The tumultuous recent history of Bangladesh can be seen as a cautionary tale of how a revolution is made and often unmade. The neighbouring nation has been in the grip of multiple forces buffeting it in different – often contrary – directions ever since Sheikh Hasina, the former Prime Minister, packed her bags and left on August 5.
The months leading up to her ignominious exit were particularly bloody, with army and police controlled by her government being let loose on protesting students who were agitating against a relatively minor matter of quotas for government jobs.
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The depth of public resentment for her government became evident when months after winning a fourth term as Prime Minister, the protests quickly snowballed into something much larger. It turned into a nation’s collective campaign against corruption, oppression, authoritarianism and indeed, hopelessness.
Hasina, like she had done on multiple occasions earlier, tried to stifle the dissenting voices, using coercion and violence, increasingly depending on the latter. By the time her government and her official residence were swamped by a tide of humanity that threw her out of the country, over 300 had been killed by the security forces.
Unofficial figures suggest the number may be in the thousands. But if hopeful Bangladeshis prayed for a return to normality, they were in for a rude shock. After Nobel Laureate Md Yunus took over as the head of the interim government, Bangladesh, instead of limping back to its feet, has actually slid swiftly downhill.
Yunus’s tenure has been marked by regular attacks on the minority community, with places of religious worship being targeted consistently. According to some reports, since the departure of Sheikh Hasina on August 5, the country has seen over 200 attacks on the minority Hindu community.
Yunus himself has been accused of giving a lot of space to radical Islamists from the Jamaat-e-Islami in the political sphere. Some say that he needs the cooperation of the Jamaat members as they have a strong presence in the rural areas, where Grameen Bank, Yunus’s venture, has a huge footprint. Without help from the Jamaat brigade, Grameen Bank would find it very difficult to run its operations, suggest sources. Yunus himself has given no sign to negate this perception. Notably, he has called the attacks on Hindus “overhyped” and has described the assaults as more political than communal in nature. Anyone with their ear to the ground in Bangladesh knows that the
claim downplays the anarchic state of affairs in the country currently.
Far more serious is what Yunus has said on holding elections and restoring democracy in the country. Bangladesh’s constitution mandates that elections have to be held within 90 days of the dissolution of the government, but there are no signs of that being followed. Yunus has been very cagey about the timeline for elections, only referring to the reforms that need to happen before elections can be held. In one interview, he has mentioned that polls would happen in less than four years, which again should ring alarm bells for democracy-minded citizens in Bangladesh.
In this backdrop, the arrest of the ISKCON leader and monk Chinmoy Prabhu has set a matchstick to the haystack, so to speak. Within Bangladesh, Hindu groups have cited this as a glaring example of the oppression of minorities. The interim government has played down the arrest and has reiterated that the crackdown was due to Prabhu’s activities rather than the community being targeted, but few are ready to buy that answer.
On the other side of the border, in India, this has provided fuel to the right wing saffron brigade, who have anyway turned baiting Bangladeshis into an election season game. The arrest of Prabhu should add more fuel to that fire.
There are already protests across India over this and after 54 monks of the religious order were stopped on Sunday from crossing over into West Bengal across the international border, the anger against the Yunus government is rapidly growing.
Bangladesh shares a common border with India that is over 4,000 km long apart from common historical, cultural and linguistic ties that span millennia. While its precipitous slide into anarchy and chaos may seem like something happening elsewhere, the teetering of the revolution and the upper hand that fundamentalists have taken there are also pointers to how difficult it is to usher in meaning change.
Among all the South Asian nations, India stands as a country that has neither allowed a coup nor a dictator’s takeover to trump democratic politics. It’s all the more important now to listen to the lessons from Bangladesh.
