Hasina’s departure leaves Awami League in disarray, Mujib’s legacy in dispute

Sheikh Hasina’s sudden departure from Bangladesh, after resigning from the Prime Ministerial post, has left the historic Awami League party in a state from which it might find fiendishly difficult to recover. It has also left the legacy of her father and founder of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rehman (1920–1975), in a quandary, as his statute was vandalised in Bangladesh by a triumphant crowd.

It would be premature to tell whether it is a product of revulsion against the established narrative of Bangladesh, a Jamaat-inspired assertion of Islamic iconoclasm, or simply a sign of odium for Mujib’s daughter’s governance style.

History has indeed turned a full circle for the Awami League, which in its earlier avatar as East Pakistan Awami Muslim League (established 1949) had battled the misrule of the Muslim League, the fountainhead party of Pakistan, thereby opening up a new political discourse in the Islamic republic. Mujib himself was assassinated, and liberation warriors were sidelined under previous regimes in Bangladesh. How recent developments affect the self-image of Bangladesh remains to be seen.

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Hasina’s departure resembles those of dynastic monarchs who lost power, like King Farouk of Egypt in 1953 and King Constantine II of Greece in 1967. It appears incredulous for a prime minister who won 224 out of 300 seats in the national parliament, Bangladesh’s Jatiya Sangsad, barely eight months earlier. Her father, Mujib ur Rehman, though his popularity had nosedived between 1972 and 1975 in the new republic, savoured his reputation by dying valiantly in an army coup. He had been warned several times by the Indian intelligence agency RAW of an impending military coup, which Mujib chose to disregard to his own peril. Except for his daughters Sheikh Hasina and Sheikh Rehana, who were abroad then, Mujib’s family was wiped out in the coup on August 15, 1975.

On Monday, the Bangladesh Army, instead of staging a coup, facilitated the escape of Sheikh Hasina and Sheikh Rehana from Bangladesh, a country possibly they would not be able to return to in their lifetime.

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An army coup would actually have sullied the reputation of the organisation when there was already popular unrest for democratisation. The leaders of the student movement have clarified they are not in favour of an army-supported government or President’s rule under emergency provisions. Aiding Shiekh Hasina’s exit, followed by forming an interim government, in order to prepare the nation for a free, fair, and participatory election appeared to be the most honourable course for the Army.

A students’ movement toppling the regime is not without precedent in Bangladesh. In fact, the events were eerily similar during the collapse of the dictatorial rule of General H.M. Ershad (Retd), who handed over power to the then Chief Justice of Bangladesh’s Supreme Court, viz. Justice Salauddin Ahmed, on December 5, 1990.

Previously, the Jatiyatabadi Chhattra Dal (JCD), the student union of BNP, had convened a meeting of elected student leaders from all over Bangladesh’s colleges. As a result—informs Talukdar Maniruzzaman in an essay Bangladesh: Fall of the Military Dictator in Pacific Affairs (Summer, 1992)—2731 student leaders affiliated with the JCD met in Dhaka on October 1, 1990, to demand Ershad’s resignation. They called for a free and fair election in Bangladesh under a caretaker government.

Until this point, two main opposition parties of Bangladesh, viz., the Awami League led by Sheikh Hasina and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) led by Begum Khaleda Zia, disagreed sharply on the ways and means to dislodge Ershad. While Khaleda Zia wanted a unified movement by all opposition parties (including the Awami League) to oust Ershad, Sheikh Hasina wanted the movement to be organised by the Awami League under her sole leadership. She should face the opposition bloc to seize power from Ershad in the proposed elections.

The students’ movement actually brought Sheikh Hasina onto a common platform for the restoration of democracy in Bangladesh. On October 10, 1990, there was firing upon a demonstration against the Ershad government, in which several persons lost their lives. On October 12, several leaders of the JCD-led Dhaka University Central Students Union (DUCSU) sustained injuries while protesting against those deaths in police firing.

Thereupon, all 22 student organisations, including Bangladesh Chhatra League, the student wing of Awami League, spontaneously formed All Party Students’ Unity (APSU), which held meetings and marches almost on a daily basis. This forced the political parties, including the Awami League and its allies, to come together and issue a joint statement on November 19.

There were two other incidents that hastened the downfall of Ershad. The first was the gunning down of Dr. Shamsul Alam Milon, Assistant Secretary, Bangladesh Medical Association, inside the Dhaka University Campus on November 27, 1990. The Ershad government, in a panic, imposed a national emergency and curfew to clamp down the protests against this killing. The result, however, was exactly the opposite. People came out in numbers, defying the curfew. Newspapers stopped printing their daily issues, and intellectuals cutting across ideological lines, civil servants, and businessmen joined the stir against the Ershad government.

While the situation was ripe for dislodging President Ershad, it was finally the Bangladesh Army, which General Ershad had once headed, that knocked the bottom out of the barrel. As President Ershad’s pliable Army Chief General Atiqur Rehman retired, the senior officers of the Army, led by the new Chief Lieutenant General Noor Uddin Khan, categorically told General Ershad on December 4, that it would no longer be possible for the Army to support his regime.

The following day, President Ershad’s resignation was on the table of Justice Sahabuddhin Ahmed. The President had made one last ditch effort to impose a new martial law regime, but General Noor Uddin, by absenting himself from the meeting convened at the Ershad’s residence in Dhaka Cantonment, ensured the idea was stillborn.

However, to the credit of Ershad, he did not flee Bangladesh at the end of his eight years’ long dictatorship. He chose to stand there, almost sure that he would be prosecuted. He was sentenced to jail on corruption charges, though the damage he did to Bangladesh was far greater. He nursed the tree of Islamism to blossom, whose sapling his predecessor and mentor General Zia-ur-Rehman had planted in the garden of Bangladesh’s politics. Ershad officially turned Bangladesh into an Islamic republic in 1988.

It might appear we are comparing mangoes with jackfruits (Bangladeshi version of apples with oranges) by comparing a dictator with a democrat. A closer look will reveal that Sheikh Hasina had the streak of autocracy in her, which led to her downfall in a manner more shameful than Ershad’s. She saw herself as a legatee of her father but invested too little in the future of the Awami League. She did not think it important, even as a gesture of courtesy, to inform her party leaders, whom she was leaving politically orphaned before deserting them. Her government turned the students into enemies when there was no such need.

Till the last moment, she insisted, security forces should deal with the protest with a heavy hand when it was becoming impractical to do so. At some level, people were fed up with her one-party rule syndrome and made common cause with forces they might not otherwise have.

India might have sadly lost a genuine friend. However, it was only a matter of time that India would have lost her anyway. She is 76, and this could well have been her last term. And she seems to be acting on the principle, like French Emperor Louis XIV, après moi, le deluge (after me, the flood). She was only taken by the floods before the expected time of high tide in Padma. Her ouster will definitely bring to power the elements, which are critical of cultural syncretism and unfavourably disposed towards India. It transpires that Hindus of Bangladesh are under fire, and Subhendu Adhikari, the leader of the opposition in West Bengal, is speaking of ten million Hindu refugees from Bangladesh. If only a tenth of that comes true, it will lead to a major imbalance in the Indo-Bangladesh relationship, which is not good for our eastern neighbour.

The writer is the author of the book ‘The Microphone Men: How Orators Created a Modern India’ (2019) and an independent researcher based in New Delhi. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.