Sheikh Mujibur Rahman

Biography

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was born in 1920 in Tungipara, Bengal, into a landed Muslim family. As a student at Islamia College in Calcutta he was active in the Muslim League and the campaign for Pakistan. After partition he enrolled in law at the University of Dhaka, was expelled in 1949 on charges of inciting university employees, and joined the new Awami League, rising to become its general secretary. He served briefly as a provincial minister in East Bengal and sat in Pakistan's national assembly in the 1950s, and in all spent some thirteen years in prison.

In the 1960s Mujib turned to Bengali nationalism and led the six-point movement for East Pakistani autonomy against Ayub Khan's government, which charged him with sedition in the Agartala Conspiracy Case. He led the Awami League to a sweeping victory in the 1970 general election. When the military regime refused to hand over power, he gave his 7 March speech and, on 26 March 1971, proclaimed Bangladesh's independence before being arrested and held in West Pakistan for the rest of the war.

Returning in January 1972 as the new nation's leader, Mujib served as prime minister and oversaw a secular constitution and the building of state institutions, and gave the first Bengali speech at the UN in 1974. His government struggled with corruption, famine and insurgency, and in 1975 he became president of a one-party state under BAKSAL. On 15 August 1975 he was killed with most of his family in a military coup.