1 week Ago By Firstpost
It has been nearly four months since Sheikh Hasina, the former Prime Minister of Bangladesh, was forced to leave the country. One would have hoped that the departure of the person blamed for the students’ large-scale protests in the country leading to hundreds of deaths would have calmed things down. It was hoped that installing an interim government under the leadership of Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus would have allowed the country to recover from the days of turmoil and stand on its feet.
After all, before the student agitation, the country was functional, with all its apparatus performing their assigned duties. Unfortunately, that hasn’t happened. The country’s return to normalcy has been painfully slow, with the interim government drowning under a range of contrasting expectations from various segments of people.
And worse still, Yunus, in his desperation to please everybody, hasn’t shown much statesmanship. The immediate beneficiaries of Sheikh Hasina’s departure from the country are the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), its allies such as Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI), and their student organisations. After being sidelined for several years, these groups are now regaining momentum and aspire to return to power soon.
Charges against BNP leadership have been dropped in court, and both the BNP and JeI have met multiple times with Chief Adviser Yunus. If elections were to be held today, the BNP and JeI would likely win. However, the reform agenda that the interim government has adopted poses a significant obstacle for these parties.
Given that reforming the governing structure of Bangladesh can take years to implement, it remains uncertain whether elections will occur anytime soon. Such political precariousness could negatively impact the economy and the overall stability of the country. The interim government is supposed to be a politically neutral entity focused on improving governance and facilitating a smooth transition.
However, this is not the case. While taking a pro-Awami League (AL) stance might be a health risk for the interim government, there are numerous instances where it appears to be actively pursuing an anti-AL agenda. Under the interim government, 11 former AL ministers, a judge, and a former government secretary have been arrested and are facing charges of “enabling massacres” in a special tribunal.
AL ministers and office bearers have even been charged frivolously with isolated civilian deaths during the protests. Chief Adviser Yunus and some of the other advisers seem to be intensifying their animosity towards Sheikh Hasina. In some cases, advisers have been reassigned or had their titles changed for appearing too sympathetic to the AL.
Although part of the interim government’s responsibility is to initiate a healing process, it seems to be opportunistically participating in an anti-AL vendetta to enhance its own legitimacy. The students of various colleges and universities in Dhaka and elsewhere led the successful agitation against the Hasina government. It is the deaths of the students that provided a sense of direction and purpose to the people against the AL government, leading to its collapse.
However, emotive agitators do not always make good leaders. Acts of arson and sabotage can weaken the government, leading to its collapse, but to expect the torchbearers of protests to turn into able administrators could be futile. The Assam Agitation that gave birth to the All Assam Students Union (AASU) and subsequently, the Assam Gana Parishad (AGP) in the 1980s is a case in point.
The AGP turned out to be a thoroughly incompetent and corrupt governing entity. However, Bangladesh appears to be committing a similar mistake. Yunus remains indebted to the students for his newfound political relevance and has made them his support structure.
The interim government has two students as advisers, bringing youthful exuberance as well as immaturity into an entity that is tasked with a serious agenda. The ‘new Bangladesh’ that Yunus and his other advisers have repeatedly spoken about has turned out to be grossly intolerant political machinery, a stark reminder of the days under the BNP government when minorities and political opponents were persecuted and the criminals went scot-free. Yunus, in his media interviews, has sought to play down the attacks on the Hindu minorities, although expressing the need to contain communal violence in the country during closed-door interactions with his colleagues.
There can be differences over the scale of violence against the Hindus in the post-Hasina period, but the fact remains that a large number of Hindus, being considered to be pro-AL, continue to bear the brunt of organised violence by the BNP and Jamaat cadres. Even the media hasn’t been spared. Independent newspapers like Daily Star and Prothom Alo have been targeted with violence and intimidation.
On November 28, the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said the attacks were orchestrated by “radicalised anti-India religious groups”, who accused these two newspapers of being “agents of India and promoting values contrary to Islam”. Lastly, in its pursuit of an anti-India agenda, the interim government seems to have neglected the importance of maintaining a good relationship with India. Yunus’s frequent and inappropriate attacks on Sheikh Hasina and her advisers—blaming India for various problems in the country, including the floods—are contrary to the spirit of good neighbourly relations.
New Delhi has fulfilled its role as a true friend in need by providing asylum to Sheikh Hasina during her precarious exit from Bangladesh. Since then, India has taken several steps to foster positive relations with the interim government and political parties like the BNP. The Indian High Commission continues to issue a significant number of visas to Bangladeshi nationals, and flights between the two countries remain uninterrupted, transporting hundreds of Bangladeshi citizens to Indian cities daily for medical care and other needs.
By failing to rein in the anti-India rhetoric, the interim government may be adopting a short-sighted approach that could damage bilateral relations. Bangladesh is currently undergoing a period of transition. The advisers to the interim government, particularly Muhammad Yunus, have the crucial responsibility of guiding the nation out of the existing chaos and instability.
They need to establish a clear agenda and provide direction for this journey. Prolonging the current state of turmoil is not an option. They owe it to their people to bring about positive change.
To achieve this, they must demonstrate strong leadership and a clear vision for the future. The writer is the Director of Mantraya, a Goa-based research forum and the author of ‘National Security Decision-making in India’. He formerly served as a Deputy Director in the National Security Council Secretariat.
He tweets @BibhuRoutray and can be contacted at [email protected] . Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author.
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