Ziaur Rahman

Ziaur Rahman (19 January 1936 – 30 May 1981) was a Bangladeshi military leader and politician who served as the sixth president of Bangladesh from 1977 until his assassination in 1981. A decorated officer of the Pakistan Army, he broadcast the declaration of Bangladesh's independence from Chittagong in March 1971 and commanded a sector and the Z Force in the Liberation War. After the upheavals of 1975 he emerged as the country's strongman, took the presidency in 1977, founded the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) in 1978, restored multi-party politics and pursued economic liberalisation; his presidency also moved Bangladesh's constitution away from secularism towards an Islamic framing, a state policy the museum records as such. He was assassinated in an attempted coup at Chittagong. His widow, Khaleda Zia, went on to lead the BNP and serve three terms as prime minister. ^{1 2}

Ziaur Rahman was born on 19 January 1936 at Bagbari village in Gabtali, Bogra district, Bengal, British India, to a Bengali Muslim family of Mandals. His father, Mansur Rahman, was a chemist with the Bengal government in Calcutta; his mother was Jahanara Khatun. After Partition the family moved to Karachi, where Ziaur finished his schooling. In 1953 he entered the Pakistan Military Academy at Kakul, and in 1960 he married Khaleda Khanam, later Khaleda Zia, with whom he had two sons, Tarique and Arafat. ¹

Commissioned in 1955, Ziaur served first in the Punjab Regiment and then in the East Bengal Regiment, fought in the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965, and worked in military intelligence. Posted to Chittagong in 1969, he was second-in-command of the 8th East Bengal Regiment when the Pakistani crackdown began in March 1971. He broadcast the declaration of independence on 27 March 1971 from the Swadhin Bangla Betar Kendra station at Kalurghat — for which he became known as the "Announcer of the Liberation" — and during the war commanded Sector 1, then Sector 11, and from mid-July the Z Force brigade. He was decorated with the Bir Uttom. ¹

After independence Ziaur rose to deputy chief and then chief of army staff. In the sequence of coups of 1975 — the assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in August, the 3 November coup that removed him, and the 7 November soldiers' uprising that freed him — he emerged as the de facto ruler under martial law, and on 21 April 1977 he took over the presidency from Abu Sadat Mohammad Sayem. ¹

As president, Ziaur Rahman founded the Bangladesh Nationalist Party on 1 September 1978, restored multi-party politics, press freedom and free markets, launched mass irrigation and food-production programmes, improved relations with the West and China, and began the regional diplomacy that later produced SAARC. His government also amended the constitution: the Basmala invocation was placed at its head and the commitment to secularism was replaced by "absolute trust and faith in Almighty Allah" — the article notes his view that Islam as a religion could play some role in guiding the Muslim-majority state. The article also records that he faced as many as twenty-one coup attempts, answered with military tribunals and executions, and acquired a reputation among international observers for strictness. ¹

On 30 May 1981 Ziaur Rahman was assassinated at the Circuit House in Chittagong in an attempted coup by army officers. He was buried with state honours in Dhaka, where the Mausoleum of Ziaur Rahman stands. Opinion of his legacy in Bangladesh remains divided: he is credited with restoring order and multi-party democracy after the one-party BAKSAL period and with economic reforms, and criticised for suppressing opposition. The party he founded remains one of the country's two major parties, led after him by his widow Khaleda Zia and then by his son Tarique Rahman. ¹

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