also called Sheikh Mujib b. March 17, 1920, Tungipara, India

d. Aug. 15, 1975, Dacca, Bangladesh

Bengali leader and first prime minister and later president of Bangladesh.

Mujib, the son of a middle-class landowner, studied law and political science at the universities of Calcutta and Dacca. Although jailed briefly as a teenager for agitating for Indian independence, he began his formal political career as a cofounder of the Awami League in 1949. The league advocated political autonomy for East Pakistan, the detached eastern part of the nation of Pakistan. Rahman's arrest in the late 1960s incited mob violence that eroded the Pakistani president's authority in East Pakistan. In the elections of December 1970, Mujib's Awami League secured a majority of the seats in the National Assembly, and Mujib demanded independence for East Pakistan. Troops from West Pakistan were sent to regain control of the eastern province but were defeated with the help of India. Bangladesh was proclaimed an independent republic with Mujib as the first prime minister in January 1972. With increasing problems, Mujib took tighter control and assumed the presidency in January 1975. He was killed, along with most of his family, in a coup d'etat just seven months later.