Sheikh Mujibur Rahman[c] (17 March 1920 – 15 August 1975), also known by the honorific Bangabandhu,[d] was a Bangladeshi politician, revolutionary, statesman and activist, who was the founding president of Bangladesh.

Born in an aristocratic Muslim family in Tungipara, Mujib emerged as a student activist in the province of Bengal during the final years of the British Raj.

Mujib's government proved largely unsuccessful in curbing political and economic anarchy and corruption in post-independence Bangladesh, which ultimately gave rise to a left-wing insurgency.

To quell the insurgency, he formed Jatiya Rakkhi Bahini, a special paramilitary force similar to the Gestapo,[16] which was involved in various human rights abuses, massacres, enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings and rapes.

Mujib's four-year regime was the only socialist period in Bangladesh's history,[17] which was marked with huge economic mismanagement and failure, leading to the high mortality rate in the deadly famine of 1974.

In 1975, he launched the Second Revolution, under which he installed a one party regime and abolished all kinds of civil liberties and democratic institutions, by which he "institutionalized autocracy" and made himself the "unimpeachable" President of Bangladesh, effectively for life, which lasted for seven months.

Sheikh Mujib's post-independence legacy remains divisive among Bangladeshis due to his economic mismanagement, the famine of 1974, human rights violations, and authoritarianism.

[23] Mujib was born on 17 March 1920 into the Bengali Muslim aristocratic Sheikh family of the village of Tungipara in Gopalganj sub-division of Faridpur district in the province of Bengal in British India.

[44] Later, when the creation of the states of India and Pakistan was confirmed, a referendum was held to decide the fate of the Bengali Muslim-dominated Sylhet District of Assam Province.

The Awami League organised a huge public meeting at Paltan Maidan in Dhaka on 17 June 1955 which outlined 21 points demanding autonomy for Pakistan's provinces.

Ayub Khan's foreign minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto resigned from the government,[87] formed the Pakistan Peoples Party, and exploited public discontent against the regime.

He spoke to West Pakistani crowds in a heavily Bengali accent of Urdu, talking about chhey nukati (six points) and hum chhoy dofa mangta sab ke liye.

[125] In 1938, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman went to the house of Gopalganj Hindu Mahasabha president Suren Banerjee when his classmate friend Abdul Malek was beaten up.

[127] In addition, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was temporarily arrested twice for making a speech and staying at the meeting place during disturbances while being the vice-president of the Faridpur district branch of the All Bengal Muslim Chhatra League in 1941.

[128][129][130][131] In his speech, Mujib laid out the political history of Pakistan since partition and told the crowd that "[w]e gave blood in 1952; we won a mandate in 1954; but we were still not allowed to take up the reins of this country".

Talks broke down on 25 March 1971 when Yahya Khan left Dhaka, declared martial law, banned the Awami League and ordered the Pakistan Army to arrest Mujib and other Bengali leaders and activists.

Due to the deteriorating situation, large numbers of Hindus fled across the border to the neighbouring Indian states of West Bengal, Assam and Tripura.

On Indira Gandhi's hopes for Bangladesh, Banerjee told Mujib that "on India's eastern flank, she wished to have a friendly power, a prosperous economy, and a secular democracy, with a parliamentary system of government".

[g] Mujib's emotional speech to the million-strong crowd was caught on camera by Marilyn Silverstone and Rashid Talukdar; the photos of his homecoming day have become iconic in Bangladeshi political and popular culture.

In January 1972 Time magazine reported that "[i]n the aftermath of the Pakistani army's rampage last March, a special team of inspectors from the World Bank observed that some cities looked "like the morning after a nuclear attack".

The Planning Commission, with Mujib's approval, wanted to transform Bangladesh into a producer of value added products generated from imported Indian raw materials.

In his first speech to the United Nations General Assembly in 1974, Mujib remarked that "In spite of the acceleration of the process of abolishing colonialism, it hasn't reached its ultimate goal.

[234][235] India and Bangladesh developed extremely cordial relations based on shared political values, a common nonaligned worldview and cultural solidarity.

Many of India's leading film directors, singers, writers, actors and actresses came to meet with Mujib, including Satyajit Ray, Hemanta Mukherjee and Hema Malini.

Chief Justice Abu Sadat Mohammad Sayem ruled that parliament had to ratify the treaty in accordance with the constitution, otherwise the government's actions were illegal and unconstitutional.

[246][247] The new paramilitary force was responsible for human rights abuses against the general populace, including extrajudicial killings,[248][249][250] shootings by death squads,[251] and rape.

Ahrar Ahmed, commenting in The Daily Star, noted that "Drastic changes were introduced through the adoption of the 4th amendment on Jan[uary] 25, 1975, which radically shifted the initial focus of the constitution and turned it into a single-party, presidential system, which curtailed the powers of the parliament and the judiciary, as well as the space for free speech or public assembly".

[256][257] His wife, brother, three sons, two daughters-in-law, and hosts of other relatives, personal staff, police officers, a brigadier general of the Bangladesh Army and many others were killed during the coup.

Prior to match, the players observed a minute's silence for Mujib and his eldest son Sheikh Kamal, who was a keen sportsman and the founder of Abahani Limited Dhaka.

[312] Mujib cited Abraham Lincoln, Mao Zedong, Winston Churchill, John F. Kennedy, Sukarno and Kemal Ataturk, Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Suhrawardy, Subhas Chandra Bose, and A. K. Fazlul Huq as the individuals he admires during an interview with David Frost.