It is 1 March today, a day which takes us back fifty years. In this year of 2021, we prepare to observe the half century of Bangladesh's independence even as we celebrate the centenary of the birth of the Father of the Nation. It promises to be a momentous year, a defining moment in our collective life.
On 17 March 1920, the future liberator of a future Bangladesh opened his eyes to life and to the world in the humble village of Tungipara in Faridpur. In a life span of a mere fifty five years, he wrought a dramatic and positive change in our lives and in global perspectives. In this centenary year of his birth and forty five years after his assassination by the forces of dark, organized conspiracy, we recall the greatness in him.
He would go through a political career rare in the annals of history, for it would be his destiny to forge for his fellow Bengalis a nation that would have a remarkable place under the sun. In the process, he would suffer long and hard. He would spend the best years of his life in prison. Twice he would face death at the hands of the state of Pakistan and twice he would emerge free, to inject new energy into his people.
We recall today the electrifying moment on 10 January 1972, when the Father of the Nation, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, came home to his liberated country, a land his dedicated and uncompromising leadership had freed from the clutches of colonial rule. He came home, triumphant in the knowledge that his captors had failed to subdue his people and had failed to snuff the life out of him.
His return was truly the completion of our war for liberty. Our nationhood achieved fullness when he stepped on the soil of his sovereign country on that day all those decades ago. It is for us today, in this Mujib Borsho, on his birth centenary, to recall the tall man that the Father of the Nation was --- and always will be --- in our history.
We remember the larger than life man he was. And we do that because of the fundamental human qualities that defined his being. He inhabits our consciousness in all his larger-than-life presence. Tall for a Bengali, he gave us all to understand that in him shone bright all those traits which go into the making of a political giant. His height mattered. So did his convictions.
He was our face to the world, in every sense of the meaning. Of all the historical icons we have had cause to observe in our political ambience, only Bangabandhu stayed steadfast in purpose. That element we call compromise, or a shifting of the ground, was not part of his nature. Deviation in political ideas was not for him.
It became clear to Bangabandhu towards the end of the 1950s that Bengalis needed to make their way out of Pakistan. That Sheikh Mujibur Rahman could break out of the communal mould, that he was beginning to question the very basis of the country in whose creation he, like millions of other young men, had once taken immense interest in the 1940s was an early hint of the greatness he was destined for.
The path to that greatness was clearly laid out in 1966 when he overrode every other concern to inform the ruling classes of Pakistan as well as his people that it was time to reinvent the state through his Six Point programme for regional autonomy. Bangabandhu was a man of huge self-esteem and an abundance of confidence.
He was our own. The mores and social norms we have grown up with were all exemplified in him. His smile radiated confidence and instilled courage in us. His sense of humour remains unmatched. He never forgot a face and always remembered names His laughter reverberated across the room and beyond. He was always filling the room with his presence. When he met complete strangers, he made them feel they had known him all their life.
When he found himself in the company of academics, he did not forget that these were men who deserved his unqualified respect. Across this land men of letters speak of Bangabandhu with reverence. Seventy five million Bengalis waged a war in his name. They won the war --- because Bangabandhu was their inspiration.
History for us is always Bangabandhu.
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