"The most dangerous man in the Awami League is Tajuddin", said Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to General Yahya Khan as the latter prepared to travel to Dhaka in mid-March 1971 for meetings with Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and other Bengali leaders. What scared the brutal Pakistanis was the indomitable spirit and acumen of one of the greatest leaders in the history of Bangladesh, Tajuddin Ahmad. Today marks his 96th birth anniversary. The first prime minister of Bangladesh and one of her brightest sons, was a student of the Department of Economics, University of Dhaka. He obtained a BA with honors in Economics in 1953.
 
The Odyssey begins:
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Tajuddin Ahmad passed matriculation in 1944 from St. Gregory's High School in Dhaka and IA in 1948. He started his political activism at a very early age on the backdrop of the last days of British India, in Bengal which was battered with famines, communal tensions, and was a hotbed of anti-British activism. Tajuddin Ahmad joined the Muslim League in 1943. He rejected Muslim League's conversative party line and was among the first generation of Dhaka's pro-democracy, secular activists. Tajuddin joined Gano Azadi League, a civil rights organization, in July 1947. In contrast to Muslim League, the organization took progressive views on many issues, like language and education.