Dialogue across a table?
September 16th, 2008
Now that Begum Khaleda Zia, a former Prime Minister of Bangladesh, is known to be nodded to sit down across a table with Sheikh Hasina, another former Prime Minister of the country, the latter has not as yet indicated anything positive in the matter, people have been making guesses somewhat wildly. Is it at all needed? Is it for any worth of ‘qualitative’ change of political culture in Bangladesh? Or is it only for waste of time and effort? Should the Caretaker Government (CG) venture at all for the task considered by many beyond their arena and scope?
It is appreciable that the CG Adviser Dr Hossain Z. Rahman had his or his CG colleagues’ pious wish in the issue for minimizing perceptional distance between the two most powerful leaders and women in the country. But pious wish hardly work always, particularly, in politics in developing countries having less developed democratic political culture. Zimbabwe looks like an exception but after it had hard toil of the African leaders, South African President Embeke in particular, for months for mutually agreeing to a power sharing deal known to have been signed today, the 15th September. Bangladesh is not certainly Zimbabwe having peculiar stumbling blocks not insignificant in calculus.
The first and foremost, to me, is the way the two came up to the position of leadership of their parties concerned. Sheikh Hasina was saddled to the leadership of the Awami League not only by her other party stalwarts in midst of grave internal crisis but also by initiative of Khaleda’s husband President Ziaur Rahman in early 1981. President Ziaur Rahman himself having had huge sympathy for Hasina being the daughter of Sheikh Mujib went all his way out to bring Hasina to Bangladesh from her self-exile in India then running for about six years. Reasons for General Zia’s seriousness in the matter could be seen both for reconciliation in internal politics as he did in many other issues, for example, repealing of the so-called Collaborators Act that remained controversial since its very inception in early 1972 for compulsive reasons in internal politics and for improving relation with India that went very sour and bitter since the historic toppling of Hasina’s father from the State power in Dhaka in August 1975. The junior Sheikh was brought to Dhaka from India by the government with both high security and honor, quite appreciably having had some sort of understanding that she would head the Awami League reformed for multi-party constitutional mode after the despised BAKSAL, her father had been heading in the latest format just before his fall. Unfortunately, in two weeks time of Hasina’s homecoming, President Zia was assassinated on the 30th May 1981 by some disgruntled army men, alleged to be well connected with the RAW or Indian central intelligence agency, Hasina was believed to be deeply connected for her being under the care and security of the same organization in the South Block of Delhi Secretariat for six years between mid August 1975 to early May 1981. Many people in the know here in Bangladesh tended to believe that she might have covert connection in the matter of assassination of Zia. Her attempt to flee the country on the day of assassination of the General and President Zia but for Security persons intervention she could not flee to India through Bangladesh’s Akhaura border, made people suspect more that she had been involved in the matter. One may recall her statement about Zia’s body exhumed from the Chittagong area (first grave) in most reprehensible term, ‘SHIAL KUTTER DEHO SILO KINA KE JANE’- who knows if the exhumed body was of jackal or dog. Such discourteousness remark might further lay some burden on her for Zia’s killing. The counter coups well known to be engineered by the RAW supported ones that followed the August 1975 coups leading to the victorious revolution that put Zia into power on the 7th November 1975 further provided some proofs that the RAW might have had some active role. These issues can not be unknown to them both that certainly affected their past relations in over two decades, and so their perceptions of each other in mutual dealings as of now.
The other issue that distances them from one another is the crucial question of ideological goal of the country. Hasina’s father Mujib in 1972 set the country on to attain secularism not of liberal one but of the Indian variety aimed to impose on people of all faiths and culture the belief in, what the Indian top intellectual and theoretician Balraj Modhak termed as ‘Indianization’, essentially of the epical and Vedic Indian variety. The post 1975 revolution that General Zia had to lead, though afterwards for only about six years, ditched the Indian brand of secularism not arbitrarily but through constitutional process and instead took to the path of Muslim nationalism for Bangladesh under the nomenclature of Bangladeshi nationalism thus abandoning the Bengali nationalism not only based on lone language but also divorced from value system of the overwhelming majority of the people of the country. There is hardly any meeting point between the two on this score. Neither Hasina has reconciled to the 1975 changes nor can Khaleda afford to abandon the 1975 basic changes in the Constitution of the country. Those who take these distinctly opposite divergences into something personal rivalry between two persons are rather naive.
Still another issue is that both inherit charisma of their dear ones, father and husband. But as distinct from Hasina, Khaleda had fought uncompromisingly to restore democracy all along just as she has been doing despite being in the latest tirade against herself and the family, but Hasina remained as an opportunist and an arrogant for power game in self aggrandizement not only in the past but also in the latest one as possibly many people can clearly see now that as if it is Hasina and Hasina alone and none else has any right to run the country having had misused the cult of the Senior Sheikh, no matter if that is still now acceptable to the overwhelming majority people of the country. Khaleda pursues contrarily, despite some lacuna and human frailties, a lofty ideal for open and free democracy for all people to benefit from that albeit her husband had set the country on to the right path in late 1970s.
One can as such be little optimistic from the past experience about the proposed dialogue that might turn very much into wasteful exercise in terms of time spent for and energy lost to bring the two to sit across the same table for any productive result. What is essentially needed of the CG as the first priority is to hold the parliament election immediately that is long overdue for nearly two years now. Let the people hope and pray that the fairly elected 9th parliament would better strengthen participatory democracy in the country through their benevolence. Let them compete for love of democratic culture of gentlemen and ladies in the next parliament.
Dr. M.T. Hussain
15 September, 2008