Shehryar Fazli
“This was a destruction not of a house but of our history, of my history,” said a veteran of Bangladesh’s 1971 Liberation War, telling me about the destruction of the Dhaka home of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the country’s first leader, on February 5.
The address, 32 Dhanmondi, is well known in Bangladesh. It is where, in March 1971, Mujib was apprehended by Pakistani troops as they began the violent crackdown that culminated in a genocide, the third India-Pakistan war, and the birth of a new nation. And it is where, on August 15, 1975, Bangladeshi soldiers slaughtered President Mujib and several members of his family in the country’s first military coup.
That it now stands in ruins shows how much public anger had accumulated during the 15 years of repressive rule of Sheikh Hasina Wajed – Mujib’s daughter – which ended in August 2024 after weeks of student-led protests.
Hasina had turned the house into a memorial for her father. Now exiled in India, she is plotting a political comeback. Last February, she planned to give a speech that would condemn Chief Adviser Muhammad Yunus’ interim government. Protest leaders warned that if she spoke, they would destroy her father’s house. She spoke anyway.
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