By Veeragathy Thanabalasingham
Colombo, August 10: In South Asia, popular uprisings have driven another top government leader out of the country in the space of just two years.
Former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina told the Indian High Commissioner in Dhaka who met her last week as street protests intensified in Bangladesh that ‘anarchists’ were planning to topple the government in a Sri Lankan-style uprising.
In the end, that’s how it happened.
The Sri Lankan uprising did not experience the same level of violence and loss of life as it did in Bangladesh. In Sri Lanka, then President Gotabaya Rajapaksa could not have done as much as Hasina on using the police to crush the revolt.
In Sri Lanka, protesters laid siege to the Presidential Palace, the Presidential Secretariat and the Temple Trees. In Bangladesh last week the Prime Minister’s residence, Parliament and government buildings were stormed. People engaged in celebrations by looting goods in the mansions.
Violence was directed against Awami League leaders and supporters. Reports said a number of them were killed.
Although Gotabaya Rajapaksa, a former military officer, was believed to have had complete control over the security forces, the army would not have been brutal with the people even if he had ordered it. Similarly, the Bangladesh army was also not ready to take strict action against the protesters.
The transition of power in Sri Lanka after the resignation of Gotabaya from abroad was done smoothly according to the constitution despite various criticisms. Following the election of Ranil Wickremesinghe as President by Parliament, the armed forces were used to disperse the protesters from the Colombo Galle Face Green, but there was no room for the military to influence the transition of power.
Though the military did not seize power in Bangladesh this time, army chief General Waker -uz-Zaman exerted tremendous pressure, forcing Hasina to leave the country and setting up an interim administration. Almost all the important announcements came from him. President Muhammad Shahabuddin immediately dissolved the parliament elected last January. Opposition leaders and political activists who were imprisoned were released.
84-year-old Professor Muhammad Yunus, a Nobel Peace laureate who was subjected to various atrocities under Hasina’s regime, acceded to the wishes of the student movements and took over as the head of the interim government last Thursday in the capacity of chief adviser.
He described the end of Hasina’s rule on August 5 as the ‘second victory’. The main task of the interim government, which will be in office for three months, is to make preparations for the parliamentary elections.
When Gotabaya Rajapaksa left Sri Lanka, no country welcomed him. Maldives, Singapore and Thailand allowed him and his wife to stay for a very short period of time. Finally, he returned to the country after a month and a half. But Hasina, who had gone to India with her sister Rehana in a military plane last week, has been staying there for a week. She was received by India’s National Security Adviser on landing at an air force base in the Northern state of Uttar Pradesh.
It is said that a request made on behalf of Gotabaya to allow the Sri Lankan Air Force aircraft to land at an Air Force base near Chennai and then fly to Singapore via Chennai airport was outrightly denied by the Indian authorities.
But immediately after Hasina’s arrival, the Modi government convened an all-party conference to look into the Bangladesh crisis. Although External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar has said that no decision has been taken on granting her political asylum in India, no time limit has been set for Hasina’s stay in India.
Hasina was said to have originally planned to travel to London from India. But Britain and United States refused to allow her even temporarily. The US has revoked her visa, demanding that she be held accountable for the brutal crackdown that killed hundreds of people. Meanwhile, Britain has demanded that an investigation be conducted under the supervision of the United Nations over the violence in Bangladesh.
It was not immediately clear what the Indian government would ultimately decide on Hasina. But what is certain is that India is not going to press her like Singapore and Thailand asked Gotabaya to leave as soon as possible.
Observers have warned that the Modi government’s approach on Bangaladesh crisis risks fuelling anti-India sentiments on the streets of that country. Violence has been unleashed against minority communities, particularly Hindus. So India is facing a complicated situation.
Hasina’s son, Sajeeb Wazed Joy, said last week that she will never return to Bangladesh and will not be involved in politics in the future. But he said in an interview with the Times of India from the US four days later that when the government decides to hold parliamentary elections, she will return to the country. He also said that his mother’s party Awami League will definitely contest the elections but did not say openly whether she would contest.
Hasina’s government in Bangladesh did not mishandle the economy like the Gotabaya government in Sri Lanka. Bangladesh was in a position to provide an emergency loan to Sri Lanka when it was caught in the worst economic crisis two years back. .
During her last 15 years of rule, Bangladesh saw significant economic growth. In a country with a population of 17 crores, several million people were lifted out of poverty. However, youth unemployment at around 40 percent was a major drawback.
Meanwhile, the international community praised Hasina’s government for providing asylum to thousands of Rohingya Muslim refugees fleeing violence in the neighbouring Myanmar.
Unlike Gotabaya, Hasina is not without political experience. The daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who successfully led the independence movement and freed Bangaladeshis from the oppression of West Pakistan, Hasina served as Prime Minister for a total of 20 years from June 1996 to July 2001 and then from August 2009 to August 2024.
Why did she, who could have go down in history as the longest-serving female head of government not only in her country, but also in the world, have to flee the country in disgrace in the midst of a popular revolt?
Hasina’s growing authoritarian tendencies in recent years have called into question the legitimacy of her government. There was a largely hostile relationship between the opposition and her. Former Prime Minister and leader of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) Begum Khaleda Zia was sentenced to five years in prison ahead of the 2018 parliamentary elections and the sentence was then extended to ten years.
Several leaders of an extremist Islamist party were hanged by a war crimes tribunal. A staunch supporter of India, Hasina was bitterly hated by Islamist extremists.
The main opposition Party BNP boycotted back-to-back parliamentary elections. As a result, the legitimacy of the victory of Hasina’s Awami League party in the parliamentary elections held in January 2024 remained in question. Independent analysts had flagged the worst irregularities in the election.
Leaders of opposition parties were continuously harassed. Legal challenges were mounted against the Prime Minister’s rivals. The space for opposition politics shrank over the years. Hasina may have thought that economic growth under her rule would distract her authoritarian tendencies from public attention. But resentment among the people was increasing.
An immediate trigger for the outbreak was the students’ protest against the quota system in government jobs. This quota system was first introduced in 1972 by Hasina’s father, the founder and the first Prime Minister of Bangaladesh, Mujibur Rahman.
Freedom fighters were allotted a big share in job opportunities. The quota was later extended to the descendants of the freedom fighters. Students and opposition parties saw this as a concession to supporters of the ruling Awami League. Hasina scrapped the system in 2018 following protests. But the Bangladesh High Court ordered the reinstatement of the old quota system June this year.
Students took to the streets demanding a fair quota system. Hasina’s government appealed to the Supreme Court against the High Court ruling. But the protests did not subside. This is largely due to Hasina’s government’s brutal crackdown on protests that began in June. More than 300 people were killed in those violence within a month. Thousands were injured and at least more than 10,000 people were arrested and imprisoned.
The student protest eventually turned into a nationwide popular uprising demanding Prime Minister’s resignation. More than 150 people were killed on August 4, Sunday, alone in the police crackdown. Ruling party activists helped the police in the mayhem.
But the protesters stormed the capital Dhaka and occupied government buildings, including Parliament, similar to what happened in Sri Lanka in July 2022. Hasina fled to India in a military plane before the waves of people besieged her residence. Although she wanted to address the nation before resigning, the army did not allow her to do so.
After dissolving Parliament, the President has announced that general elections will be held soon.
In Sri Lanka, politicians blamed foreign interference for the people’s uprising. Gotabaya even wrote a book five months ago about the alleged conspiracy to overthrow him but did not name any country. Similarly suspicion is being raised about foreign countries being behind the Bangladesh upheaval. Hasina may also write such a book in the future.
Statues of Mujibur Rahman, who brought freedom to Bangladesh, were toppled by mobs in the current violence. This is a very despicable act. He was in power for a little more than three years after the independence for which he fought with tremendous sacrifices including long imprisonment in West Pakistan jail.
On August 15, 1975, he and most of his family members were killed by military officers. Hasina, then 28, and her sister were in Europe at the time and survived by chance. it is said that so far, 19 attempts had been made on her life after she entered politics.
Awami League projected themselves as the guardians of the Bangladesh independence legacy, as the Rajapaksas claimed a monopoly on military victory in the Sri Lankan civil war.
Today’s young generation who only know the freedom struggle as ancient history, act without any understanding the glory of Mujibur Rahman. Statues of a great leader will never be forgotten.
There is a lesson before us that the fall of an autocratic ruler will not automatically bring about system change. It will not take long to know whether the Bangladesh people’s uprising is one of them or not.
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