In This Sad August . . .

It is this great man, this embodiment of freedom,we lost to the wolves on 15 August 1975.

- Syed Badrul Ahsan

In this sad month of August, as the rains of Sravana pelt us with intimations of tragedy, we know it is time to remember the Liberator. He was our Bangabandhu --- Friend of Bengal. It is time to celebrate him, that moment in life when past glory and old causes re-energise the collective spirit of the Bengali nation.

It is the courage of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman you miss as you go through life. And yet it is something more, something of values that you associate with any remembrance of him. He embodied some of the finest traditions that self-respecting people anywhere have throughout the course of history upheld in their lives. And among those values is the refusal to compromise, to undermine yourself through a convenient jettisoning of the ideals that you have always held dear. Even as the round table conference went on in Rawalpindi in 1969, President Ayub Khan suggested to Mujib that he take charge as Pakistan’s prime minister. The Bengali leader spurned the offer. It was a natural gesture on the part of a man who had defied the winds and the trends of the times to come forth with the Six Points in 1966. It was Bengal that mattered to him. Nothing else did, or would.