Sheikh Mujibur Rahman

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman
}} (17 March 1920 – 15 August 1975), popularly known by the Bangabandhu ()}} was a Bangladeshi politician, revolutionary, statesman, activist and diarist, who was the founding leader of Bangladesh. As the leader of Bangladesh, he had held continuous positions either as Bangladesh's president or as its prime minister from April 1971 until his assassination in August 1975.}} His nationalist ideology, socio-political theories, and political doctrines are collectively known as Mujibism.

Born in an aristocratic Muslim family in Tungipara, Mujib emerged as a student activist in the province of Bengal during the final years of the British Raj. He was a member of the All India Muslim League. He supported Muslim nationalism and had a Pakistani establishmentalist outlook in his early political career. In 1949, he was part of a liberal, secular and left-wing faction which later became the Awami League. In the 1950s, he was elected to Pakistan's parliament where he defended the rights of East Bengal.

By the 1960s, Mujib adopted Bengali nationalism and became the undisputed leader of East Pakistan soon. He became popular for opposing political, ethnic and institutional discrimination; leading the six-point autonomy movement; and challenging the regime of Field Marshal Ayub Khan. In 1970, he led the Awami League to win Pakistan's first general election. When the Pakistani military junta refused to transfer power, he gave the 7th March speech and announced an independence movement. During the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971, Mujib declared Bangladesh's independence. Bengali nationalists declared him as the head of the Provisional Government of Bangladesh, while he was confined in a jail in West Pakistan.

After the independence of Bangladesh, Mujib returned to Bangladesh in January 1972 as a hero and the leader of a war-devastated country. In the following years, he played an important role in rebuilding Bangladesh, constructing a secular constitution for the country, transforming Pakistani era state apparatus, bureaucracy, armed forces, and judiciary into an independent state, initiating first general election and normalizing diplomatic ties with most of the world. His foreign policy during the time was dominated by the principle "friendship to all and malice to none". He remained a close ally to Gandhi's India and Brezhnev's Soviet Union, while balancing ties with the United States. He strongly opposed the apartheid policies of South Africa and dispatched an army medical unit during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. He gave the first Bengali speech to the UN General Assembly in 1974.

Mujib's government proved largely unsuccessful in curbing political and economic anarchy and corruption in post-independence Bangladesh, which ultimately gave rise to a left-wing insurgency. To quell the insurgency, he formed Jatiya Rakkhi Bahini, a special paramilitary force similar to Gestapo, which was involved in various human rights abuses, massacres, enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings and rapes. Mujib's five-year regime was the only socialist period in Bangladesh's history, which was marked with huge economic mismanagement and failure, leading to the high mortality rate in the deadly famine of 1974. In 1975, he launched Second Revolution, under which he installed a one party regime and abolished all kinds of civil liberties and democratic institutions, by which he "institutionalized autocracy" and made himself the "unimpeachable" President of Bangladesh, effectively for life, which lasted for seven months. On 15 August 1975, he was assassinated with most of his family members in his Dhanmondi 32 residence in a coup d'état.

A populist of the 20th century, Mujib was one of the most charismatic leaders of the Third World in the early 1970s. His post-independence legacy remains divisive among Bangladeshis due to his economic mismanagement, the famine of 1974, human rights violations, and authoritarianism. Nevertheless, most Bangladeshis credit him for leading the country to independence in 1971 and restoring the Bengali sovereignty after over two centuries following the Battle of Plassey in 1757, for which he is honoured as ''Bangabandhu'' (friend of Bengal). He was voted as the ''Greatest Bengali of all time'' in the 2004 BBC opinion poll. His 7 March speech in 1971 is recognized by UNESCO for its historic value, and was listed in the Memory of the World Register. Many of his diaries and travelogues were published many years after his death and have been translated into several languages. Provided by Wikipedia