In the year when Ziaur Rahman, who was then a young major in the Pakistan Army, showed formidable courage in a historic war and was recognized with the second-highest gallantry award of the army, his first son, Tarique Rahman, was born. The day was 20 November 1965.

As a child, with his mother Begum Khaleda Zia, who later became Bangladesh’s first woman Prime Minister, and his brother Arafat Rahman, a successful sports organizer, Tarique experienced the crude realities of Bangladesh’s liberation war. During the war, when his father declared Bangladesh’s independence and initiated a resistance movement to liberate the nation in March 1971, he along with his mother and brother became the targets of the Pakistan Army and were put in prison along with the family members and wives of other Bengali military officers, only to be freed on December 16, 1971, when his father, along with his compatriots, defeated Pakistani forces. This made him one of the youngest prisoners of war for the cause of Bangladesh’s liberation.

As the son of a decorated war hero and the most uncompromising leader in South Asia, Tarique Rahman grew up as a person who is a true patriot on one hand, and on the other hand, a man with a vision. After completing his initial studies at Dhaka’s BAF Shaheen College, he got enrolled in the Department of International Relations at the University of Dhaka in the 1980s, when his mother staged a fierce movement against the authoritarian rule of Lieutenant General H.M. Ershad. The family that once had to bear the brunt of 1971’s liberation war, had to experience the ordeals of the authoritarian regime throughout the 1980s.  

At that time, Tarique Rahman decided to strengthen the Bangladesh Nationalist Party-BNP, which was founded by his father President Ziaur Rahman, from the grassroots through democratic means and became a general member of the party in 1988.  He was an active member in the movement against H.M. Ershad’s regime, while his mother was leading the movement as the chairperson of the BNP.

After the fall of Ershad, thanks to his mother Begum Khaleda Zia’s relentless movement, he campaigned along with his mother to almost every district of the country before the 1991 election. Their joint efforts bring the party a historic win in the election and his mother became the first woman Prime Minister of Bangladesh. Mr Rahman, despite being the elder son of the Prime Minister remained a general member of the party till June 1993. To create a model for other district units of the party, he organized a conference where leadership was chosen through secret ballots, that year in the Bogra district unit. He became an executive member of the Bogra District unit of BNP through that process.

As a student, he studied the thoughts of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Voltaire, Karl Marx and other exceptional thinkers, and became interested in decentralizing the power structure to the grassroots.  As a result, after the successful conference in Bogra, he encouraged other district units and affiliated organizations to choose their leadership through democratic means. These steps emboldened the party and created a grassroots network for BNP.

Before the 2001 election, Mr Rahman set up an office in Dhaka to conduct research on local issues and good governance and to find solutions to the problems of Bangladesh. He met people from all walks of life there and compiled a database that addressed the needs of people in every locality of the country. Thanks to his efforts, BNP won a landslide victory in the 2001 elections. Despite being the son of the chairperson and having huge support from the grassroots, he did not join any public office through nepotism. Instead, he focused on empowering the grassroots of the party by building bridges between their representatives and the people. As a recognition of his efforts to build the party, he was appointed as the Senior Joint Secretary of BNP by the Standing Committee in 2002.

One of the most applaudable achievements of Tarique Rahman is the launching of a countrywide conference at the grassroots level that covered every upazila or sub-districts of the country, in 2005. He went to every sub-district, addressed grassroots leaders and activists, had one-to-one conversations with the citizens, shared his views and listened back from the supporters, and preached the visions of the BNP to the people. He informed people about government subsidies for farmers, the allocation of allowances for elderly people, the anti-plastic bag movement to ensure ecological balance and the distribution of stipends for female students that significantly increased the gender ratio at schools. 

As a follow-up, he personally signed at least 18,000 response letters to conference attendees after each event. These response letters addressed regional issues and discussed how to address them.

In 2007, after the Awami League formed an unholy nexus with some forces to pull an unconstitutional takeover of power by a caretaker government, Tarique Rahman was being targeted by the new vindictive regime for his role in organizing the party. Insiders of the regime later admitted to the author of a book on this regime that the kingpins of the caretaker government compelled the officials of different offices including the anti-corruption commission to press false charges against Mr Rahman.  Besides, he was tortured during custody and had to leave the country for better treatment.

In the 2009 council of BNP, he became the Senior Vice-Chairman of the party, though he was still recovering from the injuries. He gradually became involved in the reorganization of the BNP and created a solid grassroots network of the party. One indication of his growing popularity was the 2013 Prothom Alo-Org-Quest survey where 59% of the people favoured him as the future leader.

Mr Rahman is now the acting chairperson of BNP. As the de facto head of the party, he proved his capabilities by reviving the party, empowering the grassroots. His success in the mobilization of grassroots activists became evident in the divisional rallies of 2022 which were attended by millions of people.

In 1994, Tarique Rahman married Dr Zubaida Rahman, the daughter of the former Bangladesh Navy chief and a two-time minister in subsequent governments Late Rear Admiral Mahbub Ali Khan. Zubaida Rahman is a qualified cardiologist by training and studied at Dhaka Medical College. They have a daughter named Zaima Zarnaz Rahman.