The long journey from Joi Bangla to Zia’s Bangla

Kuldip Nayar

Even if history repeats itself, it is nowhere so true as in Bangladesh. One of the two women, Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina Wajed, alternately come to head the country and indulge in the same rhetoric, make the same promises and weave the same dreams. This time it is Khaleda Zia’s turn. Her Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) has won a majority in the 300-member House. When in power, Sheikh Hasina had appealed to Begum Khaleda to return to the Jatiya Sangsad (Parliament) which the latter had boycotted. Now Begum Khaleda, the Prime Minister, has requested Sheikh Hasina to join the new Parliament. “We can resolve problems through discussions,” she said. More or less, Sheikh Hasina had used the same words while she pleaded for co-operation.

In her response, Sheikh Hasina has gone a step further. She has even refused to take oath, along with Awami League’s 63 elected members. Begum Khaleda had at least joined Parliament, although she had stayed away from it. On her part, Sheikh Hasina wants fresh elections, a demand which the Election Commission has rejected.

Indeed, people have made their choice. The verdict in favour of Khaleda Zia is so massive that it is churlish to deny it. Some rigging may have been there. This time the violence—200 people were killed during the campaign— may also have influenced the outcome to some extent. Still, there is no doubting Begum Khaleda’s majority. It is apparent what gave her the advantage was Sheikh Hasina’s non-performance, the incumbency factor. Even the whipping boy, India, was mentioned very little during the electioneering. Begum Khaleda played the religious card and sustained the posture when she recited a verse from the Koran when she took oath of office. Her equivocal stand on the Taliban too paid her dividends in the election. But her poll alliance with the Jamiat-i-Islami made it clear that she wanted to look more Islamic than her opponent in a country which is predominantly Muslim. She may change the Constitution to facilitate the introduction of Islamic Shariat as the basis for legislation.

It will, however, be a tragedy if Bangladesh goes that way. Despite being a Muslim majority state, it is a pluralistic society with one million Hindus. Even culturally the society is open and liberal because of the composite nature of the Bengali language as well as the society. Begum Khaleda may still tilt towards fundamentalism to placate the extremists on her side. But she would be sowing the same kind of seeds which Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto did when he came to power in Pakistan in 1972. He had declared the Ahmedias non-Muslims. The seed bore fruit in the shape of nettle, the Taliban. An anti-Hindu campaign has already started in Bangladesh.

During my visit to Bangladesh some eight months ago I could see fundamentalism gaining ground. Mosques and madrassas were coming up at every conceivable place. Fanaticism had claimed the lives of three communists a few days before. The intelligentsia is aware of the danger. Still, they feel helpless. The question they ask themselves is whether there is a way out of the situation. The answer lies in injecting a bigger dose of liberalism into the body politic. This means Begum Khaleda must join issue with the fundamentalists. Can she do it when she has cobbled together a coalition with their help? With the avowed hostility of the Opposition, her options are few.

Still, this is the time for Begum Khaleda to establish her credentials. She has assured the minority communities to perform their religious rites without fear. The Hindus fear the blandishment of her ally, the Jamiat. There is little difference between terrorists and fundamentalists. She should know that one thing which went against the Awami League was the charge of harbouring terrorists.

Begum Khaleda also needs to erase her anti-India image. She has been guarded in her speeches and wants to improve relations with India. When I met her in Dhaka early this year she argued with me that her pronouncements were misunderstood by New Delhi. “Let me come to power. I shall prove that I have no hostility against your country,” she told me. One BNP leader present at the meeting said that rhetoric should not be confused with policy.

That may be true. But her reservations on the Ganga water treaty and the Chittagong Hill Tract accord—the two outstanding things to Sheikh Hasina’s credit—indicate that she has a vested interest in maintaining support in the anti-India segment of the population. For example, New Delhi wants access to its north-eastern states through Bangladesh. Begum Khaleda may not readily agree to that. On the other hand, she may be more amenable than Sheikh Hasina and agree to sell natural gas to India. The BNP leadership has reportedly said that it would favourably think about selling gas.

New Delhi is a bit disappointed over Sheikh Hasina’s defeat because she was seen as piloting Bangladesh to a liberal and accommodative course. Her uncompromising stand against fundamentalists had won her appreciation in India. Of course, her plus point is that she is the daughter of Sheikh Mujib-ur-Rahman, father of the nation, who fostered close relations with India.

Times have changed. New Delhi has to change its policy of likes and dislikes. It must let the BNP feel that India wants to have as firm relations with the party as it had with the Awami League. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee has done well to invite Begum Khaleda to India. Economic ties should have precedence. We helped Bangladesh liberate itself. Subsequently, we washed our hands of the country lest we looked too friendly. How was Bangladesh, with a basketful of troubles, supposed to come up? Soon after its birth, there was a joint high-powered committee to draft plans for it which would dovetail into India’s development programmes. Nothing came of it because the Pakistan-trained bureaucracy at Dhaka and the mindset at Delhi did not allow anything to germinate even on favourable ground soon after the end of Islamabad’s rule.

There is no doubt that the liberals in Bangladesh would have preferred Sheikh Hasina to Khaleda Zia because they fear that the old atmosphere of anti-liberation and communalism may revisit them. “I want one more term,” Sheikh Hasina once told me. “Then I will be sure that liberal democracy in my country is on a firm footing.” What she probably meant, among other things, was that the sentence against the killers of Mujib would have been carried out by that time because their final appeals were still pending before the courts. For some reasons, it was taken for granted that they would be released if the BNP came to power. If this happens, the complicity of Khaleda Zia’s supporters in the bloody events of those days will stand proved. Sheikh Hasina’s hostility to Khaleda Zia is understandable but not to her policy. One does not have to remind her of the unilateral promise she made, when in power, that her party in the Opposition would not resort to strikes, bandhs or boycotts because such things had an adverse effects on Bangladesh. She must live up to her promise. Otherwise, she would be blamed for not letting the government go on with its business.

Sometimes I fear that history may say that the travails of Bangladesh were because of the hostility between the two women who, in the process of destroying each other, nearly destroyed their
country.