The man behind the nation

HAD he been alive today, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman would have been 94 years old. He was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He had to struggle hard to rise to fame and become the liberator of the nation. Leaders like Bangabandhu are not born every day. They belong to a rare breed of statesmen like Mahatma Gandhi of India, Mao Tse-tung of China and Nelson Mandela of South Africa, who came to this world to change the course of history.
Sheikh Mujib put forward his historic 6-Point demands in 1966 to stop the economic exploitation of East Bengal (now Bangladesh) by the government of Pakistan led by West Pakistanis. Consequently, President Ayub Khan put him behind bars and brought charges of sedition against him. There was a huge uprising in East Bengal during the trial. Ultimately, he was freed from prison and later given the title of Bangabandhu, friend of Bengal, by the people of Bangladesh.
It was beyond the imagination of President Yahya Khan, who succeeded Ayub Khan, that Bangabandhu's Awami League (AL) would win an absolute majority in the general election held in 1970. Yahya Khan was outraged by the results of the election and postponed a scheduled session of the National Assembly in Dhaka on March 1, 1971. The Bengalees revolted against this postponement.
At a public meeting at the Ramna Race Course (now Suhrawardy Udyan) on March 7, 1971, Bangabandhu declared: “The struggle this time is for our freedom; the struggle this time is for independence.” He called for a non-cooperation movement but, at the same time, ordered his people to prepare for war in case it was imposed upon them.
Yahya Khan came to Dhaka apparently to negotiate with Bangabandhu. While talks were in progress, he secretly left Dhaka on March 25 and ordered the army to crack down on the Bengalees. The Pakistan army soon started to kill unarmed Bengalees indiscriminately. In the early hours of March 26, Bangabandhu declared the independence of Bangladesh. He was immediately arrested and flown to Pakistan.
Other Awami League leaders fled to India and formed the government of Bangladesh on April 10, 1971 with Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman as president, Syed Nazrul Islam as acting president in absence of Bangabandhu and Tajuddin Ahmed as prime minister. With assistance from the Indian army, the armed forces of the Bangladesh government, called the Mukti Bahini, fought a guerilla type war against the Pakistan army. Finally, on December 16, 1971, the Pakistan army surrendered to the joint command of the Mukti Bahini and the Indian army. Bangladesh thus emerged as an independent state.
Under international pressure, Bangabandhu was released from Pakistani custody. He returned to Bangladesh triumphantly on January 10, 1972 and took over as the prime minister. His government successfully rehabilitated ten million refugees who had returned from India, disarmed the Mukti Bahini, re-built the infrastructures damaged during the war and put the economy back on track. On Bangabandhu's request, Indira Gandhi withdrew all her armed forces from Bangladesh by March, 1972. Bangladesh framed a new constitution that came into effect on December 16, 1972. It is rare in history for a war-ravaged country like Bangladesh to have achieved such remarkable successes within one year after independence.    
It is the greatest tragedy in our history that Bangabandhu was brutally killed, along with some other members of his family, on August 15, 1975. Even though some of the killers were tried and punished by a court of law, there has not been any enquiry to unveil the motives behind the killings.
I was lucky to be personally known to Bangabandhu through my brother, Abdul Momin, a former minister in his cabinet. During a visit to my house in Karachi in 1969, Bangabandhu suddenly disappeared from our living room and was later found to be pushing the swing of our six-month old daughter Usha in another room. This shows how much he loved children. It thus appears quite appropriate that his birthday is celebrated as the National Children's Day in Bangladesh.
The best compliment to Bangabandhu was perhaps paid by Fidel Castro of Cuba in 1973. Embracing Bangabandhu he remarked: “I have not seen the Himalayas. But I have seen Sheikh Mujib. In personality and in courage, this man is the Himalayas.”
On his birthday, let us pay homage to Bangabandhu, the Himalayas of the subcontinent and the greatest of all Bengalees of all times.

The writer is a former chief engineer of Bangladesh Atomic Energy Commission. The article is based on his book, “A Tribute to Bangabandhu and Other Essays.”