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Aleem Haider Election in 1970 and victory of the Awami League  Bangabandhu was re-elected as the president of the Awami League on January 6 in 1970. The party at a working committee meeting decided that it would take part in the first-ever general elections in Pakistan, scheduled later that year. At a public rally at the Race Course ground (Suhrawardy Udyan) on June 7, Bangabandhu called upon people to elect his party to materialize the Six-Point demand. He chose the boat as his party’s election symbol and launched his campaign from Dhaka’s Dholai Khal. On October 28, he addressed the nation over radio and television and asked people to elect his party’s candidates to the National Assembly. However, a devastating cyclone devasted major parts of the coastal belt in Bangl...

Aleem Haider Re-birth of Awami League But he was arrested under the Public Security Act on February 6 in 1962. However, freed in June last after the end of Martial Law, Mujib came down heavily on the activities of dictator General Ayub Khan in a public rally at Paltan Maidan. In September, he went to Lahore to meet Shaheed Suhrawardy for forming an alliance of opposition parties called, the National Democratic Front. He spent the entire month of October travelling across East Pakistan along with Shaheed Suhrawardy for campaigning for the front. Sheikh Mujib also flew to London in 1963 for consultations with Suhrawardy, who was undergoing medical treatment. Suhrawardy died in Beirut on December 5. Mujib restarted party activities at his residence in Dhaka. In a meeting there, ...

Aleem Haider The final stage of Language Movement Although Mujib had been incarcerated since October 1949, he had managed to establish close contacts with the politically active leaders and workers and through them, he ensured that an All-Party State Language Action Committee was formed. He supported them to observe 21st February as a ‘State Language Day. At the same time, he informed the authorities that he would go on an indefinite hunger strike from February 16 for his confinement without any charge. Soon afterward on February 14, the authorities moved him from Dhaka jail and sent him to Faridpur jail. On February 21, the students defied Section 144 and were fired upon by the police. That incident resulted in the killings of Salam, Barakat, Rafique, Jabbar, Shafiur, Abdul ...

Aleem Haider The Father of the Nation, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman showed exceptional leadership since his childhood. But who knew a thin boy with poor health from a rural village of Tungipara would become the torchbearer of the Bengali nation by leading them to independence! And it was Sheikh Mujib who became the true friend of the Bengali nation (Bangabandhu) by dedicating his whole life for the sake of the nation and its people. He had to spend 13 years of his life in prison for the sake of the Bengali people and their rights – no other leader in the political person was devoted to people as Bangabandhu did. Rise as a student leader in British Period Bangabandhu’s political ideologies were mostly shaped by Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy since his school life. After passin...