Declaration of Independence

In the first hours of 26 March

As the army moved through Dhaka on the night of 25 March, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman stayed in his home in Dhanmondi. He had told other leaders to escape, but refused to leave himself. According to the mainstream account in Wikipedia's articles, in the first hours of 26 March, shortly before soldiers came to arrest him, he sent out a message proclaiming the independence of Bangladesh and calling on people to resist.

Carried by radio

The declaration was soon on the air from Chittagong, where a radio transmitter at Kalurghat began broadcasting as Swadhin Bangla Betar Kendra, the Free Bangla Radio Centre. M. A. Hannan read the declaration over the radio. Then Major Ziaur Rahman, a Bengali officer of the East Bengal Regiment who had rebelled with his troops, broadcast the declaration on behalf of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

The little station's signal was weak, but it was picked up by a Japanese ship in the Bay of Bengal and passed on to Radio Australia and the BBC. Within days the world knew that a new country, Bangladesh, had been declared.

The struggle begins

Across East Pakistan, Bengali soldiers, East Pakistan Rifles men, police, students and villagers took up arms against the army. At first the resistance was scattered and spontaneous. It would grow into the Mukti Bahini, the liberation force, and by April a government would be formed to lead it.

The date the nation keeps

26 March is Bangladesh's Independence Day. On 10 April 1971, the new provisional government issued a formal Proclamation of Independence that looked back to Sheikh Mujib's declaration of 26 March as the moment of independence.

A note on a long debate

For decades, Bangladesh's two main political parties argued over who should be credited as the declarer of independence: Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, or Ziaur Rahman, who read it on air. Wikipedia's articles describe Mujib as the declarer and Zia as the officer who broadcast the declaration in his name, and note that the question has been politically contested. This page follows that mainstream account.