Soon after the completion of 100 Greatest Britons poll in 2002, the BBC organized a similar opinion poll to find out who is the greatest Bengali personality in Bengali nation's history of thousand years. In 2004, BBC's Bengali Service conducted the opinion poll with the title Greatest Bengali of all time started from February 11 continued onto March 22. The poll was participated by Bengalis around the world including from Bangladesh, India and overseas Bengali communities. No individual from the Bengal Sultanate and Mughal Bengal were nominated however. Total 140 nominations had been produced from the poll. BBC started to announce the top 20 names from 26 March declaring one name each day starting from 20th position. On the final day of 14 April, which was also the Pahela Baishakh, BBC announced Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding father of Bangladesh as the Greatest Bengali of all time voted by Bengalis worldwide.
Methodology
Describing the process of voting, BBC's Bengali Service stated that to avoid any flaw or controversy, they followed the most modern method of opinion polling. Participants were asked to nominate their five choices of greatest Bengali on the order of preference instead of one. The top nominee of each voter was given five points, second nominee four points, thus eventually the fifth nominee got one point. On the basis of total points, the final list of the greatest Bengali poll was generated.
Observations
BBC informed that Sheikh Mujibur Rahman bagged almost double points than the second place holder Rabindranath Tagore, while Tagore himself secured double points than Kazi Nazrul Islam and Nazrul got double than A. K. Fazlul Huq. The other 17 personalities however had narrow differences of points with each other. Along with highest six politicians, the list also contains several authors and social reformers. Also two religious preachers, one scientist and one economist got place in the final list. Begum Rokeya was the only woman and Amartya Sen only living personality to be voted in top 20.
