Uneasy Resurrection

IT was not entirely unexpected. Yet the unscheduled special programme on state-run television prominently featuring Sheikh Mujibur Rahman only hours after his daughter, Sheikh Hasina, was sworn in as Bangladesh's new prime minister caused millions of Bangladeshis to rub their eyes in collective disbelief. For, the programme not only marked the formal lifting of the official ban on any mention of Bangabandhu (as Mujibur is popularly called) on TV, it also set in motion the rehabilitation of the charismatic leader who led Bangladesh to independence in a civil war 25 years ago.

For 21 years, since the Awami League government was toppled and Sheikh Mujib gunned down along with more than a dozen of his family members in a military coup, successive regimes have tried to depict him as a monster and at the same time literally obliterate his name from history books. To achieve that, they changed everything the Sheikh stood for. Secularism was removed from the Constitution as one of the four state principles, turning Bangladesh into an Islamic state, while Mujib's killers were given amnesty and rewarded with plum diplomatic jobs. And to permanently deny his crucial role in the liberation war, history books at schools have been distorted.

Within two weeks of its coming to power, the Awami League Government has decreed that important government offices will only hang the pictures of Bangabandhu. It also declared August 15—the day Sheikh Mujib was assassinated in 1975—as a national day of mourning, terminated the jobs of the assassins and constituted a high-powered committee headed by noted historian Salahuddin Ahmed to correct the distortions in history textbooks.

One incident that especially provoked condemnation and street protests by Awami supporters was the recent removal of Sheikh Mujib's picture from the cabinet room of the Parliament prior to the parliamentary party meeting of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) of former prime minister Khaleda Zia. Although his picture has since been remounted and the employee dismissed, the episode served to highlight a crucial fact: the new government's effort to rehabilitate Sheikh Mujib would not be an easy task in a country sharply polarised between the Awami League and the BNP.

Independent analysts say the Awami League must not forget that the country remains deeply divided and hence they should not do anything in haste as it could prove counter-productive. "His role is historical and nobody can deny it," says Serajul Islam Chowdhury, a leading columnist, referring to the controversy over Sheikh Mujib's rehabilitation. With the Awami League's return to power, he notes, it would have come automatically and they should have waited for his natural rehabilitation instead of doing it hastily through executive fiat.

Mohammad Moniruzzaman Miah, a former vice-chancellor of Dhaka University and a BNP sympathiser agrees: "He stands head and shoulder above everybody else in our national liberation struggle but his subsequent role was not beyond controversy." There are others, he says, who should also be given due credit for their role in the liberation war, like the late General Ziaur Rahman, founder of the BNP, who made the first declaration of independence through a radio broadcast.

This is a point of bitter dispute between the Awami League and the BNP. While the former does not dispute the fact that Zia did declare independence, they insist he did so in the name of Ban-gabandhu, an assertion the BNP refuses to accept. Mujib was then in a jail in Pakistan having been arrested by its army on March 25, 1971. In recent years, especially during the BNP rule, the dispute over this had created a huge rift between Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia. In order to set the record straight and end the controversy, Miah suggests a national consensus should be attempted on the two leaders' role and then validated by an act of Parliament.

His views are shared by some Awami sympathisers. They contend that unless some constitutional arrangements are made with regard to the rehabilitation of Bangabandhu, the whole exercise could be reversed in future if the Awami League loses power.

Although it is more than two decades since he was overthrown, there are people who still recall with horror the dark days under Sheikh Mujib. Shortly before his assassination, he had become a virtual autocrat. He turned Bangladesh into a one-party state, closed down opposition newspapers, stifled dissent and established the Awami's own paramilitary force which earned a reputation for vicious persecution of rivals. No doubt, his detractors will be happy once again if his role is buried under the heap of history by another anti-Awami League government.바카라 웹사이트