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Bangladesh has a new government, headed by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus. Sheikh Hasina, the longest serving Prime Minister of the country who had to resign and leave on August 5 amid mass protests, is currently in India, reportedly seeking asylum in a third country. As the new government begins work, violence refuses to recede in the South Asian country of 170 million people. If in the last weeks of the Hasina government, security personnel unleashed violence against student protesters, in the week that followed Ms. Hasina’s resignation, the victims were largely the country’s religious minorities and functionaries of the Awami League, Ms. Hasina’s party. In an acknowledgement of the seriousness of the situation, Mr. Yunus, upon his arrival in Dhaka on August 8 from Paris via Dubai, appealed for calm and urged the students to “save the country from anarchy and chaos.”
According to a Human Rights Watch report, rioters burned down historical structures and targeted members and party offices of the Awami League. Members of the Hindu community, who make up some 8% of Bangladesh’s population, were violently attacked, their homes torched, temples vandalised and shops looted across Bangladesh. Ahmedis, a minority sect in Islam who often face persecution by Sunni extremists, and other ethnic minorities were also targeted, reported the HRW. According to the Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council and the Bangladesh Puja Udjapan Parishad, minority communities in Bangladesh faced 205 incidents of attacks in 52 districts since the fall of the Hasina government on August 5. Some of those whose homes were attacked may be directly involved in Awami League politics, but 98% are ordinary Hindus, Rana Dasgupta, the general secretary of the Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Oikya Parishad, told The Hindu. Over 230 people have been killed in violent incidents since August 5, including two Hindu leaders affiliated with the Awami League, taking the death toll since the anti-government protests began in early July to 560. Hindus also carried out protests in Dhaka on Saturday asking for protection from the government.
The Yunus-led interim government is off to a troubled start. Government offices remained empty through the week, and police personnel were reluctant to report back to work citing security concerns. The absence of law enforcement officials allowed the rioters to continue their vandalism and attacks without any state resistance. Students also remain on the street, demanding an overhaul of the system. On Saturday, they forced the Supreme Court Chief Justice out. They say the judiciary is filled with Awami League loyalists and want the top judges to go. Besides judges, several other key officials, including University Vice Chancellors, also resigned fearing the wrath of protesters. The first challenge before Mr. Yunus is to restore order and bring back normal life. And in the medium to long term, he has to make sure that the country transitions into a democratic government through free and fair elections.
This is going to be an uphill task for the 84-year-old banker, who won the Nobel Prize in 2006 for spearheading a microfinance revolution in Bangladesh. The country has seen dramatic political changes over the past week. Pre-August 5, the military was loyal to Ms. Hasina, and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), the main opposition, was struggling to hold itself together under state repression, while Jamaat-e-Islami, the radical Islamist outfit, was outlawed. This equation has changed. Today, there are three major power centres. The student revolutionaries; the BNP-Jamaat combo and the military.
Mr. Yunus represents the student movement. It was a key demand from the students to appoint him as the interim government chief. And by accepting their proposal, the military, the presidency and the mainstream political parties have all shown signs of reconciliation—which is a pragmatic first step. But Mr. Yunus doesn’t have any political organisation to back him in Bangladesh’s infamously fractious polity. His political ambitions are not new. In 2007, when both Ms. Hasina and BNP leader Khaleza Zia were in jail during a military-backed regime, Mr. Yunus had launched a political party—Nagorik Shakti—and vowed to contest polls. But he dropped the plans within months due to lack of public support. But now he has the backing of the students, who want a cleaner, better system. He will have to depend on the street power of the students or the political organisations of the mainstream parties, if not the direct backing of the military, to push through his agenda of reform and transition.
The BNP-Jamaat combo wants elections at the earliest because they think there is a chance for them to capture power after 15 years of wilderness. Both had a troubled past. The Jamaat had helped the Pakistani military during the liberation war in which hundreds of thousands of Bengalis were killed in East Pakistan (today’s Bangladesh). The Jamaat was also involved in attacks against Bangladesh’s minorities in the past. And the years of the BNP rule, which was founded by Ziaur Rahman, the former military General-turned President, were marked by political violence and vendetta. If the students want a naya Bangladesh, the BNP and Jamaat represent traditional politics. They have beem empowered by the past week’s developments and have demanded immediate elections.
And the third player is the military. As of now, the Generals are staying in the shadows, supporting transition. But Bangladesh’s military also has a notorious, violent past. Reuters had reported that on August 4, the night before Ms. Hasina stepped down, the army chief Gen. Waker-Uz-Zaman told the Prime Minister his troops would not be able to enforce a curfew she had called for. The message was that she did not have the support of the military any more. This had sealed her fate. Ever since, the military has taken a public posture as a supporter of transition. A key challenge before Mr. Yunus, student protesters and political parties is to ensure that the military, which had directly ruled the country in the past, stays in the barracks as Bangladesh treads the path of a tumultuous transition.
The Bangladesh edition
1. The making of the Bangladesh revolt
How students took down an elected government prone to authoritarianism. Rabiul Alam reports from Dhaka on the developments from July 1, when images coming out of the country showed a movement driven by both anger and courage. University representatives are now part of the country’s interim government
2. Analysis: Why Hasina fell
What went wrong for the most powerful Prime Minister Bangladesh had had in a generation? Writes Stanly Johny.
3. Change in Bangladesh, the challenges for India
New Delhi can capitalise on its strong development partnership with Dhaka and work closely with the interim government, the army, and the people, writes T.S. Tirumurti.
4. The leader who lost touch with Bangladesh
Sheikh Hasina presided over the country’s exceptional economic turnaround but paid a heavy price for losing the mass connect that once propelled her to high office, writes Subir Bhaumik.
5. How will Sheikh Hasina’s exit impact India?
What was the state of ties between Delhi and Dhaka during Prime Minister Hasina’s reign? What were the main areas of cooperation between the two countries? How were things different in Begum Khaleda Zia’s term? Has India reached out to the new dispensation? What are the challenges? Explains Suhasini Haidar
