“The Three Helmsmen of Bangladesh” (short)

22 August 2025.       (My Heroes of Bangladesh)




I name them in the order history placed them, but in my heart they stand equal — three voices who kept our ship from sinking when storms raged.


 • Tajuddin Ahmad — in 1971, when we had no sails, no anchor, no flag, he became the helmsman, building a government in exile and steering a cause that could have easily drowned.


 • Ziaur Rahman — the soldier whose voice declared our freedom and later kept a battered vessel afloat, refusing to let Bangladesh capsize when despair and division threatened to pull it under.


 • Professor Muhammad Yunus — for the past year, when atrocity and corruption threatened to choke the nation’s spirit, he became the voice of conscience. He showed that Bangladesh could rise above its tormentors and still chart a course toward dignity and hope. But he will leave in February.


Between their steady hands, the ship was too often left rudderless — suffocated by BAKSAL’s one-party cage, seized by the dictatorship of Ershad, and finally dragged through the long tyranny of Sheikh Hasina. Each time, the vessel drifted, leaderless and battered, until the storm itself broke their grip.


Now, with Yunus soon to step away, another storm gathers. The question stares us in the face: who will rise next to take the helm — or will silence claim the wheel, leaving Bangladesh once more adrift on a stormy sea?


Three men, three eras, three storms — but history has not yet finished writing its reckoning.

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