Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was a natural. In his dealings with people, he had no inhibitions and did not stand on ceremony. In the years in which he led Bangladesh’s struggle for liberation, he never let go of the affinity he shared with people across the country.
He was indeed Bangladesh’s superman and absolutely deserving of the honour of being the greatest Bengali in history. Observe his achievement, a huge mark on the global landscape. There have been a very good number of Bengali politicians, all illustrious in their many and diverse ways, but it was only Sheikh Mujibur Rahman who could free a people, his Bengalis, from colonial subjugation and lead them to the vast expanse of freedom.
Bangabandhu’s superhuman qualities apart, he was a refined and gifted statesman, an authentic symbol of our history in the global scheme of things. His dealings with global leaders testify to the manner in which he related to them. Not many were these leaders with whom he agreed fully or at all, but he understood the nuances of international affairs. He met China’s Mao Zedong when in the 1950s he led a Pakistani delegation to Beijing.
That was the only meeting between the two men, but when Bangladesh stood liberated and Mao and his colleagues adopted a pro-Pakistan position, Bangabandhu maintained a discreet diplomatic silence. He knew that the wheels of history would sooner or later turn to take Dhaka and Beijing to a happy relationship. His political assessment was to pay off in later years.
In Moscow, his interaction with Soviet leaders Leonid Brezhnev, Nikolai Podgorny and Alexei Kosygin in March 1972 was a reaffirmation of not just Bangladesh’s foreign policy principles but of his stature as the leader in whose hands Bangladesh’s future was assured.
Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was made of stern stuff where Bangladesh’s national interests were concerned. When in early 1974, the Pakistan government was compelled to accord diplomatic recognition to his country in order for him to join the Islamic summit in Lahore, some in his cabinet wondered if he ought to consult Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on his participation at the conference.
Bangabandhu, in his characteristic patriotic expression of sentiments, informed his cabinet colleagues in no uncertain terms that he was not the chief minister of a province but the prime minister of a sovereign country. The message had been conveyed to those around the table. It was loud and clear.
Bangabandhu’s dealings with foreign leaders were firm but polite throughout his career. On his way back to Bangladesh after his release from incarceration in Pakistan in January 1972, he stopped over in Delhi, where he was welcomed by the entire Indian leadership as a visiting head of state.
In the process, he asked Mrs Gandhi when she would withdraw Indian troops from Bangladesh. Mrs Gandhi’s response was friendly and unequivocal: the soldiers would go back home to India by the time of Bangabandhu’s birthday in March. She was as good as her words. For Bangabandhu it was a diplomatic triumph.
In his brief three-and-a-half-year rule, Bangabandhu was successful in projecting Bangladesh’s interests before the leaders of other nations around the world. In January 1972, in London before going back home, he had important meetings with Prime Minister Edward Heath and opposition Labour leader Harold Wilson. At the Non-Aligned summit in Algiers in 1973, he met for the first time a number of world leaders who were by then acquainted with his Olympian reputation as the man who had led Bangladesh to freedom.
His meetings with Zambia’s President Kaunda and other African leaders were but a clear exposition of Bangladesh’s foreign policy before them. It was also the first time that Cuba’s Fidel Castro, deeply impressed by Bangabandhu, met him and chose the moment to remark on how Sheikh Mujibur Rahman had become a heroic figure for him.
UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim visited Dhaka in 1973. Henry Kissinger, the architect of the Nixon administration’s pro-Pakistan tilt in 1971, met Bangabandhu in New York in September 1974 and again in Dhaka the following month. The meetings were remarkable for Bangabandhu’s unambiguous articulation of Bangladesh’s diplomatic aims in its role as part of the global community.
Bangabandhu’s friendship with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was deep. The two men met in Lahore in February 1974, after which Sadat travelled to Dhaka. On his way back to Cairo, Sadat told newsmen at Tejgaon airport,
Bangabandhu later paid an official visit to Cairo. Afghanistan’s President Sardar Mohammad Daoud visited Dhaka and so strengthened his country’s links with Bangladesh.
Bangabandhu and Yugoslavia’s Marshal Josip Broz Tito shared similar goals and aspirations for their countries. President Tito visited Dhaka and later Bangabandhu went on an official visit to Belgrade. Bangabandhu’s meeting with President Gerald Ford in the White House in early October 1974 was demonstrative of the assertive leader of the Bengalis making the priorities of his government known to Richard Nixon’s successor.
Likewise, his meeting in June 1974 with visiting Pakistani Prime Minister Bhutto, though it did not yield any positive outcome owing to Pakistani intransigence over the issues of assets and liabilities of pre-1971 Pakistan and the resettlement of Biharis in Pakistan, was a powerful assertion of Dhaka’s policy in relation to Islamabad. In February 1972, Senator Edward Kennedy, a fervent supporter of Bangladesh’s struggle for freedom, visited Dhaka. His meeting with Bangabandhu was symbolic of American public support for Bangladesh during and after the 1971 war.
Bangabandhu’s meeting with Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi was formal and polite, for he was aware of the latter’s friendly links with Pakistan’s Bhutto. When Saudi King Faisal raised questions about the state of Islam in Bangladesh, Bangabandhu made it clear to him that while Islam was the religion of the majority population in Bangladesh, the republic was irrevocably secular.
He was not willing to compromise his country’s foundational principles in return for Saudi recognition. When Nigeria’s Yakubu Gowon asked him if Pakistan could not have remained a single country without Bangladesh going its own way, Bangabandhu gave him a sharp response, one that was almost a rebuke.
The Father of the Nation, on his visit to Iraq in 1974, met President Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr and Saddam Hussein, at the time Vice President of the Revolutionary Command Council in Baghdad. The visit placed secular Bangladesh and secular Iraq on a remarkable pedestal of friendship.
On his visit to Japan in October 1973, Bangabandhu was received in audience by Emperor Hirohito. His talks with Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka inaugurated the process of Tokyo-Dhaka cooperation, which has continued down the decades. The Bangladesh visit by Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam cemented relations between Canberra and Dhaka, a link that has remained unbroken.
Bangabandhu’s political trajectory was an uncompromising path to his rise as the spokesperson of Bengali aspirations. He never wavered in his goals, never missed the woods for the trees. At the two Commonwealth summits he attended as Bangladesh’s leader, at the Algiers Non-aligned summit, at the Lahore Islamic summit and at the United Nations, his objectives were defined in all their clarity.
He would speak of his people’s dreams about their struggling country. And he would let the world know that they had come of age and were claiming their place on the global canvas. That freedom had not come to his people on a platter but had been earned through war, through the sacrifices of millions, was the point he underscored before his global contemporaries.
Bangabandhu’s goals were to reach fruition in the few years left of his life after Bangladesh’s liberation, before foul conspiracy would cause darkness to descend anew on Bangladesh.
He was our voice in the global community, the light in our collective national life. It is the voice we hear today. It is the light we bask in as we observe the anniversary of his birth.
About the Author
Syed Badrul Ahsan is the Chief Editorial Adviser of The Confluence; a journalist and author. He previously served as the Press Minister at the High Commission of Bangladesh, London and authored a biography on the Founder of Bangladesh, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman entitled From Rebel to Founding Father: Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.