In 1973, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman gave a speech at Paltan Bazar where he talked about smuggling.
He asked people to catch smugglers and he said he would deal with them. But the audience was sceptical and dismayed – leading Awami politicians were known to be smugglers and Mujib was fast losing credibility. Realising this, in an attempt to capitalise on his popularity, Mujib held nationwide elections in 1973. The Awami League did spectacularly well, winning 282 of the 289 directly contested seats.
But while the elections cast a warm, happy glow around him, his political fortunes suffered after that. Social and economic conditions continued to deteriorate. Food shortages escalated; most economists and agriculture experts characterise the food shortages of 1974 as the equivalent of a man-made famine. By October 1974, Tajuddin Ahmed left Mujib’s government, being unable to influence him to change his ways, and being unwilling to be part of a government that was no longer acting in the interests of the people. Tajuddin had enormous credibility because even though he was in Calcutta during the war, he was free to mobilise the political processes that gave legitimacy to the freedom movement, unlike Mujib, who was in a Pakistani prison and...