Bangladesh in the throes of revolution

Colour revolutions and ensuing regime changes have a chequered history of hits and misses. It happens because contrived upheavals engineered from abroad are tailor-made to suit the geopolitical interests of the foreign sponsors — divorced from ground realities. In Asia, South Korea and Indonesia stand as exceptions, but their transition from despotic rule stemmed out of indigenous political processes.

The colour revolution in Bangladesh follows the pattern that appeared in Georgia (2003) and Ukraine (2004-2005) where covert United States interference discredited the post-Soviet regimes inherited from the past to create a critical mass of revolutionary fervour under the rubric of ‘democratisation’.

When the upheaval reached a crescendo, new leaderships were imposed arbitrarily, which, unsurprisingly, failed to gain traction, having lacked a genuine mass base, and caused instead the weakening of State institutions spawning economic crisis and chaos — necessitating ‘revolutions in revolutions’!

From the US viewpoint too, a satisfactory outcome proved elusive needing micro-management downstream. The US is right now engineering yet another colour revolution in Georgia, incensed over the overtures by the ruling elite in Tbilisi to Moscow, its historical lodestar, for rapprochement to revitalise the economy. Although not an analogical situation, the regime change in Dhaka on August 8 may also be heading in a similar direction.

The past four months have been a transformative period, for good or bad, in Bangladesh’s political history. Certain broad trends appeared during this period that are signposts of what lies in the womb of time. Succinctly put, the ‘transfer of power’ from Sheikh Hasina to Muhammed Yunus draws comparison with the Taliban takeover in Kabul on August 15, 2021.

Constitutional niceties were dispensed with as Hasina fled the country and the insurgents moved in to occupy the power vacuum as if it were already preordained. The cardinal difference is that the Joe Biden administration, which still refuses to recognise the transition in Kabul, was only too willing to accept the legitimacy of the new forces that it had groomed, and Yunus arrived as the icing on the cake. 

Like the Taliban, Yunus espoused inclusiveness and unity. But the fact is, his interim government is already moving with an unspoken agenda of exorcising the Awami League from mainstream politics. Equally, a sense of urgency is lacking for the restoration of representative rule by holding democratic elections — i.e., until Awami League is vanquished, and the parameters of mainstream politics redefined.

Meanwhile, the power calculus is rapidly shifting in favour of Islamist forces who are, of course, the best organised cadre (with deep roots in the country’s political economy) with whom rambunctious factions of the student community have tactically aligned. 

Violent clashes in university campuses and attacks on media houses are taking place. The incipient signs of disillusionment are already discernible. A prominent Dhaka daily recently titled its editorial ‘Students, like all citizens, must also abide by the law’. Taking advantage of the unchecked spread of incendiary narratives on social media, a fertile ground is available today for hate speech and rumours and calls for destructive actions defying State authority, engendering public disorder. 

Instead of engaging the political parties in a dialogue to arrest the rapid descent into anarchical conditions, Yunus’ interim government is taking the easy route of whipping up xenophobia over alleged Indian plots to destabilise Bangladesh by exacerbating latent tensions. The anti-India sentiments lurking perennially below the surface in the country’s Muslim psyche are surging. The new narrative casting Mujibur Rahman as a ‘fascist’ is emblematic of the emergent political climate. 

What more can one expect when Mahfuz Alam, whom Yunus chose as his special assistant — and introduced to his American patrons in September in New York in the presence of Bill Clinton as ‘the brain behind the movement’ — is allegedly linked to Hizb-ut-Tahrir, the enigmatic organisation of educated middle class Muslim urban radicals who were handled by the British intelligence over decades as potential charioteers of change in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia — i.e., until it spun out of control compelling the Home Office in London to proscribe it in January in the backdrop of the cataclysmic events in Gaza! 

Pranay Sharma, an insightful observer, wrote recently that Alam decided to remove Mujib Rahman’s portrait from Banga Bhavan in Dhaka, which used to be the presidential palace and is Yunus’ headquarters. Alam regretted that the portrait of that ‘fascist’ leader could not be erased even earlier. Revolutions are known to devour their children but not founding fathers!

Alam, 29, will do well to try to understand Oscar Wilde's words in The Picture of Dorian Gray: ‘It is personalities, not principles, that move the age’. 

(M K Bhadrakumar is a former diplomat.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.