Subir Bhaumik
Since Feb 5, Bangladesh has plunged into absolute lawlessness with mobs of radical Islamists descending on residences of lawmakers , party officials and ministers of the ousted Awami League to demolish the buildings.
They vandalised and set on fire the Bangabandhu Memorial Museum in Dhaka, where Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who led Bangladesh’s struggle for independence, lived until his assassination with much of his family in the 15 August 1975 coup.
Popular as ‘Bangabandhu ‘ (friend of Bengalis), Mujib’s legacy was synonymous with the spirit of the 1971 Liberation War. The large-hearted leader had told officials engaged in rehabilitation of tens of thousands of Bengali women raped by Pakistani soldiers that if none owned them up, he would be father to them and their permanent address would be 32, Dhanmondi.
This Museum has been vandalised once before immediately after the ouster of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina (Mujib’s one of two surviving children) on August 5 last year. But the fresh attack on Wednesday followed the announcement of a program of political agitation by Hasina, now in exile in India, that spanned the entire of February, a month of enormous emotional significance due to the 1952 Bengali language movement .
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