"Woman was God's second mistake" - philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche
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"A woman is four times more brazen than a man. She also has six times his courage and eight times his strength of passion!" - Chanakya
2000 snap - Khaleda Zia and Hasina
Look next door neighbour - Bangladesh and we have how 'women (from purdah to power)' could be.
Around 2006; both Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda were jailed by a military-backed interim regime. Khaleda was arrested on corruption charges.
Both the women leaders and former PMs; Ms Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina were held in detention in houses not far from each other.
Reports emerged that Hasina even shared her food with bitter rival Khaleda. But later in 2024 --- in an interview Hasina denied this.
She also claimed Khaleda Zia was under house arrest and was treated well in a “newly built house.”
“A better place, and better furniture and everything .... For me, it was all old, broken," Sheikh Hasina complained.
Among the cases filed against Khaleda Zia was that she had misrepresented her birthday, to turn Aug 15, a day of mourning for Sheikh Hasina marking the massacre of her her father Mujib and other family members into her day of celebration.
On this case; when Khaleda did not show up to a court hearing over a complaint lodged in 2016 by a supporter of Hasina’s Awami League party, the court issued an arrest warrant for her.
“The complaint was that she had been celebrating a fake birthday, on Aug. 15, for a long time ....But, in fact, that is her original birthday” -- Khaleda's lawyer and a BNP leader Syed Nazrul Islam had told the court.
Nevertheless; on Dec 30 as Khaleda breathed her last; Sheikh Hasina offered “deepest condolences” to Khalea's family.
“As the first woman Prime Minister of Bangladesh, and for her role in the struggle to establish democracy, her contributions to the nation were significant and will be remembered,” Hasina noted.
The 'rivalry' touched a new level in 2021 when Khaleda caught epidemic Covid19.
When her condition worsened and medicos advised her to travel abroad for treatment, the request was turned down by courts -- ostensibly at the diktats of powerful Sheikh Hasina.
It is said later also such pleas were rejected. As claimed by BNP workers; Sheikh Hasina denied Khaleda foreign visit on health ground as many as 18 times.
In 2021 after Covid19, Sheikh Hasina foreign minister at the time, A.K. Abdul Momen, had said that Khaleda Zia could bring any doctor she wanted to Bangladesh to treat her, but she wouldn’t be allowed to go abroad.
In fact in the twilight of her life; Khaleda Khanam Putul was frequently in and out of the hospital under security protection, suffering from a number of age-related illnesses including rheumatoid arthritis, diabetes and advanced liver problems.
Khaleda was freed from house arrest and nearly a dozen of the court cases against her were dropped after Hasina was ousted on Aug 5, 2024.
By then; she was hardly health and remained bedridden.
Interestingly despite hospitalization, her party still decided to nominate her to contest as many as three seats in the February 2026 elections.
From her hospital bed, Khaleda called Sheikh Hasina’s downfall as “the end of tyranny.”
“Through a long movement of struggle and sacrifice, we have freed ourselves from the fascist, illegal government,” she read from a statement.
ends
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