By Arun Kumar Shrivastav
General elections are scheduled to be held in January 2024 in Bangladesh. For the incumbent Bangladesh Awami League, the upcoming elections are a high-stake event. The 74-year-old Bangladesh Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, who has been in power since 2009, is the world’s longest-serving woman prime minister. Her long rule is believed to have provided Bangladesh with political stability, which, in turn, ensured economic prosperity. But critics attribute her being in power for these many years to the misuse of official machinery, including armed forces. One of the examples of her high-handedness that her critics point out is the corruption charges against prominent opposition leader and former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, who has been serving an 18-year jail term since 2018.
In a bid to consolidate power in her hands, Hasina is often blamed for having suppressed opposition and critical voices, political killings and forced disappearance included. In her agenda against the opposition, she is believed to have used Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), and the elite paramilitary force was put on the list of sanctioned organizations by the United States in December 2021. The US sanctions brought her regime into focus. Human rights organizations are seeking an investigation into opposition charges of crime against political opponents over the past decade. They have documented political activists who have been killed in extra-judicial executions.
In Bangladesh’s political minefield, it’s not safe to entirely blame Sheikh Hasina. She is said to have survived at least 19 assassination attempts in the last four decades. The tallest opposition leader Khaleda Zia of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, is the widow of Ziaur Rahman, an army officer who served as the Prime Minister of Bangladesh before having been assassinated in 1981. Sheikh Hasina is the daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who is considered the father of the nation of Bangladesh for his role in getting independence for his country. He served as the first president of Bangladesh from 1971 until his assassination in 1975 in a coup. So both political heavyweights in Bangladesh politics have seen conspiracies and coups from close quarters.
With this as a democratic legacy, when Bangladesh is going to general elections in January next year, the concern for free and fair elections is natural. It’s something that everyone will watch very keenly. In geopolitics, Bangladesh has its importance to both India and China. Like in other countries, China has made significant inroads into the country’s economic and political life. But the collapse of the Sri Lankan economy, believed to be due to the Chinese debt trap, has alerted the governments in this region about their friendships with the world’s second-largest economy.
Of late, Bangladesh has been trying to balance its tilt towards China by making some hasty friendship moves to India. But India, which is seeing a surge of Hindutva politics in recent years, is hard to please, with Bangladesh’s less than impressive track record against its minorities. Despite being a Muslim-dominated country, Bangladesh is not an Islamic republic; it’s a secular democracy. But news of vandalizing Hindu temples and forced conversion of Hindu minorities is a recent but growing trend.
Famous exiled Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen recalls when nobody cared to wear Hijab or Burqa in Bangladesh. But this is changing fast, and Islamic fundamentalism is taking root, with instances of Muslims asking Hindu women to wear burqas. It is undoubtedly a disturbing note for the current Indian establishment. Khaleda Zia’s party has been flagging the uncomfortable proximity between Bangladesh and China, stating that it would hurt Bangladesh and India. Reigning in the growing tendency to victimize the minority is a dire necessity for Bangladesh unless it wants to go the Pakistani way. In this context, the US sanctions on the RAB of Bangladesh are something to deal with. If Bangladesh fails to purge its sins of rights violations by bringing the guilty to face justice, it will not be absolved. The world will not simply look away.
The question is whether the current leadership has sufficient political capital left to lead the country to modernity and secularism. Or does the opposition have it?
Over the past few months, opposition gatherings have been surprisingly large despite the government’s crackdown on opposition leaders and political activists. It indicates the wind is not as favourable for Sheikh Hasina and her Awami League as it has been. To turn the winds in her favour, the Sheikh Hasina government has been trying to impress the Indian government to make the US lift the sanctions on its paramilitary forces and their officials. But it will be tough for the Indian government to completely ignore political violence and growing intolerance against Hindu minorities in Bangladesh. (IPA Service)
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