Exactly 100 years ago, on March 17, 1920, on the bank of river Baighar, a tiny village named Tungipara under the present district of Gopalganj witnessed the birth of a baby boy in the house of the respectable Sheikh family. His father Sheikh Lutfur Rahman and mother Sayera Khatun used to call him Khoka. Though his paternal grandfather Sheikh Abdul Majid on the occasion of the child's "Akika" (a ceremony of naming a new born Muslim child) named him "Sheikh Mujib" (The person who answers), later this Khoka became "Mujib Vai" and Mujib Vai emerged as "Bangabandhu" (Friend of Bengalis). Mujib became the maker of history, a country, a nation as well as an ideology.

He was later dubbed the Father of Bangladesh and the greatest Bengali of all time. The legend of Bangabandhu hadn't been born overnight. Years of work culminated and later evaluated under the unforgiving magnifying glasses of the history transformed Khoka into Bangabandhu.

Mujib was a protester from very early in life when he was known as Khoka. He never compromised with any injustice from his childhood. Many tried to stop him and put hindrances on his of way to becoming a person with serious

political conscience, but he never gave up. In the later part of his life, rulers tried to stop him and also tried to kill him. Without any reason they put him in jail. Still, he never bowed to anyone.

“The greatest Bengali of the past thousand years, sculptor of Bangladesh, Father of the Nation, supreme commander of the Liberation War”—he won these titles because of his work and sacrifice. The main role behind the history of becoming Bangabandhu from Khoka was his invincible leadership, kindness and sacrifice for the people of Bangla.

Renowned author Ahmed Sofa writes in an article that “Bangabandhu and the independence of Bangladesh are synonymous, complementary to each other. These two words have drawn us into a new era of unprecedented freedom.”

From his early age in school he showed leadership potential. Mujib was admitted to Gimadanga Primary School for his primary education. He was admitted to the Gopalganj Public School in Class III. In 1938, when Mujib was a student of the Gopalganj Missionary School, two great leaders—AK Fazlul Haq and Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy—visited Gopalganj and Mujib had the responsibility to organize the volunteer team. During this visit, Suhrawardy discovered Sheikh Mujib as a promising, courageous political talent.

Mujib joined the All India Muslim Students Federation in 1940 when he was a student of Islamia College. In 1943, a famine broke out due to World War II and Mujib went out to offer humanitarian help. He collected food from his family and rich people to feed the poor.

Following the announcement of Muhammad Ali Jinnah that Urdu would be the only official state language of Pakistan, protests erupted among the Bangla-speaking people in 1948. Mujib led the Muslim Students’ League in organising strikes and protests, and was arrested along with Khaleque Nawaz Khan and Shamsul Haque on the 11th of March that year, and Mujib was brutally beaten.

During the 24-year-long Pakistani reign in erstwhile East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), Mujib spent almost 12 years in prison. But that six-feet-tall man with infinite courage never bowed his head before oppressive forces. Though his family suffered, he didn’t compromise. West Pakistani rulers offered him a coveted ministry but he paid no heed.

Sheikh Mujib left the Muslim League and then joined Suhrawardy, Maulana Bhashani, and Yar Mohammad Khan in forming the Awami Muslim League.

He was elected to the East Bengal Legislative Assembly on a United Front coalition ticket in 1954 and served briefly as the minister for agriculture in AK Fazlul Huq’s government.

Following the suspension of the Constitution and the imposition of martial law by General Ayub Khan in 1958, Mujib was arrested on charge of waging resistance and imprisoned till 1961.

After his release, he organised an underground political wing called Swadhin Bangla Biplabi Parishad, comprising student leaders, to oppose Ayub Khan’s military regime. He started working for the independence of East Pakistan and was again arrested in 1962 for organising protests.

Following the death of Suhrawardy in 1963, Sheikh Mujib came to head the Awami League, which turned out to be one of the largest political parties in Pakistan. Later, the party leaders decided to drop the word “Muslim” from its name with a view to moving towards secularism and making a broader appeal to non-Muslim communities.

He was one of the key leaders who opposed Ayub Khan’s “Basic Democracy” model designed for centralising power and merging the provinces.

During the escalation of communal tension in 1966, Sheikh Mujib placed a six-point autonomy plan, titled “Our Charter of Survival”, at a national conference of opposition political parties in Lahore. He demanded self-government and considerable political, economic, and defence autonomy for East Pakistan in a Pakistani federation with a weak central government.

Seeing his growing popularity, the Pakistani government imprisoned him with the charge of sedition in 1968. But people of all spheres of life took to the streets to free their beloved leader. It was an unprecedented event in the history of the whole sub-continent. The Pakistani government couldn’t take the pressure and had to free Sheikh Mujib.

On February 23, 1969, the people of Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) bestowed the “Bangabandhu” title on Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. The then Dhaka University Central Students’ Union (DUCSU) vice-president and Sarbadaliya Chhatra Sangram Parishad convener Tofail Ahmed conferred the title on behalf of the people at a rally after Sheikh Mujib—subsequently the Father of the Nation—was freed from jail in the Agartala Conspiracy case on February 22, 1969.

With mass protests mounting across East Pakistan and the rising demand for liberation from subjugation by West Pakistan, Bangabandhu envisioned a struggle for independence during a landmark speech on March 7, 1971. Mujib asked the people of Bangladesh to free the country from the Pakistani rulers.

Emboldened by his call, the people of this country vehemently engaged in an armed struggle to free themselves from an oppressive and discriminatory rule. After a nine-month-long war, the people that Mujib led had earned their freedom at the cost of over 30 lakh lives.

With that hard-earned freedom and the emergence of a new nation, the boy named Khoka from an unknown backwater had become “Bangabandhu”—the architect and the undisputed father of a nation. His journey of becoming so is engraved with deep patriotism, unlimited sacrifice and unparalleled leadership.