In the fifty-four-plus years of Bangladesh’s existence as a sovereign state, many have been the times when constitutional government was overthrown through conspiracy shaped at home and abroad.
The violence with which the government of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was overthrown on August 15, 1975 — and Bangabandhu was President at the time, with Parliament at work under the Constitution — was the first instance of the long years of illegitimacy the country would go through.
Have conditions changed at all? If Khondokar Moshtaq, Bangabandhu’s longtime political associate and minister for commerce in his government, successfully had renegade junior officers of the army carry out the coup in 1975, an almost similar situation occurred in August 2024 when the constitutional government headed by Sheikh Hasina was overthrown in what has questionably been given out as a student-led uprising.
In effect, both Moshtaq and Muhammad Yunus ascended to power on the strength of illegitimacy, indeed through a patent violation of the Constitution.
Moshtaq’s coup was a brazen demonstration of firepower directed at the foundational principles of the state.
In Yunus’ case, it was a meticulous design which dislodged the Hasina government and inaugurated a regime change which undermined the legal basis of political governance in Bangladesh.
And yet to suggest that only Moshtaq and Yunus rose to power through a violation of the Constitution would be missing the point. The reason is obvious.
There have been two military regimes between 1975 and 1990, which remain embarrassing symbols of a blatant resort to conspiracy to undercut the democratic principles on which Bangladesh was founded in 1971.
The story of intrigue and conspiracy goes back to the times when Bangladesh was part of Pakistan between 1947 and 1971.
It all began with General Ayub Khan. Having engineered, with President Iskandar Mirza, a coup d’etat in Pakistan in October 1958, he made sure that the country’s first general elections, scheduled for early 1959, were not held.
With the Constitution, adopted in 1956, abrogated, the military regime framed its own constitution in 1962. Nowhere were the people of Pakistan in the picture, for Ayub Khan introduced the peculiarity known as Basic Democracy.
Driven by a desire to don civilian clothes, even as the army remained his base, he had the Pakistan Muslim League break up into two factions, council and convention, before commandeering the latter and pretending to govern through it.
That was the beginning of martial democracy, if one may apply the term, in Pakistan. It was to be replicated in Bangladesh, a state that was a clear and decisive revolt against militaristic Pakistan and that began its journey as a model democratic nation-state.
By mid-1975, however, it was for Bengalis a return to Pakistan-style politics, per courtesy of soldiers who seized the state and solidified their grip on it in that year of grief. General Ziaur Rahman decided to take a leaf out of Ayub Khan’s book by giving shape to the Bangladesh Nationalist Party.
While Ayub sliced off one half of an already existing political party, Zia improved on his method. He cobbled his own party into shape. But like Ayub Khan, who had politicians making a beeline for the Convention Muslim League, Zia had politicians from the left, centre and right in Bangladesh cheerfully join the BNP.
It did not matter to these politicians, many of whom had taken part in the War of Liberation that Zia’s party had commenced its journey through striking at the fundamentals of the Bengali state.
It did not occur to them that the BNP emerged in the cantonment through an exercise of dictatorial fiat, that it was a rejection of the idea of Bangladesh, which had underpinned the state between the mid-1960s and early 1970s.
The Zia illegitimacy drove a dagger into secular democratic politics in Bangladesh through its patronisation of the assassins of August-November 1975 and then through its unabashed indulgence of the very elements who had collaborated with the occupation Pakistan army in 1971.
Through his political party Zia consolidated the militarisation of politics in the country, a trend that hearkened back to the Ayub era.
Where the Ayub intervention in politics was to leave Pakistan in a straitjacket for decades, with three more military rulers to follow in his footsteps, the Zia period was one which fuelled inordinate ambition in men like General Hussein Muhammad Ershad.
The country’s second military ruler would not wait long to seize power. Ten months into Zia’s assassination, Ershad seized the state in March 1982. That was the beginning of a new phase in political decline in Bangladesh.
Ershad permitted the assassins of Bangabandhu to form a political party in clear defiance of morality and political decency.
Where the Zia regime knifed the principle of secularism out of the Constitution, the Ershad dispensation went for a wholesale imposition of majoritarian faith as the religion of the state on the country.
And, of course, in line with the military politics of Ayub and Zia, Ershad drew into his party civilians who had never had any qualms about demonstrating political betrayal. They made their way to his door to be welcomed into his Jatiya Party.
The legacy of Ziaur Rahman and Hussein Muhammad Ershad, symbolised by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and the Jatiya Party, was a potent hurdle to a restoration of secular democracy in Bangladesh.
Together, these two parties have fanned the flames of political trends inimical to the concept of Bangladesh.
In their separate but identical ways, the two parties have struck at grassroots politics (something which has sadly continued in traditional parties) by making it possible for retired soldiers, superannuated civil servants and businessmen to crowd out professional politicians from the scene and dominate it.
Carpetbaggers have down the decades genuflected before Ayub, Zia and Ershad, have strengthened these dictators’ hold on power and have humiliated themselves in a variety of ways.
The legacy of dictatorial rule in Bangladesh has been a long tale of grief for the country. In their separate but similar ways, Zia and Ershad left democratic politics badly wounded, a condition worsened by the darkness descending on the country in August 2024.
Zia’s followers have never considered the need to reshape their politics and go back to the principles which served as the fundamentals of the War of Liberation. Neither have they expressed any remorse for the series of assassinations, beginning with August 1975 and continuing till 1981, which left the country bloodied. And Ershad’s fans have had no regret for the regressive politics pursued by their leader.
Notice, though, that much like Ayub Khan’s civilian foot soldiers who swiftly deserted the Convention Muslim League after the general’s fall from power, many among the politicians who were on the Zia-Ershad bandwagon simply lost their way after May 1981 and December 1990. But that is hardly any consolation for the nation.
The legacy of the Zia-Ershad period continues to stymie the struggle for a full restoration of democracy in Bangladesh.
The struggle for democracy has been renewed. With political upstarts and neophytes and anti-liberation elements seizing the state fourteen months ago and launching a vicious assault on Bangladesh’s history and cultural legacy through the overthrow of the Sheikh Hasina government, the struggle against the denial of history assumes a new phase.
It is an uphill task Bangladesh’s people are confronted with today. It is an existential struggle they cannot afford to lose. It becomes important, given the dangers which constitutional rule has been pushed into yet again, for popular sentiments to grow and be deepened and loudly voiced in favour of a wholesale return to the four fundamental principles of the state, as fashioned in the War of Liberation and enshrined in the Constitution adopted in 1972.
The point is obvious, without ambiguity: the People’s Republic of Bangladesh will need to be restored; the repression which has gone on since August 2024 will have to be checked through People Power; and those guilty of striking at the nation’s history will need to be brought to justice.
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With questions of a safe exit arising of late for those who hold on to power without constitutional sanction, the nation and especially the secular political leadership must be vigilant in ensuring that those who have been subjecting Bangladesh to gross abuse answer for their crimes and their sins before the nation.
Bangladesh needs to have its dignity, its self-esteem before its people and before the world restored — swiftly, purposefully and decisively.
