Bangladesh needs corrective programme to deal with crises on crucial fronts

The heinous killings of 22 people at the Holey Artisan bakery in the prestigious diplomatic neighbourhood of Gulshan in Dhaka by terrorists is a testament to an increasing permeation of Islamic extremism in Bangladesh, and the threat to India from its potential associated overspill. The sheer savagery of the attack, peaking at the head of a slew of assassinations of “liberal-minded” writers, bloggers, publishers and others of the minority communities such as Hindus, Buddhists, and Christians in the Muslim-majority country, bespeaks of a proliferating violence, striking at the foundation of the country’s socio-political structure. The threat  from religious fundamentalism hangs over Bangladesh like the proverbial Sword of Damocles.

The offensive by the terrorists is a grim reminder that instruments of governance in Bangladesh need to be more effective. Successful co-ordination among concerned branches of the administrative machinery, necessary for ensuring watertight public security and pre-empting terrorist attacks, appear to be conspicuous by its lapses. Nevertheless, the terrorist attack is also an adverse corollary of the country’s recrimination-filled political process.
Bangladesh is, in some ways, socio-politically split apart, internally, into two broad contending adherences; it is an outcome of inveterate, pernicious political antagonism. The country has two principal political parties: The Awami League (AL) and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). The former, led by Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina Wajed, is currently the country’s ruling dispensation, while its arch-rival, BNP, is spearheaded by former Prime Minister, Begum Khaleda Zia. The two leading political personalities are usually at daggers drawn toward each other. Lack of even elementary cordialities between the two is a hallmark of the country’s politics.

Conspicuously distinct identities have cropped up around the two political parties within Bangladesh. An important determinant of today’s socio-political ordeals can be gauged from the background of the two principal political parties.

The AL, led initially by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, was at the vanguard of Bengali rights and dignity in erstwhile East Pakistan. During the grim, blood-drenched, and ultimately India-assisted war for East Pakistan’s liberation into Bangladesh from the Pakistani yoke in 1971, the freedom fighters or Mukti Bahini fought in the name of the AL’s then unquestioned leader, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.  After the creation of Bangladesh in December, 1971, Sheikh Mujib commenced his rule amid monumental goodwill and expectations. But gradually, his regime came to be discredited through growing allegations of sundry unscrupulousness; resentment grew. Then on 15 August 1975, he and most of his family members were tragically assassinated by some from the country’s armed forces. A survivor was his elder daughter, Sheikh Hasina Wajed; she ultimately took on her father’s political mantle and continues to carry it even today.

General Ziaur Rahman was a Bengali officer in the Pakistani army. During the liberation struggle, he changed loyalties, joined the fight, and heroically seized a radio station in Chittagong for some time to announce, on behalf of Sheikh Mujib, Bangladesh’s independence from Pakistan. In independent Bangladesh, Zia rose to the highest rank in its army. After a brief interregnum of political yeastiness following Mujib’s assassination, General Zia took power in 1976, and later still, shed his military uniform, donned civilian attire, formed the BNP and ruled as President. Despite providing overall stability to the country Zia took a particularly controversial step. He uplifted the ban upon the communal Jamaat-e-Islami. In May, 1981, President Zia was assassinated. The task to lead the BNP fell on the shoulders of his wife, Begum Khaleda Zia.

Parliamentary democracy returned to Bangladesh in 1990; the struggle for achieving it witnessed a rare, fleeting unity between Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia. Nevertheless, the amiability quickly degenerated to growing antagonism and a rupture of even minimum political rapport between the two.

AL and Sheikh Hasina consistently fulminate against the BNP and its leader, Khaleda Zia, guilty for having enlisted certain individuals among their ranks and as allies, culpable for undermining the country’s freedom struggle in 1971. The BNP’s invectives indicate that the AL has scant respect for democratic norms and is a byword for misrule.

Sheikh Hasina has followed democratic norms. Under her, the AL has been elected to power through democratic elections; her party did not violate any fundamental tenets of the country’s constitution to remain in power.

What has churned up underlying socially exploitative substance was her actuating the procedure of systematically bringing to justice and sending to the gallows those who actively connived with Pakistani forces in 1971, allegedly sympathised with her father’s and family’s murderers and subsequently, as allies of dictatorship regimes and then of the BNP dispensation, ruled the country, encouraged religious extremism and persecuted minority communities.

Whatever credible allegations the BNP might have brought against AL’s high-handedness and nepotism by its leaders, its alliance with the communal Jamaat-e-Islami during its rule from 2001 till 2006, was an unpardonable act for the AL. Once in power, it was not surprising that a communal party would begin the spadework to promote its propaganda and create fertile ground for other similarly inclined groups. Several anti-India activities, abetted directly or indirectly by some among the rulers, occurred between 2001 and 2006, notwithstanding any statements to the contrary.

Since Hasina’s return to power in 2008 and her re-election in 2013, the blameworthy have felt the heat of government’s determination to bring into account their alleged misdeeds. The proliferations of extremist activities are an outcome from the rage, apprehension and worry, collectively, of all those in the know that prosecution awaits them. Additionally, rampant corruption, poverty, social and economic backwardness are obvious cannon fodders to this wretched and worrying state of things.

Today, the task ahead for Bangladesh is much more than identifying which particular affiliation the attackers belonged to. A comprehensive corrective programme covering the social, economic, political, and security ambits need to be conceived and begin to be implemented in haste. In this urgent national objective, different political leaders need to close ranks and agree to its importance, cutting across party lines.

It is opined that Sheikh Hasina, despite her bona fides, has a streak of imperiousness in her. The casualties have been good governance and rumblings of occasional intra-party dissatisfactions. She should begin administer requisite correctives without delay. Khaleda Zia would do well to realise before it is too late that ambitions for her party is fine, but to achieve it she need not push the country towards social and religious infighting.

Both leaders need to undertake urgent house-cleaning in their respective arenas. Its collective outcome would strengthen the country’s foundations to defeat the purposes of the merchants of terror and hate. For India, keeping the mechanism for thwarting strikes from extremist groups in Bangladesh or from anywhere else, well oiled, is a paramount objective.

The author analyses International Affairs, World Politics and Global Economic Relations