Configurations of political parties in Bangladesh now carry multiple drifts—they are still inchoate after a long hiatus under an authoritarian stretch of fifteen plus years. But the parties got a new lease of life since a populist revolt ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s (Hasina) repressive regime. Now they are optimistic, alive, and thrusting. The expected contestants are mobilizing resources for the future electoral race. Bangladeshis love politics, even though their success in institution-building fell short of expectations on multiple occasions. Historically, parties “formed “with a great ease in colonial and post-colonial Bengal; then bulk of those outfits did not grow for long. Factional and personal rivalries are still so strong in Bengali political culture. Single party domination, personalistic hegemony and the familiar dynastic claims characterized the rise and fall of parties in the past.
Among the squirming parties in post-Hasina Bangladesh, I sense an ideological jolt. The Awami League (AL)-centric secular-liberal nationalism, with Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (Mujib) as the “Jatir Pita” has lost its pitch since the July-August’s tectonic discontent. A fresh sense of patriotism is, however, yet to come out lucidly —it is even short of catchy slogans and rhetoric to attract public attention. Anti-Indian and anti-AL postures are the twins in the new mood in Bangladesh, which, of course, have their challengers—both internal and external. India is important to Bangladesh; on the other side, Bangladesh is too crucial for Indian security in the Northeastern states. So, New Delhi might try to reinstate Hasina or her AL allies back in Bangladesh. Nostalgia for the bygone Hasina regime among her surviving beneficiaries is still a bond amongst the AL leftovers, anxious to return to power by hook or crook. The troubled AL will really have its own existential crisis if a band of its leaders, not directly associated with Hasina’s tyrannical regime, would jettison the old guards—the Mujib family, and recycle themselves as the new-fangled AL. Neither the caretaker regime nor the BNP or Jamaat is ruling out such possibilities. AL gained its historic thrust in 1971, which, of course, went adrift after the 1975 violent coup. Much later, it regained vigorously first since the 1996 election victory and then more solidly after the 2008 electoral triumph. Has the one-time mighty AL lost its previous momentum? Hasina’s prolonged autocracy destroyed a large and established party from within itself. Neither Mujib nor Hasina fully trusted the party though both used the party to climb the ladder of power. Mujib stabbed the party on the back by creating the BKSAL single party system, and Hasina preferred to rule by creating an oligarchy of corrupt businesspeople, crony politicians, sycophants, politicians, politicians, politicized bureaucrats, police, and henchmen.
Will post-Hasina Bangladesh wipe out the Mujib-Hasina brand of politics? In that case, the AL might lose its deceptive Indian patronage. India is the dominant power in the region and the regional actors are careful in dealing with the neighborhood juggernaut. The BNP, now buoyant about its impending return to power, would avoid any direct confrontation with the next-door giant. Even the Jamaat-e-Islami (Jamaat) has sent “soft” messages to India. None of the leaders of those two major parties aggressively demanded AL’s ban. Rumors floated that the AL leadership would change, and it was willing to connect with the BNP for certain areas of common concerns. The BNP wanted legal actions and punishments for Hasina, and her associates for their tyrannical intransigence, and wanton deaths and destruction in July-August 2024. So far, the BNP did not strongly demand for the AL’s ban, but the leaders of the unbridled civil unrest denounced AL as a fascist outfit that did not deserve a slot in a democracy.
A disconnect exists between the majority Bangladeshi parties and the student leaders who steered the furious anti-Hasina crusade—they want a radical change with a “revolutionary” zeal by upending the entire post-1971 political narrative including its historiography and the sense of identity. They condemn the AL’s exclusionary path and its alleged collusion with New Delhi to turn Bangladesh into a “vassal state” of India. The timeworn Bangladeshi consensus, so long defined by the AL-delineated post-1971 Chetona that deified late Sheikh Mujib and sustained Sheikh Hasina’s prolonged tyranny is all but shattered since the July-August revolt. The conventional parties, including the BNP, the Jamaat and the lessor parties, would prefer to return to power soon by a majoritarian party rule or by sharing power by a coalition of like-minded parties. The smaller parties, however, want a proportional representation, which ordinarily gives better power-sharing opportunities to the minor parties. The protest leaders and the smaller parties also want the proportional representation (PR) as a tool to fight against the single party hegemony in Bangladesh. But the larger parties, both the BNP and the AL, are reluctant to give up the existing majority-style voting system. If Bangladesh switches to a proportional representation, the world of political parties will change substantially.
The student leaders of the July-August upheavals opposed the main parties’ dynastic leadership, which turned them against both the ousted AL and the BNP. Both the parties carry the family names at their highest echelon. The simmering encounter between the BNP and the protest leaders was clear recently when the BNP turned down the student leaders’ demand for the Bangladesh president’s immediate resignation. Senior BNP leaders are trying to establish the party’s relevance to post-Hasina Bangladesh politics. BNP’s front runners are active in the media. Out of her contrived jail sentence, Begum Khaleda Zia (Khaleda) is looking for a better health care abroad and Tarek Zia, the BNP’s president-in-charge is more visible on social media. More prospective candidates are lobbying for the BNP tickets in the next election, for which no date came out, so far.
Will the Samannayyakari (coordinating) student leaders float a party, as the rumor goes on? Neither the student campaigners nor Dr. Mohammad Yunus’s cabinet, so far, produced a clear political vision about their future. Spectacular political changes resulted from the student-led protests in the bygone. I remember the massive events that goaded East Pakistan Chief Minister Abu Hossain Sarker’s government to resign in 1956; it was the AL leader Ataur Rahman Khan who headed the succeeding government. Now, the caretaker authority is running the administration until the next election.
There was a time when the digits of “1971” carried the “short-handed” message for clipping Jamaat out of politics, as I read this in the past. Now, Jamaat’s greatest achievement is that the party, as a movement, could survive undercover, when necessary, and still explode as a big blow to its political adversaries. Jamaat’s student front, the Shibir has a place in the student Samannya committee that has worked with Dr. Yunus. BNP has maintained its unity during its trying times. And now, it is the largest party in Bangladesh with bright electoral prospects ahead. No longer, dependent on the BNP’s mercy, Jamaat has moved from the periphery to the center of Bangladesh politics. Islamic politics is not the monopoly of Jamaat, although it is the largest party upholding political Islam in Bangladesh. Few can predict now if Jamaat will go to the poll alone or as a coalition of the Islamic parties. Smaller parties also hope for its share in the Bangladeshi arena of politics. Evolving configuration of the BNP and Jamaat will substantively impact the future Bangladeshi party politics.
What happened earlier this year ripped through the Bangladeshi psyche while people feel empowered by the populist stump that ejected the Hasina rule. That colossal uprising worked like a referendum against Hasina’s unbending authoritarianism and crimes against humanity. But the main discourse of the revolt is yet to appear as a coherent institutional expression. Which of the established parties would embrace the July-August protest’s counter-narrative? The perceived relief is that the AL’s archaic single party ascendency is not on its brutal rampage in Bangladesh now. And the rhetorical temperature against the Jamaat and the old fearmongering about Islamic terrorism have significantly subsided. Bangladeshis, however, still acknowledge that parties are the essential vehicles for the parliamentary democracy that they cherish so much. The lingering polarization, periodic lawlessness, disagreements and discontent over constitutional and institutional reforms and the absence of a roadmap for the next election are creating a chasm between the parties and the interim regime. Fear of internal instability and external interference on different pretexts wrestles a necessary consensus before the return of an elected and stable governance.