by MANASH GHOSH
A new book details the circumstances which led to the Bangbandhu’s assassination.
The following is an excerpt from the book Mujib’s Blunders: The Power and the Plot Behind His Killing.
Fidel Castro was right in giving a prescient and timely warning to Bangabandhu that showing magnanimity to his political enemies, who had dourly opposed the Liberation War, would be considered as a sign of inherent weakness in his character and not as a moral virtue. His benevolence would only spur them on to conspire and act with greater gusto and vengeance against him and his government and, in the process, frustrate his dream of building a sonar (golden) Bangladesh.
Castro was among the few world leaders who had paid the most glowing tribute to Bangabandhu saying he had not seen the mighty Himalayas but had seen Mujib. And yet Bangabandhu paid no heed to Castro’s advice as he thought that by accommodating the committed pro-Pak minded officers in the top echelons of his administration and uniformed services, he had been able to win their trust and confidence.
‘Mujib’s Blunders’, Manash Ghosh, Niyogi Books, 2025.
However, when he started getting hard evidence of how some of his ambitious plans and projects were being sabotaged by an influential section of the bureaucracy, he confided in his party colleagues that he had committed a big blunder by placing repatriates in key bureaucratic posts. He had confessed saying he had tried to build a Bangladesh of his dreams with untrustworthy Pakistani materials and admitted that this was the ‘worst mistake’ of his life.
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