The one nicknamed Bangabandhu (the friend of the Bengalis) is really the founder of Bangladesh, the father of the nation (one of my Bengali friends joked that the mother is yet to be found). In other words, the closest this country has to a George Washington.
The issue is the once revered father turned dictator and somehow "managed" in only three and a half years, to go from savior of the Bengali people and their leader in the bloody war against Pakistan in 1971, to a dictator surrounded by corruption.
Mujib was a born leader, able to draw a million cheering nationalists when he arrived in Dhaka from a Pakistani prison. Unfortunately, his qualities as a manager did not match his leadership ones. He struggled to address the challenges of poverty and unemployment in the country, coupled with rampant corruption. In the aftermath of the 1974 famine, he banned other political parties and most of the newspapers. He declared himself as President under a one party system, destroying the parliamentary government and declaring martial law.
When Mujib was assassinated by a group of junior army officers on August 15, 1975, along with most of his family, very few Bengalis mourned.
His house is now a museum. All the rooms are cordoned off, everything covered with plastic. The steps where his body fell are covered with glass sheets, supposedly preserving bloodstains underneath. Bullet holes are
covered with plates. And there are the odd pictures with the likes of Fidel Castro and Leonid Brezhnev.
Over all, another sad story of rise and fall.
