Sheikh Hasina – Brave daughter of a Brave Father and why India 'needed her' !!

 

Sheikh Hasina – Brave daughter of a Brave Father and why India needed her

Sheikh Hasina won't return to Bangladesh politics: son Sajeeb Wazed Joy

The agony and irony associated with the birth of Bangladesh in 1971 in more ways than one surpassed these elements of 1947 when Indian sub-continent broke up amid bloodshed and Pakistan came into being. Who would have imagined such ruination – physical and moral – that could lead to prove once again that religion and merely taking the name of Islam and Holy Quran alone cannot keep two entities as one?

West Pakistanis were different from Bengalis and thus Pakistan splintered and Bangladesh came into being in 1971.

In this region thus 1971 and the birth of Bangladesh had a more significant impact than any other comparable historical dates and in that too the fallout was wide range. India inherited a perennial problem and the “Bangladeshi immigration” became a political ploy in northeastern state of Assam – with all elements in the saga – namely violence, insurgency and bloodshed.

From ousting a military dictator to fleeing Bangladesh — Sheikh Hasina’s 15 years in power

Her 15 consecutive years in power are marked by an economic rebirth but also by opponents' mass arrests.   

The allegedly 'autocratic Hasina', 76, won a fifth term as prime minister in January but the opposition boycotted a vote it said was neither free nor fair.

Critics accused her government of a litany of rights abuses, including the murder of opposition activists.

The daughter of a revolutionary who led Bangladesh to independence, Hasina presided over breakneck economic growth in a country once written off by US statesman Henry Kissinger as an irredeemable “basket case”.

She promised last year to turn all of Bangladesh into a “prosperous and developed country” but around 18 million young Bangladeshis are out of work, according to government figures.

Hasina was 27 and travelling abroad when renegade military officers murdered her father, prime minister Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and her mother and three brothers in a 1975 coup. She returned six years later to take the reins of her father’s Awami League party, beginning a decade-long struggle that included lengthy stretches of house arrest.

Hasina joined forces with Khaleda Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) to help oust military dictator Hussain Muhammad Ershad in 1990. But they soon fell out and their ensuing rivalry dominated modern Bangladeshi politics.

Hasina first served as prime minister in 1996 but lost to Zia five years later. The pair were imprisoned on corruption charges in 2007 after a coup by a military-backed government. The charges were dropped and they contested an election the following year that Hasina won in a landslide. She had been in power ever since.

A mural of Bangladeshi ex-Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is seen vandalised by protesters (Reuters/Dawn) 

July 2016 - Terrorism struck Dhaka and Sheikh Hasina reacted strongly with a firm hand: 

“Yeh kaun musalman… "What kind of Muslims are these,” she said in her first reactions to the Friday night (July - 2016) holocaust.

Her message should actually rekindle hopes in the entire South East Asia because by July 1 night – a pall of gloom had descended in the entire region including in northeastern states of India. Because - all these places are in their own way are hubs or melting pots of myriad of socio-religious cultures and pluralism and hence cannot simply accept the idea of Wahabism and Talibanism.

Any authoritarian attempt in these cities and villages with the tool of violence can only result in more bloodshed and almost civilwar kind of situations.

One is aware of the fact that from administrative point of view however the Hasina regime in Dhaka needs to act more and rather quickly to show results against the steady rise of fundamentalism in that country especially since 2013.

But she must get the credit where she deserves them.     

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Supporters have praised Hasina for leading Bangladesh through an economic boom, largely on the back of the mostly female factory workforce powering its garment export industry.

Bangladesh, one of the world’s poorest countries when it gained independence from Pakistan in 1971, has grown an average of more than six per cent each year since 2009.

Poverty has plummeted and more than 95 pc of its 170 million people now have access to electricity, with per capita income overtaking India in 2021.

Hasina was also hailed for a decisive crackdown on militants in the Muslim-majority nation after five Bangladeshi extremists stormed a Dhaka cafe popular with Western expatriates and killed 22 people in 2016.

Silencing dissent

However, her government’s intolerance of dissent gave rise to resentment at home and concern from Washington and elsewhere.

Five top Islamist leaders and a senior opposition figure were executed over the past decade after convictions for crimes against humanity committed during the brutal 1971 liberation war.

The trials triggered mass protests and deadly clashes.

Her opponents branded them a farce and a politically motivated exercise to silence dissent.

The US imposed sanctions in 2021 on an elite branch of Bangladesh’s security forces and seven of its top officers over charges of widespread human rights abuses.

Hasina insisted in the face of the mounting protests that she had worked for her nation and toured areas of Dhaka damaged during days of deadly unrest last month.

“Over 15 years, I’ve built this country,” she told reporters. “What didn’t I do for the people?”

  “Global – The International Briefing” had rightly said once that as the eldest child of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Hasina was actually “born into politics”.

Hasina’s life has been truly - one of drama, tragedy and political endeavour.

Mujibur Rahman was assassinated together with 18 members of Sheikh Hasina’s family on 15 August 1975, when Sheikh Hasina and her sister, Sheikh Rehana, were out of the country. The military dictator Major General Ziaur Rahman had then assumed power.

His actions and teachings have played the utmost part in Sheikh Hasina’s personal and political development.  And, I feel her speech on July 2 – post Dhaka siege and military success- reflects the spirit of Banga-bandhu. 

But importantly for India, Sheikh Hasina has been a “daughter of democracy” and also a trusted friend of a democratic India. 

She displayed her friendship irrespective of party affliations in India and has been dealing with maturity with leaders like Manmohan Singh and Narendra Modi – two men of different mattle and caliber.