Listeners name 'greatest Bengali':
Listeners of the BBC's Bengali service have voted Bangladesh's first president, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the "Greatest Bengali of All Time".
Sheikh Mujibur, assassinated in 1975, easily beat Nobel prize-winning poet and playwright Rabindranath Tagore. [...]
Tagore is revered widely - regarded by many as the Bengali Shakespeare - and is the composer of both the Indian and Bangladeshi national anthems.
In the survey, popular fascination with poetry and rebellion was reflected in the listeners' choice for number three - Kazi Nazrul Islam, a firebrand poet who was jailed by the British for writing subversive verses.
Still revered by Bengalis as the Rebel Poet, Nazrul Islam also composed hundreds of love songs and religious chants.
Can you imagine polling Americans, for example, and getting poets in the second and third spots?
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