Bangladesh president Zia ur-Rahman, popularly known as Zia (1936-1981), succeeded to a significant extent in bringing political and economic stability to the new nation following a period of great disruption.

Mansur Rahman, father of Zia ur-Rahman, was a chemist working for the government of India stationed in Calcutta, Ziaur Rahman was born there on January 19, 1936. When Calcutta became the target of Japanese air strikes in 1940, like many urban Bengali families with rural links Mansur Rahman sent his family to his ancestral home in the small town of Bogra in northern Bengal. After Germany surrendered and the Japanese threat to Calcutta diminished, Mansur Rahman brought his family back and enrolled Zia in one of the leading boys schools of Calcutta—Hare School—where Zia studied until the independence and partition of India in 1947. On August 14, 1947, Mansur Rahman, like many Muslims working for the old British government of India, exercised his option to work for the new state of Pakistan and moved to Karachi, the first capital of Pakistan.

Zia’s character and style as one of the most effective leaders in the underdeveloped world was largely shaped by the issues, attitudes, and events during his years at Hare School. Subhas Bose, a former president of the All India Congress Party, and Mohandas K. Gandhi were the two charismatic leaders of India whose lives baffled the young students. For trying to use the Japanese to force the British out of India, Bose was regarded as a hero by the students, but the British and their supporters in India considered him a traitor for his collaboration with the Japanese. To most of the Hare School boys treason and patriotism did not seem to make much sense. Nor did Gandhi’s open support of India’s involvement in British war efforts clarify the appropriate role of India’s leaders. What dismayed many students, particularly Zia ur Rahman, most was the inability of the authority figures teachers, parents, and leaders—to clarify the is­sues or to help achieve a consensus in regard to what was a just Policy.

After the war the political situation became even more amorphous. Gandhi’s Congress Party and Muhammad A. Jinnah’s Muslim League Party, representing the two main communities of India—Hindu and Muslim—failed to come to an agreement about sharing power in the future indepen­dent republic of India. When Syed Ahmed’s two nation theory become a reality after the referenda of 1940 which ensured the division of India the life of Muslim boys in Hare School became almost intolerable. Having lost faith in mu­tual cooperation and sharing as means to diffuse tension and resolve conflicts, Zia took it upon himself to justify the impending creation of Pakistan and, in the process often became engaged in fist fights. An otherwise reserved and somewhat introverted boy of 11 often took on older school bullies and beat them.

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