MONDAY, August 5, was a history-tossing day for Bangladesh, which made the headlines globally. The Awami League leader prime minister Sheikh Hasina, the country鈥檚 longest-running chief executive, terrified of the rumbling protesters gushing towards her official residence, hastily resigned. She fled the country. But her stormy exit came in the wake of staggering death tolls, countless injuries, untold human sufferings, ferocious public rage, burning, looting and catastrophic losses across the range.
The country鈥檚 collapsed administration, since she bolted out of the country, is yet to fully recover. Initially, it was a student-led protest for reforming the discriminating job quota, but as she bungled it, the campaign became a nationwide populist revolt that finally toppled her. The recent upheavals came at the breaking point under Hasina鈥檚 sledgehammer governance that protracted too long.
A seismic regime dissolution is usually the twin of a divided nation鈥� the original sin of the country鈥檚 inflexible rift goes back to the early years of Bangladesh. The stocks of unbending hatreds commenced with those who professed themselves as the impeccable bunch of patriots and spitefully cast the rest aside as the smeared 鈥榦thers鈥� in the new state emerging from a violent civil war. The two opposing sides did not find a middle ground to live in a mutually tolerant polity. Consequently, national unity yearned in Bangladesh right from its birth.
Thrown out of the newly independent country鈥檚 political process, the so-called 鈥榓nti-liberation forces鈥� lost personal safety, security, jobs and property. Indiscriminate blame games of who did what in 1971 and during the bloody insurrection of 1975 still drive Bangladesh apart. The Awami League exploited the old split as its political capital even after the nation crossed its 50th year of independence. Bangladeshis are yet to realise that pluralistic democracy does not flourish in a stalemate between a divided society and deceptive political institutions. We saw the worst manifestation of this gap between the people and the country鈥檚 governing elites over the recent years.
Partisan polarisation, to Amy Chua, the celebrated author of outstanding volumes on a range of social and political issues, is like a virus that has not yet found a cure. Bangladesh is one of the worst examples of such politically riven countries where neither robust institutions nor national consensus thrives. The country鈥檚 clarion call, now, is for an early election and the restoration of democracy, which are amongst the most challenging questions for the recently inaugurated interim government headed by Dr Muhammad Yunus.
A fuller narrative of the grim rancor that still plagues Bangladesh is beyond the scope of this limited opinion piece. Hasina steadily built an 鈥榰nelected, unaccountable鈥� and a stifling one-person and one-party rule after she had won the 2008 election. Her grandiose rhetoric fell short of building a multi-layered nation with an array of democratic institutions and an esteem for the due process of law mediated by non-partisan actors. An undemocratic cult certainly revolved around Hasina, who hauled hereditary claims from the perceived glories of Sheikh Mujib, her father whom she deified as the 鈥榮ole鈥� founder of Bangladesh. It was Hasina鈥檚 way to weaponise history to legitimise her harsh regime.
But then again, Bangladesh gave birth to a leader-dominated national imagination since Sheikh Mujib assumed the country鈥檚 absolute leadership soon after his return from Pakistan jail early in 1972. Hasina鈥檚 juggernaut of an autocracy transported the footprints of her father鈥檚 one-party decree shortly before his tragic end. However, she did not officially announce that she re-embodied the earlier BKSAL domination. Hasina鈥檚 hegemony had supporting pillars 鈥� her loyal partisan factions with its student wing and the hired goons, pro-AL civil bureaucrats, crony capitalists, corrupted layers of police and the upper levels of the judiciary loyal to her decrees.
She nourished those columns of power by warped measures which have been becoming known every day since her fall. India鈥檚 not-so-hidden validation of the regime only emboldened Hasina both domestically and internationally. While Mujib鈥檚 undisputed authority came from his charismatic popularity until he launched the short-lived BKSAL in 1975, his daughter鈥檚 network of authoritarianism was much larger and even more tailored to her invincibility.
Between 1975 and 1991, the emotional makeup of the country鈥檚 politics changed first under General Ziaur Rahman and later during General HM Ershad鈥檚 rule. Both the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and the Jatiya Party, born out of the previous military regimes, were non-ideological although they allowed space to Muslim identity and political Islam. Following the 1975 coup, Mujib was no longer the usually applauded leader in the national pantheon. His BKSAL gamble caused the greatest harm to national unity and to himsel
. When the BNP laid a claim that after the Pakistani massacre on March 25, 1971, it was (then a major) Zia who first called for Bangladesh independence. The acrimony over who first declared independence in 1971 mushroomed into a cacophony over the 鈥榝atherhood鈥� of Bangladeshi independence from Pakistan. Sadly, the spectre of that dissension still prowls across the political, social, and cultural spans 鈥� it is at the bottom of the surfeit of miseries, including the contemporary tragedies, of the nation.
The Awami League imagined that its 1996 electoral victory, after the 21-year hiatus, only vindicated its 鈥榬ightful claims to the exclusive political leadership of the country it freed from Pakistan in 1971.鈥� Prime minister Hasina promptly repealed the so-called Indemnity Ordinance that earlier precluded the trial of the accused assassins of Mujib and most members of the family in 1975. However, her critics insisted that Hasina used the trial of the indicted 鈥楳ujib killers鈥� to rejuvenate the AL ascendency as it transpired before Sheikh Mujib suffered a fierce rebellion.
Taj Hashmi鈥檚 Fifty Years of Bangladesh 1971-2021, Crises of Culture, Development, Governance, and Identity, (Palgrave/Macmillan, 2022) is one of the detailed narratives of Hasina鈥檚 domination and her divisive strides, including the pervasive rights violations that Hasina committed from 2009 to 2021. Her foremost rival was the Bangladesh Nationalist Party headed by Zia鈥檚 widow Khaleda Zia who won the first election in 1991 after General Ershad鈥檚 fall.
For the duration of her tenure, Hasina launched horrendous strikes, violence and an exceptional bureaucratic disruption until the Bangladesh Nationalist Party amended the constitution to craft a caretaker system to umpire the election which led her to the 1996 election victory. In 2001, Khaleda led her BNP to victory again. Then, Hasina pitched another round of agitations that steered to a military intervention which, in certain ways, enabled the Awami League victory in the 2008 election.
Fifteen years of Hasina鈥檚 hegemony were a cocktail of selective memories, nostalgia, and a politically induced amnesia about the nation鈥檚 larger history. The AL identity worked like money in the bank for the party activists 鈥� it was also an endorsement for jobs, social vanity, business deals and easy credit that went to the party factions. Her cherry-picked history hardly encountered questions by the accredited historians and the liberal intellectuals of the country. The annihilation of the democratic process by ruthless marginalisation of the opposition parties, swelling corruption at the highest places, unrestrained violence against the dissenters, kidnapping and forced disappearances branded the Hasina government. Appalling political divides faltered dialogues on critical national security matters. Not an enviable job! the interim administration must put the past behind and move ahead. The fledgling student protests, which ousted Hasina, are indeed driving the country through a national catharsis.
Hasina鈥檚 long regime is a betrayal of Bangladesh鈥檚 national unity and the country鈥檚 comprehensive political development. But Bangladesh is still an energetic and a resilient landscape that just daringly ditched an autocratic rule 鈥� a strategic resource for the nation鈥檚 future. The ruling elite鈥檚 current priority is to depolarise the country by restoring peace and security, the rule of law and launching an arrangement of participatory institutions necessary for liberal democracies. Riding the momentum of history at this hour, can we voice that Bangladesh now needs the uniters, not the dividers at the helm?
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M Rashiduzzaman is a retired academic. He occasionally writes on Bangladesh politics and history.