Alameen Templeton
Is this “Gaza blowback” – Bangladesh’s dramatic, overnight return to Islamic fundamentalism and a rejection of the Awami League that has drawn much of its inspiration and strength from India and the “international community”?
Is Sheikh Hasina’s administration the first western-leaning government in a Muslim-majority nation to fall and are there more to follow?
“With its best friend out of power in Dhaka, India now finds a major crisis in Bangladesh as radicals and fundamentalists are set to take over the country with help from benefactors in Pakistan and China.”
That’s how India’s Firstpost is summing up the last 72 hours of turmoil over the West Bengal border that saw its Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina fleeing the country after her heavy-handed handling of roiling, month-long protests killed 100 people across Bangladesh on Sunday.
Bangladesh’s newly installed, interim president, Nobel Prize winner Professor Mohammed Yunus, the founder of Grameen Bank, has called Hasina’s humiliating flight to India “Bangladesh’s second liberation day”.
Yunus has long been a vocal critic of Hasina’s government and the harsh tactics it became notorious for when dealing with popular protest.
India’s “Christianist” and “Hinduist” media outlets, many of them “twinned” with major US and British news brands, are warning of another rise of “Islamists” in Bangladesh.
Several Hindu temples were occasionally vandalised during chaotic demonstrations – although they were never targeted as part of the protest movement – and India’s media are playing that up Wednesday while warning that “foreign interference” is driving Bangladesh’s change.
They’re pointing fingers at Pakistan and China, conveniently forgetting India and the UK enjoyed unrivalled access to Hasina’s ear throughout her record four sojourns as Bangladesh’s Prime Minister.
Although, there was that one time the UK froze her out after she won elections in 2014 that were boycotted by almost all opposition parties over widespread, state intimidation and Hasina’s arch-rival Khaleda Zia was put under house arrest.
Hasina responded to the UK’s sanctions by turning to China and that quickly brought the British back in line.
But, undoubtedly, Khaleda and her Bangladesh Nationalist Party have enjoyed long-standing ties with Beijing and its resurfacing today is probably also a part of the “Gaza blowback”.
That blowback may well be the decider in the battle for power that has embroiled the two women at the top of Bangladeshi politics since 1991.
Both are heirs of Bangladeshi heroes who were on opposite sides of the divide that has flavoured the stark schizophrenia of the country’s politics since the Seventies.
Bangladeshis are divided between those who favour a secular government and strong ties to the West and those who want an Islamic government for an Islamic country. The increasing antagonism between the Awami League and the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) has only widened this divide and has resulted over the decades in several voter backlashes against incumbent governments as excesses of their competing creeds have exasperated the street.
They spent decades trying to cancel out laws passed by the other, battling over amnesties, ties to China, ties to the UK, job reservations for “veterans” and closer or colder ties to Pakistan.
The latest protests, for instance, were over job quotas , but the acrimony was so deep as the two sides clashed that each new confrontation led to even further hostility and suspicion. The unrelenting cruelty of the police in the end proved Hasina’s undoing.
Hasina inherited Awami League leadership when her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the leader of the battle for independence from Pakistan, was assassinated in 1975. But the coming military dictatorship would freeze it out of power until 1996.
The Awami League has long accused Khaleda’s assassinated husband, General Ziaur Rahman, the then army chief who seized power in a coup in 1977, of being behind the assassination.
Upon taking power, Ziaur Rahman granted amnesty to Mujibur Rahman’s assassins and moreover appointed them to diplomatic positions. He also allowed leaders of Islamic parties like Jamaat-e-Islami (which was invited to Monday’s meeting chaired by the military to discuss the establishment of an interim Bangladeshi government) and the Razakars, who fought alongside the Pakistan army during the “liberation” war, to return to Pakistan.
In addition, he passed an indemnity law granting immunity to those involved in Mujibur Rahman’s assassination. But he would face, on average, an attempted coup every three months until his assassination by mutineering army officers in 1981.
Khaled took over the BNP after his death and enjoyed two terms as prime minister during which relations with India languished and withered. According to India’s Mint News (which is twinned with the Wall Street Journal): “Trained by the Pakistani army, Zia adopted its mindset, favouring military coups and anchoring Bangladesh’s nationalism in Islamic and anti-Indian sentiments, in contrast to the secular ideals championed by Bangabandhu and the Awami League.
“Zia’s successor as President, General Hussein Muhammad Ershad, later amended the Constitution to declare Islam as the state religion of Bangladesh.”
Khaleda used her position to replace the presidential system with a parliamentary form of government led by a prime minister and removed restrictions on foreign investment and made primary education compulsory and free.
She held onto power until 1996, when elections swept the Awami League into power. But she bounced back in 2001 with a second term, which many said was marred by corruption
Mint News puts it thus: “In 2004, a grenade attack targeted a rally addressed by Sheikh Hasina. While Hasina survived, the attack resulted in over 20 deaths and more than 500 injuries. The government led by Khaleda Zia and its Islamic allies were widely blamed for the attack. Years later, Zia’s eldest son was tried in absentia and sentenced to life imprisonment for his role in the attack, though the BNP claimed the charges were fabricated.
“Despite Khaleda Zia’s efforts to curb Islamist radical groups, her second term as prime minister ended in 2006 when an army-backed interim government assumed control amid political turmoil and street violence. The interim government detained both Khaleda and Hasina on charges of corruption and abuse of power for about a year before releasing them in time for the general election in 2008.”
Hasina has ruled since then and she has used that time to press corruption charges against Khaleda, which the BNP has always claimed were fabricated.
The acrimony between the two is reminiscent of the Red-Blue divide in America, where each new administration tries to undo the deeds of the outgoing one. Or, perhaps, it harks back even further to the 1600s when Turkey was afflicted with untimely deaths of the sultans and the competing “Walide Sultanas” Kossem and Safiye roiled the world.
Or, perhaps, Hasina’s government is the first to fall to “Gaza backlash” as the rancour of the Muslim street starts spreading into the corridors of power. Time will tell if more western leaning governments are in the firing line.
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