Why Is Sheikh Mujib the Culprit of This Bengal?

The Night of March 25, Dhanmondi 32

March 25, 1971. Evening was sliding into night. The city had a kind of unease you could feel but not name. Talks with Yahya Khan had not formally collapsed, yet word was coming in that trucks were rolling out of the cantonment. At the house on Road 32 in Dhanmondi, party leaders were coming and going.

Tajuddin Ahmad had come with a short draft and a tape recorder. The draft was a declaration of independence. He wanted the leader to read it into the recorder in his own voice, or at the very least to sign it. Tajuddin's own account, later made public through his family, says this: Sheikh Mujib stayed silent, and then he refused. He did not go into hiding that night either. He told everyone else to flee and stayed home himself.

Around midnight the Pakistani army came into the city. Pilkhana, Rajarbagh, Jagannath Hall. That same night he was arrested at his house and taken away. For the next nine months he sat in a Pakistani prison. The war was fought without him.

This piece starts on that night because that night left behind a question no one has answered for fifty years: how did a man who was absent from the war become its sole owner? And once he owned it, what did he do with its promises?

The spirit of the Liberation War is not some vague thing floating in the air. It is written down. The Proclamation of Independence of April 10, 1971 sums it up in three words: equality, human dignity and social justice. Hold those three words up as the measuring stick and you are pushed toward an uncomfortable conclusion. The first person in independent Bangladesh to break all three promises with his own hands was not a Razakar or an Al-Badr man. It was Sheikh Mujibur Rahman himself. In that sense he was the first traitor to the spirit of the Liberation War. This piece is the case file for that charge.

From Soldier of Pakistan to Claimant for Its Prime Ministership

The story begins in Calcutta. In the 1940s he was a young student at Islamia College, a loyal worker of Suhrawardy, an eager foot soldier of the Muslim League's Pakistan movement. He was never ashamed of his part in creating Pakistan. That is not a crime. But it is worth remembering, because later propaganda painted him as a man who had dreamed of Bangladesh from birth.

He did go to prison during the Language Movement in 1948, that much is true. But in February 1952 he was in jail. Historians of the Language Movement such as Badruddin Umar have said many times that his role in the 1952 movement was later puffed up in party history. This habit of writing history is also part of his legacy: the habit of moving other people's achievements into one man's ledger.

The Six Points of 1966 demanded autonomy inside Pakistan, not independence. The 1970 election was for Pakistan's National Assembly, and after winning it he claimed the right to form Pakistan's government. For three full weeks in March, while students had already raised the flag of an independent Bangla, he was sitting in power-sharing talks with Yahya and Bhutto. Tajuddin himself later said that despite overwhelming public support for independence, Sheikh Mujib once again chose the path of a political settlement.

The March 7 speech does not escape this hesitation either. The language was electrifying, but it ended with four conditions: lift martial law, send the troops back to barracks, investigate the killings, and hand power to the elected representatives. In other words, the door to compromise was left open. It was later written that the American Consul General in Dhaka, Archer Blood, felt relieved that day, because Mujib had avoided a straight declaration of independence.

The War He Was Not In

After the night of March 25 the party was directionless. The leader had left no instructions, left no declaration, and had given himself up. The Awami League claims that before his arrest he sent a declaration of independence by wireless, and that claim later went into the constitution. But whether a man who would not say a single line into a tape recorder that night secretly sent a wireless message is still disputed among historians, for lack of reliable contemporary proof. The declaration people actually heard on the radio came on March 27 from Kalurghat in Chittagong, in the voice of a major.

What followed happened without him. Tajuddin and Amir-ul Islam crossed the border on foot. They formed a government in exile and wrote the Proclamation of Independence. They made the absent man President and ran the war in his name. In sector after sector the fighting was done by Bengali soldiers, EPR men, students and farmers. Leftists fought too, revolutionaries like the engineer Siraj Sikder.

Yet inside this war a smaller war was going on. Mujib's nephew Sheikh Fazlul Haque Moni, along with Tofail Ahmed, Abdur Razzak and Sirajul Alam Khan, built a separate force in India: the Mujib Bahini. It was set up with the help of India's intelligence agency RAW and trained at Dehradun under the Indian general Uban. The name tells you where its loyalty lay. The friction between its leaders and Tajuddin, Prime Minister of the government in exile, was out in the open even then. Inside the war itself, the seed of an armed loyalty built around one person was sown. The harvest came in 1972.

His First Job on Returning: Pushing the Fighters Aside

January 10, 1972. He came back to a new country, one that had been born in his absence. Hundreds of thousands came out to see him. History gave him something very few leaders ever get: the unquestioning trust of an entire nation.

The first thing he did with that trust was turn the structure of the war into a structure of loyalty to himself. Tajuddin's plan to rehabilitate freedom fighters was set aside, and the loyal wing of the Mujib Bahini was turned into the Jatiya Rakkhi Bahini. The trainer was once again the Indian general Uban. Freedom fighters who stood outside the party, who held views of their own, found the new state getting smaller and smaller for them.

And the man who had carried the war on his shoulders for nine months? Tajuddin Ahmad stepped down as Prime Minister and became Finance Minister. Within two years Mujib told him to resign and sent along a draft of the resignation letter. Tajuddin signed that draft and left. The man who would not sign the independence draft on the night of March 25 sent the wartime Prime Minister a draft of his own resignation. The whole story lies between those two drafts.

Patron of Terror

The Rakkhi Bahini was born by presidential order on March 8, 1972. On paper it was a law enforcement force. In practice it was an armed body loyal to one man, outside the normal chain of command, and its targets were the government's political opponents, especially the young men of the JSD, many of whom had fought in the Liberation War only months before.

When the papers began reporting its excesses regularly, the government did not rein it in. It gave it armor. On October 18, 1973 an amending ordinance gave retroactive legality to everything the force had done and said no member could be sued for anything done "in good faith." This is where the politics of impunity in this country got its first legal face.

The numbers are frightening. By the count of the journalist Anthony Mascarenhas, political killings had passed two thousand by the end of 1973. Estimates of how many died at the hands of the Rakkhi Bahini over three years vary: one journalist puts it between ten and thirty thousand, and the JSD claims even more. The figures are argued over, but the argument is in the thousands, not the tens.

March 17, 1974. After a JSD rally at Paltan, a procession set out to besiege the residence of Home Minister Mansur Ali. Brickbats, tear gas, and then the Rakkhi Bahini arrived in trucks and opened live fire. The Awami League's count of the dead was six. Other counts run from forty to fifty. In the capital of an independent country, three years after the Liberation War, bullets were fired into a procession.

Then there is Siraj Sikder. An engineer, a leftist revolutionary, a man who had taken up arms against the Pakistanis in 1971. After independence he became an armed opponent of the Mujib government. If he was a criminal, his place was in the dock of a court. Instead, he was arrested in Chittagong at the start of 1975, flown to Dhaka, and on the night of January 2 killed "in police firing" on the way to the Rakkhi Bahini camp at Savar. A few days later, standing in Parliament, Sheikh Mujib is widely quoted as having asked: "Where is Siraj Sikder today?"

A death in custody, and from the head of the state not a word about an inquiry, only gloating. Whatever this country saw over the next fifty years under the names "crossfire," "gunfight" and "Aynaghar," the first draft of it was written on that road to Savar.

The story of shelter does not end with the Rakkhi Bahini. Gazi Golam Mostafa, leader of the Dhaka City Awami League, had by then become a byword for corruption and muscle. In 1974, after a quarrel at a wedding at the Dhaka Ladies Club, his men took away the freedom fighter Major Dalim and his wife. In the end the matter was "settled" at Mujib's house, and Mostafa apologized. But the army officers who stormed Mostafa's house in reaction lost their jobs for breach of discipline. Dalim, Noor and several others. Gazi Golam Mostafa kept his post. Who was sheltered and who was punished: this one incident is the plainest evidence there is.

The universities were no different. On the night of the DUCSU election of September 3, 1973, armed men burst into the halls during the count, snatched the ballot boxes and fired through the night. The votes were never counted. Earlier, in the March general election, there were allegations that in several seats where opposition candidates were ahead, counting was stopped, boxes were stuffed and Awami League candidates were declared winners. In the very first election of the independent country.

A head of government's crime is not only what he does himself but also who he keeps alive. Sheikh Mujib kept alive the force, the party's muscle, his own men. In that sense he was a patron of terror and the head of a reckless state.

Seventy-Four: Owner of the Mine of Thieves

From March to December 1974. First the reports from Rangpur and the northern districts, then the floods, then skeletal people on city streets and lines outside the gruel kitchens. The official death toll was twenty-seven thousand. Independent researchers put it at around one and a half million, roughly two percent of the population at the time. When a government shrinks the deaths of its own people fiftyfold, you have to ask how sincere it was about stopping them.

Amartya Sen showed that total food supply that year was no worse than in the years before. People died from failed distribution, from hoarding, from rice smuggled across the border. Relief blankets and wheat went into the wrong hands. Mujib knew exactly whose hands. It has become almost proverbial that he complained at meeting after meeting: everyone else gets a gold mine, he got a mine of thieves; the aid he begs for abroad is eaten up by a gang of lickers.

But whose mine was it? The thieves were no strangers. They were his party's leaders, officials placed by his recommendation, contractors and license holders who enjoyed his blessing. When the man who holds all the power of the state stands on a stage cursing thieves while no thief is ever tried, the curse stops being outrage and becomes a performance. The Rakkhi Bahini could track down Siraj Sikder. It could not track down which warehouse the relief wheat went to. Because there was never any wish to look.

He Gave the Constitution, and He Buried It

On paper, the constitution of November 1972 was a good one. Parliamentary democracy, fundamental rights, freedom of speech. It did not last two years.

On December 28, 1974, a state of emergency, fundamental rights suspended. On January 25, 1975, the Fourth Amendment. The parliamentary system replaced by a presidential one, and Sheikh Mujib made President without any election. On February 24, BAKSAL, with himself as chairman. Every other party banned. Members of Parliament who did not join the national party would lose their seats. Civil servants, professionals and trade union leaders were pressed to sign up. On June 16, the Newspaper Ordinance: four papers under government management, every other paper shut. Thousands of newspaper workers out of a job in a single day.

In the assessment of the researcher Mohiuddin Ahmad, Mujib wanted one-party rule and absolute power, and could not tolerate any criticism.

Here a sum needs to be checked. 1971 happened because Pakistan's rulers refused to honor the verdict of the 1970 vote. The moral basis of that war was that the people's verdict must be honored. The man who came to power on the name of that war set up, within four years, a system in which there was no longer any way to remove him through the people's verdict. What Ayub Khan did in uniform, Mujib did with a unanimous vote in Parliament. The difference was in the costume, not the goods.

Releasing the Killers, Mortgaging the River

After the war, 195 officers out of the Pakistani soldiers held by India were identified as the main accused in war crimes. In 1973 a law was even passed for their trial. Then in February 1974 came Pakistan's recognition, and Mujib flew to the Islamic summit in Lahore, sharing a stage with Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, one of the chief villains of 1971. On April 9 came the tripartite agreement in New Delhi. The agreement itself acknowledged that these 195 stood accused of genocide and crimes against humanity, and the same agreement opened the road home for them. There was talk of a verbal promise that Pakistan would try them itself. It never made it onto paper and was never kept.

The story is the same with the collaborators at home. A special tribunal order in 1972, then a general amnesty at the end of 1973. Those not accused of murder, rape or arson walked free. Thousands of them. The chief accused in the killing of the very martyrs whose names his government used for its legitimacy went home safely under an agreement he signed. And Siraj Sikder, who fought the Pakistanis in 1971, went home as a corpse. Put those two pictures side by side and nothing more needs explaining.

The relationship with India showed the same pattern: no shortfall in giving, silence when it came to collecting. In March 1972, a twenty-five-year friendship treaty. On May 16, 1974, the Land Boundary Agreement: India would keep part of South Berubari, Bangladesh would get the Tin Bigha corridor. Bangladesh ratified it through the Third Amendment by November 28. India did not. The wait for Tin Bigha took about two decades, and full implementation of the agreement took four.

The Farakka story is plainer still. The 1974 joint declaration said the barrage would not run in the dry season until a water-sharing agreement was reached. No agreement came, yet in April 1975 the Mujib government allowed India to run the feeder canal "on a trial basis" for forty-one days, from April 21 to May 31. The trial never really ended. The Padma dropped in the dry season and salinity crept into the southwest. The door through which the Padma's water drained away was opened with his signature.

The First Traitor to the Spirit

Now let us go back to those three words written in the Proclamation of April 10, 1971.

Equality. In an independent country everyone was supposed to be equal. Yet in Mujib's Bangladesh the biggest qualification became a party card and loyalty to him. The loyalists of the Mujib Bahini found their place in the Rakkhi Bahini, relief went into party warehouses, and in the end the country itself became the property of one party.

Human dignity. A custodial killing on the road to Savar, bullets fired into a procession at Ramna, legal immunity for the Rakkhi Bahini, and a safe post for the leader whose men carried off a freedom fighter's wife from the Ladies Club. Dignity belonged only to those close to power.

Social justice. One and a half million people starved to death while those who swallowed the wheat stayed inside the party. The chief accused of genocide went home, and people who disagreed went to the grave.

All three promises were broken in the first three and a half years of independence, and they were broken under the man who held all the power of the state. There is no room here to blame a Razakar, or even the CIA. The Razakars betrayed from outside, taking the enemy's side. Sheikh Mujib did it from inside, in the name of the spirit itself. The first kind is easy to recognize. The second is hard, because it claims to own the spirit. In that sense he was the first traitor to the spirit of the Liberation War.

History has a cruel symmetry too. On August 15, 1975 he was killed along with his family. At the front of that coup stood the same Dalim who had been dismissed after the Gazi Golam Mostafa incident. Then Khandaker Mostaq issued the Indemnity Ordinance and blocked the trial of the killers. The road of impunity the Mujib government had opened for the Rakkhi Bahini was the very road his killers walked down. That killing was a crime too, and it deserved a trial. But being a victim does not mean being innocent. A brutal death does not wipe out the record of his rule.

And the record did not end with his death. Four decades later his name, his portrait and his speeches became the main source of legitimacy for another long rule. Enforced disappearances, crossfire, midnight elections, pressure on the media, and over all of it hung the portrait of the same man. When in 2026 even the state news agency draws a straight line from Siraj Sikder to Aynaghar, you can see that the betrayal did not stop with one generation. It became an inheritance.

Verdict

Go back to that night of March 25. One man stands with a tape recorder in his hands, and another stays silent. The first ran the war and, after independence, received a draft of his own resignation. The second was not in the war and, after independence, received the whole country.

The rest is the record of what he did with that country. That record is above. The verdict belongs to the reader.

Sources

• Wikipedia, "Proclamation of Bangladeshi Independence" (Tajuddin's draft and recording on the night of March 25)
• The Daily Star, "The Liberation War and the Provisional Government"
• The Daily Star, on Tajuddin's resignation draft
• Prothom Alo English, "Tajuddin's journey during 1971"
• The Financial Express, "Irrefutable facts" (Archer Blood)
• Wikipedia, "Mujib Bahini"
• Wikipedia, "Jatiya Rakkhi Bahini"
• Banglapedia, "Raksi Bahini"
• Wikipedia, "1974 Ramna massacre"
• Wikipedia, "1972–1975 Bangladesh insurgency"
• Wikipedia, "Criticism of the Awami League" (Mascarenhas's figures)
• Banglapedia, "Sikder Siraj"
• Wikipedia, "Siraj Sikder"
• Wikipedia, "Gazi Golam Mostafa"
• The Daily Star, "Shahriar's confession"
• Prothom Alo English, "DUCSU election in which ballot boxes were snatched"
• Wikipedia, "1973 Bangladeshi general election"
• Wikipedia, "Bangladesh famine of 1974"
• Banglapedia, "Bangladesh Krishak Sramik Awami League"
• The Daily Star, interview with Mohiuddin Ahmad
• BSS, on the June 16 newspaper closures
• Wikipedia, "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delhi_Agreement"
• Dhaka Tribune, "Revisiting the 1974 tripartite agreement"
• The Daily Star (2006), on the Land Boundary Agreement
• Banglapedia, "Farakka Barrage"
• BSS, "Siraj Sikder to Aynaghar"

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