Maroc - EURASIAREVIEW.COM - A la une - 24/Dec 23:26

Bangladesh After Hasina: An Ideological Rebranding? – OpEd

Since Bangladesh’s interim regime removed the portraits of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (Mujib, Bangabandhu/father of the nation) from the Bangladesh president’s office, Dr. Mohammad Yunus faced one question across the spectrum: Did such incidents feature a historic rebranding of the Awami League (AL)-sponsored and Mujib-focused Bengali national identity fostered since the country’s 1971 independence? We are yet to fully grasp the diverse actors and the ideological proclivities behind the July-August uprising that ejected Hasina out of power and the volatile political calculus that has emerged since then. When the furious mobs rampaged Hasina’s residence, Mujib’s statues in public places, his old house and their pictures in government offices, the protesters’ footprints were no longer hard to discern. And then the campaigners rolled against the centuries-old Sufi shrines in Dhaka and other such places—the enraged mob cursed the shrinegoers as Islam forbids “grave-worshipping.”   Much to the liberal dismay, those events stretched as an extraordinary political comeback of the Jamaat-e-Islami (Jamaat), Chatra Shibir (Shibir), its student wing and their allies ---somewhat reminiscent of the Islamic parties’ regrouping after the BKSAL’s single party dictatorship violently ended on August 15, 1975. Jamaat, of course, has a record of coming alive after lying low under pressure except that its recent ubiquity seems more convincing now than its past encounters. But in 2024, the so-called rightwing parties filled the void caused by the rising distrust and unpopularity of liberal/secular parties and their leaders. With their allies, Jamaat leaders are more determined to restore their political legitimacy severed by Hasina’s sledgehammer administration. The July-August revolt upheld the rightwing Islamist parties’ survival as a movement under unprecedented coercion. It is that resilience which will define those parties’ future role and survival in Bangladesh.  Mostly aimed at the decapitation of the Islamist parties and their cohorts, the intolerant waves of the post-1971 revenges rained down like a xenophobic nationalism dividing Bangladesh between “us” against “them!” The 1971 specter still preoccupies Bangladesh in 2024! In post-Hasina Bangladesh, the non-secular Muslim groups and their leaders dared the dripping contempt of their liberal antagonists. Jamaat’s return to mainstream politics in post-Hasina Bangladesh implied a de facto acquiescence to the ascending Islamic parties although they are yet to prove their legitimacy through their electoral gains. The Islamic parties’ diplomatic outreach augmented in Dhaka since Hasina’s downfall. A delegation of Jamaat and the Islamic parties recently received an invitation to visit China. The major parties (except AL and its allies) pledged for national unity is the country’s new imperative. During the rise and fall of parties in the country’s power void, the Islamist parties have quietly attracted diplomatic attention. AL, an institutional inheritance from East Pakistan, carried the center-left party label. Under Hasina, however, AL became an intolerant political apparatus desperate to win an election with or without a partnership, and, when convenient, through widespread civil rights violation, and by rampant vote rigging too. Major Bangladeshi parties assembled around their respective charismatic leaders since 1971, not so much around a firm ideology or on steady institutional foundation. Pakistan’s “two-nation theory” had a Muslim gist, but the 1956 constitution did not create a dogmatic Islamic state. As a contrast, India, with a secular constitution became a virtual Hindu Raj under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s BJP rule. Hasina’s ideological ambivalence searched for a “Secularism Lite” to bring her party back to power. And it was not the party’s exclusionary secularism that eventually brought AL back to power after a 22-year hiatus in 1997. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), a believer in Bangladesh nationalism (a blend of Muslim identity and Bengali nationalism) is also a nationalist and a not-so-ideological party that wants to win election with or without coalitions.  Neither AL nor BNP had an ideological sweep in the parliamentary elections from 1991 to 2008. With 30.8 votes in 1991, the BNP leader Begum Khaleda Zia (Khaleda) forged a coalition government with like-minded groups, Jamaat backing and independents. Later, the party had a mixed performance with 33.5 (1996), 42.7% (2001) and 32.74 (2008) of votes in three respective voting. But the BNP’s alliance with Jamaat caused the AL allegation that Khaleda’s rule carried the “right-wing, violent and anti-patriotic” partners. More earnestly, the AL and BNP fought over who first declared Bangladesh independence on 25th March 1971—Mujib or Ziaur Rahman, then a young Major in Pakistan army. Was it an ideological struggle? Faced with Indian disapproval of the post-Hasina interim regime, Bangladeshis feared that New Delhi was a threat to their national sovereignty. Whether a party is pro-Indian is more worrying to Bangladeshis than the outfit’s right or leftwing inclinations.  Jamaat got 12.1% of the popular votes in 1991---it was the party’s highest voting accomplishment in the first four parliamentary elections since 1991. And then it received 8.61% (1996), 4.62% (2001) and 4.55 (2008) votes in three elections. One of the reasons for the less popular votes for Jamaat was its hesitation to seriously contest for three hundred legislative seats. The Islamic Oikya Jote (IOJ), allied with the BNP got only 0.79% votes and one seat in 1991. And in 1996, the IOJ received 1.09 % votes and won one elected seat; later in 2001—the IOJ got less than 1% votes but won two legislative seats when they allied with BNP. Those voting figures did not signify any predominance of the Islamist parties, but the secular liberal establishments and the international media raised an alarm about Islamic orthodoxy seizing Bangladesh.  Except for a limited electoral participation in “safe” constituencies with AL blessings, the leftist parties have not shown any upper hand. Social media reported their presence in the July-August protests. BNP also claimed that hundreds if its cohorts died, jailed, or injured in the July-August-Street roil. But the Islamist groups’ proven street power in the summer of 2024 surged their political standing in Bangladesh. On its own, Jamaat was a movement-leaning party with its cadre and the known Islamic creed while it is also keen on election as touched earlier in this essay. In 2001, Jamaat, the largest Islamist party, got 4.7 percent popular votes with seventeen seats when it joined the BNP-led coalition government. That was, of course, the dawn of intense rivalry between AL and its allies, on the one hand, and the BNP and the Jamaat on the other. Was it an ideological confrontation or a power struggle, a routine issue between parties? The July-August protests stood for a populist wave ---not a clear ideological surge. More importantly, Bangladesh now fits into a post-secular trend where secular liberalism suffers from misgiving as a cover for authoritarian and dynastic rule backed by India as recently revealed by Hasina’s long and repressive tenure.  Both in pre-partition Bengal and in East Pakistan, assorted and personalistic coalitions rose and fell—they were not landmark ideological turmoil. James J. Novak, a visiting writer once observed in his book Bangladesh: Reflections on the Water, 1993 (Indiana University Press), that Bangladeshis had a “split-level” psyche—partly because of their multi-layered cultural and religious traditions. It is also a Sufi ritual to adapt to diverse elements. Secular liberalism was never the unchallenged political ideology in Bangladesh, and socialism was not the “frenzied obsession” except as an urban elite preference. Even when the secular Bengali nationalists held their sway in the earlier post-1971 years, the bulk of the Bangladeshi civil society clasped its Muslimness in private life as well as in public display. The revival of political Islam by the Jamaat and its allies and the widely felt rejuvenation of Muslim sensibilities in Bangladesh are, however, not identical. Overwhelming Muslim identity, not a strictly defined ideology or a storm of zealotry, has, of course, its political credence and a national security weight, which are hard to jettison in Bangladesh now.  M. Rashiduzzaman, a retired academic in the United States, writes on Bangladesh politics and history. Parts of this essay come from his forthcoming book:Parties and Politics in East Pakistan 1947-71: The Political Inheritances of Bangladesh, Peter Lang. 2024.