Bangladesh president Ziaur 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 Ziaur Rahman, was a chemist working for the government of India stationed in Calcutta. Ziaur Rahman was born there 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...