Claims that Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s The Unfinished Memoirs was ghostwritten by 123 officials are baseless. The text is rooted in Mujib’s 1967–69 jail notebooks, preserved in facsimile, corroborated by contemporaneous media, and consistent with his nationalist politics. The conspiracy confuses Mujib’s autobiography with an entirely different archival project. Such disinformation is not an innocent mistake—it is a calculated attempt to weaken Bengal’s memory of its liberation struggle.
Did Sheikh Mujibur Rahman really need 123 ghostwriters to tell the story of his childhood, his activism, and his dream of a free Bengal? The very idea borders on the absurd. Yet in the turbulent wake of Bangladesh’s recent political upheavals, a wave of conspiracy theories has emerged claiming that The Unfinished Memoirs—a cornerstone of Bengali nationalist history—was fabricated by former IGP Mohammad Javed Patwary and a team of officials. These claims, amplified by sensationalist media and echo chambers online, are not harmless speculation. They are disinformation designed to erode the foundations of Bongobondhu’s legacy.
As someone committed to historical truth, I argue that these accusations crumble under scrutiny. They rest on a deliberate conflation of two entirely separate bodies of work, lack any substantive evidence, and collapse in the face of overwhelming documentary, textual, and historical proof that the memoirs are indeed Mujib’s own words.
The Source of the Rumors
The allegations originated from documents allegedly uncovered by Bangladesh’s Special Branch of police in August 2025, suggesting Patwary and his team were rewarded with cash and apartments for ghostwriting Mujib’s autobiography. A legal notice has even demanded an official probe into whether Mujib wrote the text at all.
But this narrative unravels upon closer inspection. The supposed “evidence” confuses The Unfinished Memoirs with a very different project: the 14-volume Secret Documents of the Intelligence Branch on Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. That series—published under Sheikh Hasina’s oversight—compiles 48,000 pages of declassified Pakistani intelligence files. Patwary and his officers played a technical role: scanning, transcribing, and decoding the often-illegible Urdu and Bengali texts. Sheikh Hasina duly credited these professionals for their role in organizing scanned, typed, and corrected files, ensuring academic rigor that even led to collaborations with prestigious publishers like Routledge and Taylor & Francis.
To equate that archival task with ghostwriting Mujib’s prison memoir is not just erroneous—it is a deliberate sleight of hand.
Mujib’s Hand, Mujib’s Voice
The provenance of The Unfinished Memoirs is clear. Between 1967 and 1969, while imprisoned in Dhaka Central Jail under Pakistan’s repressive regime, Mujib filled four notebooks at the encouragement of his wife, Fazilatunnesa Mujib. He later entrusted them to his nephew, Sheikh Fazlul Haq Moni, for typing. After Mujib and Moni were assassinated in 1975, the notebooks disappeared—only to be rediscovered in 2004 in Moni’s abandoned office drawer, brittle and discolored with age.
Sheikh Hasina and her sister Sheikh Rehana personally transcribed them, with Baby Maudud editing. Hasina’s preface describes the emotional shock of recognizing her father’s handwriting: “When I had the notebooks in my hand, I was at a loss for words.” Crucially, the published edition includes facsimiles of the original pages, allowing readers to verify the script against Mujib’s known handwriting. No “ghostwriter” could retroactively fabricate this evidence.
History Confirms the Text
The memoirs’ content itself reinforces authenticity. Covering Mujib’s life up to 1955, they detail the Bengal famine of 1943, communal riots, student activism, the Language Movement, and the struggle against Pakistani exploitation. These recollections align seamlessly with contemporaneous press reports from the late 1960s, during Mujib’s imprisonment. His trial testimonies in the Agartala Conspiracy Case echo the very same nationalist themes found in the notebooks. The consistency is striking—there are no anachronisms, no contradictions. What emerges is a vivid, unfinished narrative abruptly halted by the realities of prison life.
Mujib is not alone in leaving behind such prison-born testimony. Gandhi’s My Experiments with Truth, Nehru’s Discovery of India, and Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom were all written under conditions of confinement and later faced attacks from detractors who sought to discredit their authenticity. Yet history has judged these works as invaluable first-person chronicles of liberation struggles. The Unfinished Memoirs belongs firmly in this lineage.
Why the Attack, and Why Now?
The timing of these conspiracy theories is no coincidence. They surface amid the Anti-Corruption Commission’s probe into 123 officials and within a broader campaign to diminish Mujib’s role in Bangladesh’s history. Only weeks earlier, the Interim Government cordoned off Bangabandhu’s residence on 15 August, barring citizens from mourning his assassination. Erasing his memoir is part of the same strategy: to strip Bengalis of their collective memory, and thereby weaken their resolve.
If critics are serious, they should welcome forensic handwriting authentication of the notebooks—something Mujib’s supporters have nothing to fear from. But instead of pursuing evidence, conspiracy peddlers thrive on innuendo, recycling half-truths on social media to cast doubt where none exists. This is not historical inquiry; it is political vandalism.
Conclusion
The Unfinished Memoirs is not merely a book. It is Mujib’s testimony, written with pen and pain from the depths of prison. To deny his authorship is to deny not just an individual’s words, but the lived experience of a people who struggled, suffered, and prevailed. These conspiracy theories are not benign—they are weapons in the war against memory.
We must resist this theft of history. Mujib’s voice endures—clear, authentic, and unassailable.
Joy Bangla.
I am Iconus Clustus—justice activist, truth-seeker, and writer. My work is rooted in the unfinished struggle for recognition of the 1971 Bangladesh Genocide. Guided by philosophy, I write to provoke thought, stir conscience, and insist on justice as a shared responsibility.