Sheikh Mujibur Rahman

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, also known by the honorific Bangabandhu, was a Bangladeshi politician, revolutionary, statesman and activist, who was the founding president of Bangladesh. As one of the founding leaders of Bangladesh, he has held several political offices; since 1966 during the Pakistani colonial era in East Bengal, he had served as the president of a Bengali nationalist party, Awami League, which led the Bengali region of East Pakistan to secede from Pakistan through a nine month long war to form the independent People's Republic of Bangladesh in 1971. He declared the independence of Bangladesh, and was declared as the first president of Bangladesh in the midst of the independence war albeit being imprisoned by the Pakistani government at that time. After Bangladesh's victory in the war and his subsequent release from Pakistani imprisonment in January 1972, Mujib returned to Bangladesh and resigned from his first presidential term in order to take over as the second prime minister of the new country, under which capacity he served for over three years. Following his resignation from Bangladesh's premiership, he took over Bangladesh's presidency again as the fourth president of the country, during which time he abolished all other political parties except for his own party, the Awami League, which was merged with three other political parties to form the new Bangladesh Krishak Sramik Awami League (BaKSAL) in order to bring Bangladesh under a one-party-system that effectively allowed him to become president for life under which role he served for less than seven months until his assassination in a coup d'état conducted by some officers of the Bangladesh Army in August 1975. His nationalist ideology, socio-political theories, and political doctrines are collectively known as Mujibism.