To mark his 100 days as the chief of Bangladesh’s interim government, Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus gave a slew of interviews to international media. The hue of all of them were uncannily similar, and hence a little boring—he portrayed the success of his government and talked about the challenges ahead. The institutional reforms would be emphasised and old fetishes, such as micro-finance and social business, highlighted.
The 84-year-old has also been consistent in his opinion when it comes to the return of the Awami League in Bangladesh’s politics. In an interview to Time magazine, Yunus said that the Awami League, led by deposed dictator Sheikh Hasina, will be welcome to participate in the next general election after those responsible for killings and abuses are brought to book. “They are as free as anybody else to participate,” he told the magazine, adding, “We’ll fight them on political grounds.”
However, in a conversation with The Hindu, Yunus said that his government doesn’t want to take any decision regarding the banning of the Awami League as the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) doesn’t want it. “We cannot defy the opinion of a major party of the country,” he said.
That is indeed a crafty move, for the Yunus government is fighting the issue of banning the Awami League on two fronts. On one side of the political spectrum stand the ordinary Bangladeshis, an overwhelming number of whom want the Awami League proscribed for the killings during the July uprising, and on the other are the BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami who want the Awami League to do its business as usual.
The BNP’s stance regarding the Awami League is a curious one. It has been at the receiving end of the Sheikh Hasina-led party’s rule, which was marred by enforced disappearances, crimes against humanity, and rigged elections. Around half of the five million members of the BNP faced politically motivated, trumped up charges.
Yet, after the ouster of Sheikh Hasina following a popular uprising, which caught the BNP’s greying leadership off guard, the party wants to go back to the halcyon days of ‘peaceful coexistence’ with the Awami League.
BNP secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir has even said that calling the Awami League ‘fascist’ undermines democratic practices. His view was echoed by Jamaat-e-Islami Ameer Shafiqur Rahman, who said that he doesn’t want to hear the word ‘fascist’ so many times. He even called the Awami League “members of our family”. Jamaat’s Secretary General Mia Golam Parwar has also categorically said that his party is against the banning of any political party. This is equally befuddling because the Awami League during its 15-year rule has left no stone unturned to wipe the Jamaat out of Bangladesh’s political landscape—top Jamaat leaders were hanged, and its members faced persecution.
BNP-Jamaat’s worst fear
Both the major political parties, the BNP and the Jamaat-e-Islami, are afraid of any new political dispensation that might rise in the aftermath of Hasina’s fall. An overwhelming number of Bangladesh’s population is young, with no allegiance to any political party. According to the UNDP, about 64 per cent of Bangladeshis are under the age of 35, which means, thanks to one rigged election after another, a small number of these young people have been able to exercise their democratic right to vote. They don’t bat an eyelid before trolling ailing BNP chairperson Khaleda Zia for her thin eyebrows either.
The Gen Z and Gen Alpha of Bangladesh live in a post-ideological world where things are situational and political arrangements are based on socio-cultural issues. As evident in the events of July, the BNP and Jamaat do not understand this new language and run the risk of getting ‘cancelled’.
Also, both the parties’ decade-and-a-half-long struggle to oust Hasina is a glaring example of their failure to read the pulse of the masses. The popular support for a new political force without the torn baggage of old politics is high among the youth. And a new political party with fresh leadership has the ability to give the country’s old leaders a run for their money.
The Awami League is virtually banned in Bangladesh and the possibility of the party contesting the next election in full vigour is low. The BNP sees this as an opportunity to defeat a non-existent enemy and win a one-sided election, rather than face a bunch of young leaders who might come up with issues that are alien to Alamgir.
A few BNP leaders’ children are married to Awami Leaguers, and in that sense, the Jamaat chief is not wrong in saying that Awami League is family. But the Jamaat-e-Islami’s fear is much worse than the BNP’s—if the Awami League is tried, as a political party, for the alleged mass murders, the question of Jamaat’s trial for its alleged role and complicity in 1971 will also gain traction. Words such as ‘ban’, ‘trial’, and ‘war crimes’ send shivers to the very marrow of the party leaders’ bones.
In fact, a generational struggle is taking place in both the major parties’ rank and file. The older ones want to pursue the kind of politics that they have always practised, while the young leaders evidently want a new political dispensation. Take BNP leader Ishraque Hossain, for instance. An engineer and son of a freedom fighter, 37-year-old Hossain does not toe the official line of his party. In a latest post on Facebook, he wrote: “…I express my solidarity, in advance, to those who will fight against Awami fascism wherever they are, regardless of party, religion, or political affiliation.”
And he is not alone. A fissure in the Jamaat-e-Islami, the most regimented political party in the country, is evident too, with its young members openly calling the party chief’s speeches a sell-out.
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Can the Awami League return to politics?
By the look of it, the chance of an immediate return of the Awami League in its past form looks slim. This is perhaps one reason why the major political parties do not want to see it banned. The party does not have the organisational ability to successfully hold political programmes across the country.
The biggest impediment to Awami League’s return to politics is Hasina. In an array of ‘leaked’ audio conversations, she issued veiled threats to Bangladesh’s civil administration, asking a member of the Awami League to send her the name and ancestral origin of the police chief of Gopalganj. At one point, she said that “she never forgives.” In another ‘leaked phone call’, she called fellow Bangladeshis “foolish”, adding that she’s not far away—“I am very close to the country so that I can enter anytime quickly.” The 77-year-old sounds delusional and vindictive.
Over the last 15 years, from oligarchs to petty thugs—the party pursued an open door policy for criminals of every shade. This is one of the reasons that Awami League members do not want to risk their life and limb to hold party rallies, as doing such things isn’t worth the hassle.
Then there’s also the issue of a patron-client relationship that plagues Bangladesh’s old politics. The Awami League leadership is unlikely to shore up support for the party’s cause, as most of its grassroots have already looted enough.
What remains is the party’s ideological heartland. And things don’t look good on that front either. Thanks to the overuse of the 1971 narrative, the young people of Bangladesh do not find the cult of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman appealing anymore.
Apologising to Bangladeshis for its past actions can be the first reconciliatory step for the Awami League. The party must also get rid of goons and criminals within. It needs to rebrand itself, and that is going to be a herculean task. The party leadership, at present, doesn’t look keen on these things.
Ahmede Hussain is a Bangladeshi writer and journalist. He is the editor of The New Anthem: The Subcontinent in Its Own Words (Tranquebar Press; Delhi). He has just finished writing his first novel. He tweets @ahmedehussain. Views are personal.
(Edited by Aamaan Alam Khan)