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Sheik
Mujibur Rahman Facts
Sheik
Mujibur Rahman (1920-1975)
Sheik Mujibur Rahman
(1920-1975) was a charismatic leader who organized dissent and rebellion
against the British in India, led the Bengalis of East Pakistan in their
resistance to the unjust actions of the post-colonial Pakistani government, and
finally helped found the independent nation of Bangladesh in 1972.
Sheik
Mujibur Rahman (Mujib) was born on March 17, 1920, in Tongipara village in the
Gopalganj subdivision of the Faridpur district in the eastern part of the
province of Bengal in British India. An extroverted, sports-loving young man,
Mujib was well liked by his teachers and friends, but never distinguished
himself in his studies. To the dismay of his father, a small landholder (sheik
is one of the titles often assumed by the landed gentry) and a government
official, Mujib showed the first sign of his future revolutionary leadership by
distributing rice from his father's stockpile to the famine-stricken peasantry
of his area.
A charismatic leader, SheikMujib epitomized anti-colonial leadership in the Third World. He
organized dissent and rebellion against the British and rose against the
injustice and exploitation by the power-wielders in West Pakistan against the
Bengali population of East Pakistan. For Sheik
Mujib the battle for freedom from exploitation was never-ending. Even
after winning independence for Bangladesh from Pakistan, an exploitation-free
Bengali society eluded him. When he seemed to be having some success in tiding
over the most difficult period of post-liberation history, he was assassinated
and his family massacred in a fluke coup staged by a handful of junior officers
of the fledgling Bangladesh army.
Seeking Justice for Bengal
Joining the Awami Muslim League Party in 1949 with his
mentor, Hussain Shahid Suhrawardy, and later elected its general secretary
(1953), Mujib formed a coalition of a number of East-Bengali-based political
parties. In the provincial election of 1954 the coalition (Jukta Front)
inflicted a landslide defeat on the Muslim League Party, which had been
responsible for the creation of Pakistan and was often equated with Pakistan
itself. He served in the cabinet of Fazlul Huq until the election was voided
and Huq put under house arrest by the central government of Pakistan.
Earlier, in 1952, Mujib had played a leading role in the
student movement demanding that Bengali, the language of the majority of the
people of the country, be made an official language. The Karachi government of
Pakistan subsequently conceded the demand under public pressure, but not before
a number of Bengali students had been killed by the police. The 1954 incident
reiterated what Mujib had suspected before—that Bengalis were not going to
receive their rights without a fight.
In 1957 Mujib became the undisputed leader of the Awami
League, defeating Ataur Rahman in the struggle for the party presidency after
Maulana Abdul Hamid Khan Bhashani, the founder-president of the party, resigned
over foreign policy disagreements with fellow party leader Prime Minister H. S.
Suhrawardy. Mujib's stand on the language issue and his later open challenge to
certain orders of the martial law projected him as an undaunted fighter for
human rights. Sensing that Mujib was organizing another mass movement, the
central government ordered his arrest on a trumped up charge of corruption in
1958 when he refused to comply with the new law (Elective Bodies
Disqualifications Order of 1958) requiring all Pakistani politicians to refrain
from political activity for six years. By now Dhaka jail had become a second
home to Mujib; he spent a number of years during the pre-and post-independence
periods there.
His extensive grass-roots tour of East Pakistan between 1960
and 1962, defying the martial law ban against political activities, made
Bengali appreciate Mujib for his uncompromising commitment to equality and
justice. For his increased visibility as a Bengali nationalist and for his
defiance of the military, Mujib was again jailed in 1962 for six months. After
the promulgation of the second constitution by Ayub Khan the same year, Mujib
came out of prison, began preparations for a mass movement against the Ayub
regime, and waited for the opportune moment to start it.
A Drive
for Bengali Autonomy
The opportunity came after the 1965 Indo-Pakistan war in
which East Pakistan, with its Bengali majority, was practically left
defenseless by the central government. In November 1965 Mujib worked out a
six-point program for enabling his party to secure political and economic
justice in a federal system. The scheme involved setting up a federal system in
which the power of the central government would be dramatically curtailed; only
foreign affairs and defense were to be left as central subjects. The provinces
were to have jurisdiction over currencies and fiscal policy, with the
stipulation that the federal government was to be provided with requisite
revenues for meeting only the requirements of defense and foreign affairs.
Mujib's six-point program also demanded that a constitutional provision was to
be made providing that separate accounts for foreign exchange earnings and foreign
trade could be maintained under the provincial governments. A last point
emphasized that a separate military for East Pakistan was to be raised and
maintained in order to contribute to national security.
Mujib's program was rejected by the leaders of the Pakistan
Democratic Movement (composed of the leaders of the combined opposition party
who had unsuccessfully challenged Ayub in the election of 1964) at an all-party
meeting in Lahore in February 1966. Undiscouraged, Mujib quickly decided to
start a mass movement based on his program. In 1966 he was once more arrested,
and in 1967 the central government brought a charge of treason against him for
his alleged conspiracy with Indian leaders to make East Pakistan secede from
Pakistan. Pressured by a nationwide mass movement, the Ayub regime withdrew the
conspiracy charge against him and others and Mujib was set free unconditionally
on March 2, 1969.
Under the Legal Framework Order of Yahya Khan, who took over
power from Ayub in 1969, the dates for national and provincial elections were
set for December 5 and 17, 1970, respectively. Perhaps the November cyclone
which claimed half a million lives and rendered 3 million homeless and the
apparent lack of concern for the victims by the Yahya junta changed the course
of Pakistan's political history. Mujib's Awami League won a landslide
victory—167 seats out of a possible 313—thereby securing an absolute majority
in the Assembly. This was unacceptable to West Pakistan's military and
political elites. As a result, the Assembly was indefinitely postponed by
President Khan on March 1, 1971, two days before the first session was to
convene. This infuriated the Bengalis, and a spontaneous mass movement against
the military erupted. Mujib tried to turn the rising public anger into a
non-violent, civil disobedience movement.
During the three week long movement Mujib ruled East
Pakistan as the de facto head of government. A last effort to negotiate a
peaceful settlement failed on March 23. On midnight of March 25, 1971, the
military crackdown on the Bengali autonomy movement began, resulting in the
arrest of Mujib, the round-up of suspected nationalists, and a general
disarming of the Bengali police and Bengali members of Pakistan's armed forces.
The crackdown, accompanied by senseless killing of Bengali police, soldiers,
and civilians, served to harden Bengali resolve to fight the Pakistan military
to the last. alleged treason, his name
became a symbol of inspiration and strength for Bengalis everywhere.
From Jail to the Presidency
After India's defeat of the Pakistani army in East Pakistan
on December 16, 1971, and the transfer of power in Pakistan from the military
junta to civilian leaders headed by Zulfikar Bhutto, Mujib was freed. On
January 10, 1972, he returned to Bangladesh as a hero. Promptly he took charge
of the new nation and inspired the people to rebuild their war-torn country.
His initial success as inspirer, as integrator, and as consensus-builder was
reflected in the first general election of the new nation in 1973, when his
Awami League Party secured another landslide victory.
Earlier in 1972 Mujib, popularly called Bangabandhu (friend
of Bengal), had given the new nation of Bangladesh its first constitution. It
incorporated four basic principles of state policy: democracy, socialism,
secularism, and nationalism; together they were called Mujibism. The first step
which Mujib took in order to ensure quick economic recovery was to nationalize
all banks and major industries, most of which were owned by West Pakistanis.
After the landslide electoral victory in 1973, Mujib became overconfident and
complacent about the future, and, to the neglect of national priorities, he
began to concentrate on building grass roots bases of his party. This necessitated
a drastic redistribution of resources, which segments of the Bengali
elite—particularly within the civil and military bureau-cracy—found difficult
to accept. The consecutive droughts in 1973 and 1974 also created an
unmanageable situation for Mujib and his regime, which lacked both the
experience of crisis management and the support of the largest food donor of
the world—the United States.
The worsening situation was used as the chief justification
by Mujib to declare a state of emergency on December 28, 1974, and to amend the
constitution in early 1975, transforming Bangladesh's parliamentary system into
a presidential one, giving Mujib unlimited power as the new president of the
Republic, and establishing a one party system. Armed with this amended
constitution Mujib forced the leaders of the opposition parties to join his
newly created party—Bangladesh Krishak Sramic Awami League— popularly known as
BAKSAL.
Using his new power, Mujib tried to bring fundamental
changes to Bangladesh's political, economic, and administrative structure
through political centralization and administrative decentralization. But
before he could see his dream of "golden Bengal" come true, he and
most members of his family
were assassinated in a pre-dawn coup staged by a handful of junior officers of
the Bangladesh army of August 15, 1975, the anniversary of the day India won
independence from the British in 1947. The coup leader, Khondar Kar Mushtaque
Ahmed, took over the presidency. Two more coups in rapid order brought to power
Ziaur Rahman.
Further
Reading on Sheik Mujibur Rahman
Additional information can be found in Zillur R. Khan,
Leadership in the Least Developed Nation: Bangladesh (1983); International
Who's Who 1972-1973; and TIME 99 (January 17, 1972).
Additional Biography
Sources
Sheikh Mujib: a
commemorative anthology, London: Radical Asia Books, 1977.Tribute to Sheikh
Mujib: fifth death anniversary, 17 March 1920-15 August 1975, London:
Bangabandhu Society, 1980.
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