a good personal library. Friends used to borrow books from him. Pearl Buck's The Good Earth also influenced him. Sardar Fazlul Karim became a student of Dhaka University in 1942; he studied English for a few days but shifted to Philosophy because Haridas Bhattacharya's class lectures had attracted him. He passed his BA Honours in 1945 when the Second World War ended. The 1943's Bengal famine influenced him a lot. The communists were very active during the Bengal famine. Sardar left Socrates, Plato and Hegel in his room and travelled to remote villages with relief for the hungry!