Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was born on 17th March 1920 in Tungipara in the district of

Gopalganj in undivided Bengal. His father’s name was Sheikh Lutfar Rahman. His paternal
grandfather’s younger brother, Khanshaheb Sheikh Abdur Rashid, established a Middle English
(ME) school in Gopalganj. At that time, it was the only place to learn English in that region.

  The Sheikh family was wealthy at one time, but lost nearly
everything because of a criminal case lodged by the rulers of that time. From Mujib’s grandfather’s
time, the Sheikh family began studying English. His father was in highschool when his grandfather
passed away. Mujib was married when he was only twelve years old. His wife’s nickname was Renu.
When Renu’s father passed away, her grandfather called in Mujib’s father and told him that his
eldest son should marry one of his granddaughters, because he wanted to leave all his property to
his two granddaughters. Renu’s grandfather was Mujib’s father’s paternal uncle. In order to obey the
directive of elders, Mujib’s marriage to Renu was registered. Mujib was twelve years old at that time.
Renu was three or four. After the death of Renu’s grandfather, Renu was also brought up by Mujib’s
mother. 
In 1938, Mujib suddenly fell ill and his treatment lasted nearly two years. In 1936, when he was in
Class Seven, Mujib developed glaucoma. His studies were repeatedly interrupted due to illness. He
gained admission to Gopalganj Mission School again in 1937. In 1938, when Mujib was still a
student, the then first premier of Bengal, AK Fazlul Huq and Labor Minister Shaheed Suhrawardy
visited Gopalganj.
As he was assembling a group of volunteers for the occasion, Mujib noticed that the Hindu boys
were slowly distancing themselves. This was because the leaders of the Hindu community were
going to the students’ houses and telling them that congress was unhappy with the fact that Huq
Shaheb and Suhrawardy had formed the cabinet with the help of the Muslim League. Therefore, the
Hindu students didn’t want to cooperate.
When Suhrawardy went to visit the Mission School, he was introduced to Mujib, who was one of the
students. Mujib informed him that there were no chapters of the Chhatra League or Muslim League
in their area. Suhrawardy noted this down in his notebook, along with Mujib’s name and contact
information and told him to keep in touch. Mujib and Suhrawardy met again in 1939 when Mujib
proposed the formation of Chhatra League in Gopalganj. In this way, Bangabandhu slowly entered
politics. At that time, his father was the chief administrative officer of the Madaripur Subdivision.
In 1941, right before his Matric exams, Mujib became seriously ill, his fever reaching 104 degrees.
His results weren’t as good as he had expected since he had to take the exams while he was ill.
During that period, Mujib became heavily involved in politics. In his own words, he said: “I attended
meetings, gave speeches. I didn’t take part in sports. Just Muslim league and Chhatra League.
Pakistan had to be realized. Otherwise Muslims had no way of surviving. Whatever was written in
the newspaper Azad all seemed true.” (Unfinished Memoirs)
After matriculation, Mujib joined Islamia College. Under his leadership, the college became the heart
and soul of Bangladesh’s student revolution. Mujib had been deeply involved in student politics all
along. Later on in his political life, Bangabandhu was the favorite of students and the youth. In fact,
even in those fiery days of 1971, when East Pakistan was in turmoil, the four student leaders—they
were called the four Khalifas (Abdur Rab, Shahjahan Siraj, Nur E Alam Siddiqui and Abdur Razzak)
—could always be found at his side. Mujib would consult with them on many important decisions.
The impact of Chhatra League on that mass movement was immeasurable.
In an essay about Mujib it was said that in the thousand year history of Bengal, his was a name
spelled out by the stars, which would continue to glow with its own radiance. In fact, he worked
tirelessly from the mid 30s for the establishment of Pakistan, and when East Pakistan was created,
his struggles did not cease.
Mujib believed that Pakistan was created with a set of specific goals and ideals in mind. Khwaja
Nazimuddin’s family played a pioneering role in the Muslim movement. Khwaja Nazimuddin was the
Prime Minister of Bengal in the 40s and became Chief Minister when East Pakistan was created. He
was also the Governor General of undivided Pakistan.
Khwaja Shaheb was then the Prime Minister of East Pakistan. In the 1937 elections, eleven
members of the Khwaja family became MLAs. In 1943, when Khwaja Nazimuddin became Prime
Minister, he made his younger brother Khwaja Shahabuddin the Minister of Commerce, Labour and
Industry. The famine had begun at that time. Thousands of people were leaving the villages for the
cities. There was no food to be found in rural Bengal. The British government had confiscated all the
boats for its war effort and had reserved all the food grains for soldiers.
On the issue of how to improve relations between Hindus and Muslims, in his autobiography, Mujib
referred to Shubhash Chandra and Chittaranjan Das, writing: If the leaders and activists of Bengal’s
revolutionary movement, who had sacrificed their all for their country, had raised awareness among
the masses regarding harmony between Hindus and Muslims in general, and against Hindu traders,
moneylenders and landlords and tenure-holders in particular, then the Hindus-Muslim conflict
created in undivided Bengal, which helped give birth to Pakistan, would not have been possible.
Moulana Azad also wrote in his book, India Wins Freedom, that among all the leaders of congress
only Chittaranjan Das realized that Muslims who had fallen behind should be given appointments on
a priority basis if the greater Muslim community was to be included in congress. And not just in
theory, but also in practice, he reserved 80% of new positions in the Kolkata Corporation for
Muslims.
However, Mujib’s political mentor Suhrawardy fell victim to Muslim League’s internal conspiracies
during partition in 1947, even though under his leadership the Muslim League won 119 of the 124
seats reserved for Muslims in the general elections of 1946. Under the leadership of Fazlul Huq, the
Krishak Praja Party won four seats. In spite of this, Muslim League supremo Suhrawardy was
removed and Khwaja Nazimuddin was appointed Prime Minister of East Pakistan. Ibrahim Ismail
Chundrigar was the Muslim League observer at the meeting where Khwaja Nazimuddin was elected
the leader of East Pakistan. He was a close confidante of Jinnah.
The Pakistan that Mujib worked so hard to create—going from village to village generating publicity
and breathing life into the Muslim League and Chhatra League; even during the 1947 referendum,
travelling by steamer to Sylhet with the help of businessman Randaprasad Chowdhury to promote in
favor of Pakistan, in the end achieving the inclusion of Srihatta—gradually, intense disagreements
arose between that very same Mujib and the Muslim League leadership. He began to oppose
various policies and their applications. Because of this, he was imprisoned shortly after liberation for
criticizing and opposing government policies at different times. If the 9 months in 1971 are included,
then Mujib’s total period of imprisonment comes to 3,053 days. He wrote his Unfinished Memoirs
while in jail and it was published 29 years after his death. In the introduction to Unfinished Memoirs,
the Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina wrote that she received the four notebooks around
the same time as the horrific grenade attack of 21 August 2004 at the Awami League rally held on
Bangabandhu Avenue, which was intended to end her life and killed 24 League leaders. One of her
cousins gave the notebooks to her; they had been found inside the desk drawer of Bangabandhu’s
nephew, and Banglar Bani editor, Sheikh Fazlul Haque Mani’s office. Perhaps Mujib had given Mani
the notebooks to have them typed up. On 15th August 1975, the assailants attacked Sheikh Mani’s
house as well as that of Mujib; he and his entire family were also killed. Unfinished Memoirs was
compiled from those notebooks.
It would be next to impossible to make any general assessments of the significant, industrious life of
Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, which was an indicator of his patience, attitude, commitment and infinite
self-control. On the night of 25th March 1971, the Pakistan Army arrested Mujib and took him to
Karachi as a prisoner. The picture of him with two military officers, taken at the Karachi airport, was
published in various newspapers around the world. From then on, Mujib was in the Mianwali jail in
West Pakistan, near Rawalpindi. From 25th March 1971 to 9th January 1972, he received no news
of what was happening in the world. During this time, he was subjected to extreme heat and cold for
nearly nine months in order to create physical and mental stress. He was given only one blanket to
ward off the cold and was not permitted any medical check-ups. As a military officer, the jail
governor would visit him from time to time. He received no news of the war.
While in jail, by observing the increased activity of war planes in the sky and listening to the internal
conversations of the military guards, Mujib gleaned that a war had perhaps broken out between India
and Pakistan. He was imprisoned in that jail until 26th December. Then, on the last night, the jail
governor made him lie on some hay in the back of a truck and drove him through mountains and
forests, in the pouring rain, to some unknown location. All the man said was, “Your life was in danger
in jail. I have been given the responsibility of taking you to a safe location.” Mujib was provided no
further information. But he was taken to a nice, clean bungalow (which was the jailer’s official
residence). He was also given the opportunity to shower and provided warm clothes, a shaving kit
and other amenities, of which he was deprived for nine months. But Mujib was still not given access
to any newspapers or the radio, television or telephone. Five days later, that is, on the afternoon of
1st January 1972, two military officers took him in a staff car to another bungalow, which was located
25 kilometers away from Rawalpindi. There, the then-president of Pakistan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto met
with him in the afternoon. Bhutto informed Mujib that he was the president and needed Mujib’s help.
During the few days between 1st and 8th January, Bhutto spoke to him at various times and
pressured Mujib to sign a joint statement. He showed Mujib many drafts. Mujib asked right at the
beginning whether he had been freed from prison or simply moved from Mianwali Jail to another
prison, one in which living was comfortable and easy to bear. It was there that he had the
opportunity to read the newspaper. But the papers which reached him had various news items
blacked out. As it happens, one day a copy of Time magazine which had no redactions found its way
into Mujib’s hands. In it, he found an article discussing the problems Sheikh Mujib, as Bangladesh’s
head of state, might focus on in the coming days. Moreover, a question was raised in an editorial:
where was Mujib? If he was alive, how was the head of state of a country being kept prisoner in a
Pakistani jail? Mujib found discussions on many other issues in the magazine.
Meanwhile, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto made repeated appeals to Mujib to establish a relationship between
Pakistan and Bangladesh. A relationship that would keep Pakistan undivided. Mujib simply informed
Bhutto that he would not be able to say anything to him without first conferring with the people of his
country. In the end, a frustrated Bhutto decided to send Mujib to Britain. In the middle of the night on
8th January 1972, a special Pak Airlines plane flew Mujib, its sole passenger, to London’s Heathrow
airport. When he landed at Heathrow, the local time was 6:30 am. Heathrow airport authorities had
been previously notified by the Pakistan government that an unscheduled flight carrying Mujib was
on its way to London, so that it would be allowed to land, and the British foreign ministry and prime
minister’s office were informed. The British secret service agents took Mujib directly from Heathrow
to Claridge's Hotel. As soon as the news spread, Bengalis residing in London went to the hotel to
meet Mujib, each relaying his or her own version of events to him. Mujib received news of
Bangladesh, though Bhutto had already informed him in passing that all his family members were
alive, even his parents.
Discussions, writings and research on Bangabandhu continues, and will do so for years to come. I
want to end this article with a comment made by Bangabandhu in 1973, in a notebook written in his
own hand; a complete introduction to him can be found in this quote: “As a human being, I think
about all of humanity. As a Bengali, all that which is related to Bengalis concerns me deeply. The
source of this everlasting bond is love—enduring love—a love that gives meaning to my politics and
my existence.”

Always, Bangabandhu was willing and ready to stand up against men with feudal mindsets, whether
they were Hindus or Muslims. In the formation of his consciousness, anti-communal as well as anti-
feudal emotions always played a major part, as did his awareness of the negative roles played by such
forces in Bengal's history. Bangabandhu's dislike of the callous and superior attitude displayed by feudal
and upper class leaders comes out clearly in his narratives when he describes a visit he had to take
because Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy had wanted him to convey a request to a Khan Bahadur of
Rangpur, who was also an MLA, to come to Kolkata. The young Mujib travelled all night to get to
Rangpur. However, hungry, exhausted, as well as sleepy though he was, the young man was not invited
in or offered anything by the titled man. This was one of the many moments when the budding leader
realised that he would have to take a stand against the heartless Muslim leaders of East and West
Pakistan's Muslim League.
Men such as Bangabandhu appear only once in an epoch. However, he has left us Bangladesh, The
Unfinished Memoirs, the Prison Diaries and his other writings, speeches and letters so that we can try to
achieve his dreams

The Unfinished Memoirs is thus the story of a spirited young politician learning about how he
should take his people forward on the road to independence as he dived deeper and deeper into
East Bengal's politics. It is a narrative that is very much about his instinctive identification with
ordinary people and a sense that he belonged to them and not in the pockets of distant rulers. In
the Prison Dairies, too, we see him reaching out to ordinary people and demonstrating his
empathy for prisoners whose status made them much more vulnerable than those who had
political “division” to the brutality of the guards. His compassion extends fully even to the
mentally ill in prison who would often prevent him from sleeping at night.

Bangabandhu realised early that the real enemies of a country are those who exploit ordinary
men and women. In The Unfinished Memoirs, they took the form of Brahmin or Muslim
landlords, or moneylenders or businessmen-politicians. In the Prison Diaries, their avatars were
the (West) Pakistani politicians and administrators of the period when he was in jail and their
Bengali lackeys. These books reveal amply his democratic and secular frame of mind and his
attraction for socialism as well as his emerging vision of nationalism. Whether outside prison or
inside it, we see him in these two books as someone incapable of being cowed down by the
intimidatory tactics deployed by arrogant politicians, hardened bureaucrats, sadistic police
personnel or vicious military men.
There are many, many reasons why every educated Bangladeshi should read The Unfinished
Memoirs and the Prison Diaries, but surely, the most cogent ones are that we can deduce from
them time and again the evolution of Bangabandhu's political philosophy and embrace through
his narratives the underlying principles of the Bangladeshi state. Looking at the Muslim League
government at work in East Pakistan, Bangabandhu came to understand clearly why
governments must be by the people, for the people and of the people, why democracy worked
best, and why any government in power should work on democratic assumptions. Reflecting on
colluding politicians who served the state purely out of self-interest and uniformed people who
worked by incarcerating and oppressing people, he seemed to have learnt more and more the
precariousness of freedom and the need to protect it from those who would take it away from the
people—again and again.
There are thus many lessons we can learn from The Unfinished Memoirs and the Prison Dairies.
For instance, we see in the first book the young Mujib realising by the end of 1950 that the
problem with Liaqat Ali Khan was that “he wanted to be the prime minister not of a people but
of a party” and “that a country could not be equated with any one political party.” The need, he
felt then and later, was the need to create a country that worked fully on secular and democratic
principles. Imprisoned illegally repeatedly, the young politician declares strongly, “It is wrong to
keep anyone in prison without a trial,” testifying thus to his firm belief in fundamental human
rights.

Coming from Kolkata to a country that was supposed to be completely independent, and
therefore a country whose people were supposed to have all kinds of human rights, Bangabandhu
was shocked to sense that attempts were underway to deculturise East Pakistan's Muslims, strip
them of the “Bengali” part of their identity as far as possible, and make them adopt the Urdu
language for state occasions. By early 1948 the young Mujib and fellow members of the Student
League had joined other activists in opposing Muslim League moves to make Urdu the only state
language of Pakistan, and in demanding that Bengali be made one of the two state languages.
Although in jail in February 1952, he was in constant touch with organisers key to the Language
Movement. He believed with great conviction that, “no nation can bear any insult directed at its
mother tongue.”

Throughout The Unfinished Memoirs, Bangabandhu records his love of everything Bengali. He

was deeply attached to Bengali culture as a whole and the Bengali language in particular. When
he heard Abbasuddin's song in a boat on the Meghna, he tells us that he was simply mesmerised
by the beauty of the whole scene. In Karachi a few years later, he is reminded by its setting of
how green his beloved Bengal was, and how beautiful, compared to the “pitiless landscape” of
the West Pakistan. This makes him compare the hard mindset of West Pakistanis to the softness
of the Bengali temperament and makes him conclude, “We were born into a world that abounded
in beauty; we loved whatever was beautiful.”
Bangabandhu amidst a cheering crowd.

Bangabandhu's love of Bengali writers, as well as his secular impulses, is clear in an incident
when after Suhrawardy had been pointing out to some West Pakistani lawyers how West
Pakistanis had received a distorted picture of the role of Hindus in the Language Movement.
Immediately afterwards, they wanted Bangabandhu to recite some of Nazrul's poems.
Bangabandhu did so, but as if to show how secular he was, he recited a few lines from
Rabindranath's poems as well. In the Peace Conference he attended in China in 1951, he spoke in
Bengali, reasoning that since Chinese, Russian and Spanish were being used why he should not
speak in Bengali. His growing conviction that autonomy was needed for East Bengal was now
linked to his linguistic nationalism.

Bangabandhu had come closer and closer to the view that Bangladeshis needed a country where
secularism, socialism, democracy and the kind of nationalism based on upholding the Bengali
language and celebrating Bengali culture must take roots. As for the fourth pillar of our 1973
constitution, clearly he felt strongly that inequality in all spheres should be minimised in all
fronts. At the end of his description of his visit to China in The Unfinished Memoirs, he says
unequivocally: “I myself am no communist; I believe in socialism and not capitalism. Capital is
the tool of the oppressor.” Analysing the defeat of the Muslim League at the hands of the United
Front in 1954, Bangabandhu observes that it was no good to try to fool the people by using
religion as an excuse to exploit and dominate others. He notes too that what “the masses wanted
is an exploitation-free society and economic and social progress.”
The Unfinished Memoirs is thus not only a record of the first thirty-four years of Bangabandhu's
life but also a book depicting the evolution of his political thinking. It is also a work telling us
that we need to restore the four pillars of the country—nationalism, socialism, democracy and
secularism—fully if we are to build the kind of Sonar Bangla that Bangabandhu dreamt of. We
must learn from him the courage to speak truth to power, here and everywhere, for nothing
should take us away from our founding principles. The Unfinished Memoirs indicates too that we
need to readjust our course when we need to. As he says at one point of his book: “When I
decide on doing something I go ahead and do it. If I find out I was wrong, I try to correct myself.
This is because I know that only doers are capable of making errors; people who never do
anything make no mistakes.”

However, in his narratives, whenever he named a fellow

politician, be it from his party, side or adversary, he mostly
addressed him as ‘saheb’ or Mr - something that proved his
respect for all of them as politicians and as individuals. Such
respect is rare these days.
Mujib candidly criticised political decisions or moves of two of
his most respected seniors - Maulana Abdul Hamid Khan
Bhasani and Husein Shahid Suhrawardy but ultimately he had
never lost his respect for them.
he crux of his political struggle was therefore always about something deep.
Yes, it was the political self-determination of the people of this land. His
struggle culminated in the liberation war. But at the core of it all, his fight was
for human rights.

As he was a lifelong fighter of human rights and social disparity, Mujib,

through his prudent political observation, gave hints in his autobiography that
the birth of Bangladesh was more the result of the Muslim League’s failure
than any other factor. He portrays the independence movement as
materialising in the context of constant let-downs by the Muslim League’s
leadership, who were totally disconnected from the people of East Pakistan.