Take care, Mr Caretaker

Between corrupt dynastic democracy and a caretaker regime eating from the hands of the army, twice-born Bangladesh is trapped in a delicate crossroad of nationhood

Pranay Sharma Delhi

For a generation that re-defined 'nationhood' twice in the last six decades, contemporary history is bound to play an important role. For those in Bangladesh who have lived through the experiences of both 1947 and 1971, it could also become a highly contentious and contested subject. It gets even tougher when a post-independence generation gets involved in the debate. But few subjects are as controversial and politically emotive as the one that tries to define the role Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and General Zia-ur-Rahman played in Bangladesh's freedom struggle.

Mujibur Rahman, the first prime minister of Bangladesh, was assassinated with most of his family members in 1975 by a group of middle-ranking officials of the Bangladesh army. Six years later, another group of army officials gunned down Zia when he was the country's president.

Sheikh Hasina was out of the country at the time of Mujib's assassination. She returned home soon after to inherit the mantle of her father's party, the Awami League. Zia's widow, Begum Khaleda, took the reins of her husband's political outfit, the Bangladesh National Party, after his death. Both have since remained the supreme leaders of their respective parties.

For many years Hasina and Khaleda have been fighting over the place of honour that Sheikh Mujib and Zia deserve in the pantheon of Bangladesh's freedom struggle. The Awami League leader and her supporters place Mujib much above Zia in the pecking order of the freedom fighters in Bangladesh. Though this view is widely accepted by a large number of people in India and other parts of the world, Khaleda and the BNP have always contested it.

Mujib has always been referred to as 'Banga Bandhu' or 'friend of Bengal' and enjoyed a status akin to the 'Father of the Nation'. Khaleda and her BNP supporters have failed to get an equally honorific title for Zia. The closest they have come to was in identifying him as the 'proclaimer' of independent Bangladesh even before the new nation was formally born. But the BNP has made up for it by giving Zia the primary position in Bangladesh's history. Every time Khaleda has come to power, she has changed school textbooks to ensure Zia continues to enjoy the primary position in the country's freedom struggle.

Sheikh Hasina and the Awami League have diligently altered the text by placing Mujib much above Zia and all the others, when they have come to power in Dhaka. To spite the BNP, Hasina and her followers have maintained that it was not Zia, but a regional leader, who, on Mujib's order, had proclaimed the birth of Bangladesh.

It is an irony that the army-backed caretaker government is today trying to bring about a change in the school textbooks to give both Mujib and Zia their rightful place in Bangladesh's history. According to the latest official version, Mujib would be read in school texts as 'Father of the Nation' and Zia as the one who proclaimed the birth of Bangladesh.