The minister's one hundred taka

The minister’s one hundred taka

- Syed Badrul Ahsan

On a sultry late afternoon in May 1972, Tajuddin Ahmad stood before an audience of essentially young men and women in Dhaka’s Malibagh. Invited by the Shaheed Faruk-Iqbal Smrity Sangsad --- Faruk and Iqbal were two young Bengalis killed in army firing in early March 1971 as the non-cooperation movement in East Pakistan gathered pace --- Tajuddin Ahmad stepped before the microphone and began speaking in his usual soft-spoken manner. Never an orator in the mould of his leader, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and yet possessed of the grit which often defines men of history, he reminded his audience of the many impediments which lay ahead for the newly independent country he happened to be serving as finance minister. Those two martyrs, he told his audience, were symbolic of the sacrifices the nation had made during the nine-month War of Liberation from Pakistan. He did not fail to tell the young men and women gathered before him on that steamy day that many more sacrifices were necessary if Bangladesh was to be a land of prosperity and dignity for its people.