The nation will celebrate the 91st birthday of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman on March 17. The day is a public holiday.
The Father of the Nation was born in 1920 in a middle class family at Tungipara in Gopalganj district.
Awami League and its front organisations have chalked out elaborate programmes, which will begin early in the morning, to celebrate the occasion in a befitting manner.
The party will hoist the national and party flags at Bangabandhu Bhaban on Road No-32 and all its offices across the country will follow suit. At 7:00 am, party leaders will place wreaths at the Bangabandhu Memorial Museum in Dhanmondhi.
Awami League president Sheikh Hasina and her senior party leaders will place wreaths at the Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman majar in Tungipara.
They will also participate in various programmes, to be held throughout the day, including Milad Mahfil, special prayers, children’s rally, cultural programmes and prize distributing ceremonies. On March 18, the ruling party will organise a discussion marking the 91th birth anniversary of the Father of the Nation, at Bangabandhu International Conference Centre in the capital.
After the birth of West and East Pakistan following the partition of India, Mujib became increasingly alienated from the conservative politicians of the Muslim League then in power in East Pakistan. Inevitably, he became involved in the movement to establish Bengali as a state language of East Pakistan and the movement in turn led to the creation of Awami Muslim League.
Through the ordeals of repeated arrests and hunger strikes in prison, he worked for his cause and, because of his steep opposition to communal and feudal politics of Muslim League, became a prominent figure in East Pakistan politics.
Soon he became the general secretary of the increasingly secular Awami League (it dropped “Muslim” from its name in 1955) and a minister of the United Front government that drove the Muslim League from power in the provincial elections of 1954.
Bangabandhu was now in the thick of politics and action to wrest back the rights of his people through a secular, organized and democratic movement, even as a succession of military generals attempted to rule Pakistan through martial law and stub out the popular movement in the East. Mujib was in and out of jail throughout the latter half of the 1950s and the next decade. He became convinced that Pakistan was a dead end for his people and felt the immediate need for a way out of the military-bureaucratic coalition clique then ruling the country. He had to face trial for treason in what came to be known as the Agartala Conspiracy case in 1967. In the end, the Pakistani dictator of the period, Ayub Khan, was forced to resign and Bangabandhu stepped out of the jail triumphantly on 22nd February, 1969. The next two years saw the leader at his best inspiring his people through fiery speeches in meetings. He kept highlighting his party’s demand for complete autonomy in East Pakistan until the message went home in the elections in December 1970, when his party won 167 of the 169 seats in the province.
Yahya Khan, who replaced Ayub Khan, colluded with Bhutto to postpone the 3rd March, 1971 opening of the National Assembly. The unwise move led to a spontaneous and angry civil disobedience movement in East Pakistan. As a result, Mujib became de facto ruler of East Pakistan.
News Source: The Independent