It took just 18 minutes into TIME’s interview with Sheikh Hasina last September for Bangladesh’s Prime Minister to bring up her murdered father. There would be at least a dozen more unbidden mentions of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the nation’s independence hero and founding President, whose portrait—bespectacled, mustachioed, chin resting on right fist—loomed over our conversation in her Ganabhaban official residence in central Dhaka just like all other public buildings. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] “When Pakistan was established, he was a student and very much active against British colonialism,” Hasina explained.