How Mujib became Bangabandhu

Here at last is a ringside view of the birth of Bangladesh, by its liberator Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. His daughter, Sheikh Hasina, now prime minister of Bangladesh, got four notebooks containing his autobiography in 2004, at a dark moment in her life and political career. A grenade attack on a rally organised by her party, Bangladesh Awami League, killed 24 workers—and she knew she was lucky to have escaped the assassination attempt. "Four notebooks in my father's hand...It was as if I had been given a new lease of life," writes Sheikh Hasina in an emotional preface.

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and 15 members of his family and extended family were gunned down in a military coup on August 15, 1975, four years after Bangladesh's freedom from Pakistan. Sheikh Hasina and sister Sheikh Rehana had survived because they were not at home during the attack. The sisters took it upon themselves to retrieve the material from the already fragile and fraying notebooks, and the autobiography was translated into English by professor Fakrul Alam of Dhaka University. The memoirs give us a glimpse of the movement for Pakistan in the run-up to 1947 in the eastern flanks, and, of course, the language movement, which finally led to the birth of Bangladesh. The memoirs, written while Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was in prison from 1967 to 1969, tells us of tumultuous moments in the history of undivided Bengal, the Bengal famine, Partition, communal riots after 1947, the formation of East Pakistan up to 1955. "Since you are idle, write about your life," his wife Fazliatunessa Mujib or Renu told him as they sat talking inside jail one day. With Bangladesh yet to get freedom, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman retorted: "I haven't been able to achieve anything! I guess all I can say is that I have tried to sacrifice a bit of me for my principles and ideals."

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