Sheikh Mujibur Rahman

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (17 March 1920 – 15 August 1975) was a Bangladeshi politician, revolutionary and statesman, the founding president of Bangladesh. Born at Tungipara in Bengal, he rose through the Muslim League and the Awami League to become the undisputed leader of East Pakistan, led his party to victory in Pakistan's first general election in 1970, and, when the military junta refused to transfer power, became the figurehead of the independence struggle that produced Bangladesh in 1971. He headed the provisional government while imprisoned in West Pakistan, then led the new state as prime minister from 1972 to 1975 and as president in 1975, until he was assassinated with most of his family in a military coup. Bangladeshis honour him as Bangabandhu, "Friend of Bengal". ^{1 2}

Mujib was born on 17 March 1920 into the Bengali Muslim Sheikh family of Tungipara village in Gopalganj, in the Faridpur district of Bengal in British India. His father, Sheikh Lutfar Rahman, was a court official at Gopalganj; his mother was Sheikh Sayera Khatun. The article traces his clan's descent from Sheikh Abdul Awal Dervish, who had come to Bengal with a group of Muslim missionaries. Mujib was the third of six children and was nicknamed "Khoka" at home. After schooling at Gopalganj and a four-year interruption for eye surgery, he matriculated in 1942 and studied at Islamia College, Calcutta, taking his bachelor's degree in 1947. As a student he was drawn into the Bengal Provincial Muslim League and worked for the Pakistan movement, coming under the mentorship of Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy. ¹

After Partition, Mujib helped found the East Pakistan Muslim Students League in 1948 and the Awami Muslim League — later the Awami League — in 1949, and was elected to the East Pakistan provincial assembly in 1954. Through the 1950s he defended the rights of East Bengal in Pakistan's parliament and spent long periods in prison under both British and Pakistani rule. In 1966 he put forward the Six Points, a demand for far-reaching autonomy for East Pakistan, and became the recognised leader of Bengali nationalism. His party won an outright majority in Pakistan's 1970 general election, but the military regime of Yahya Khan refused to hand over power. On 7 March 1971 Mujib addressed a vast rally in Dhaka, calling on his people to prepare for a struggle for liberation; UNESCO later listed the speech in its Memory of the World Register. Arrested in the army crackdown of 25 March 1971, he was held in West Pakistan while the Liberation War was fought in his name, and the provisional government of Bangladesh was formed with him as its president. ¹

Mujib returned to Dhaka in January 1972 and took office as prime minister. His government rebuilt a war-devastated country, gave Bangladesh a constitution in 1972 founded on nationalism, socialism, democracy and secularism, held the first general election in 1973, and normalised relations with most of the world; in 1974 he gave the first Bengali speech to the United Nations General Assembly. The article reports that his government struggled with disorder, corruption and economic crisis, that the famine of 1974 killed large numbers of people, and that the Jatiya Rakkhi Bahini, a paramilitary force he created, was involved in human rights abuses. In January 1975 he launched what he called a Second Revolution: parliament made him president, and his BAKSAL became the country's only legal party, abolishing the other parties and restricting civil liberties. His religious policy as head of state combined the secular constitution with public statements that secularism did not mean hostility to religion, the founding of the Islamic Foundation, and Bangladesh's entry into the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation in 1974 — state policy, which the museum records as such and not as a statement of personal affiliation. ¹

On 15 August 1975 Mujib was assassinated at his home in Dhanmondi, Dhaka, in a military coup, together with his wife, three sons and most of the family present; his daughters Hasina and Rehana survived because they were abroad. He was buried at Tungipara, where his mausoleum stands. His legacy remains divisive in Bangladesh — he is credited with leading the country to independence and restoring Bengali sovereignty, and criticised for the famine, abuses and authoritarianism of his last period — but in a 2004 BBC opinion poll he was voted the greatest Bengali of all time. ¹

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