By P.K.Balachandran
Colombo, August 16: Ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s escape to India seeking sanctuary from angry Bangladeshis earlier this month and the destruction of every relic of her father and founder of Bangladesh Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, exemplify the fate of dictators across the world.
Murder cases have been filed against Sheikh Hasina in Bangladesh’s courts. She could also be hauled up before the International Criminal Court on charges of genocide. And the Interim Government of Dr. Muhammad Yunus has sought investigators from the UN to probe her “atrocities”.
While this has been the fate of all ousted dictators, Hasina’s case stands out. Her father too faced the wrath of the people this August. Both father and daughter are being subjected to unprecedented vilification In fact, the damage done to Mujib’s image and reputation in these disturbances has been far greater and more visible.
While Hasina’s official residence, Bangabhaban, was vandalised and looted by mobs, as many as 1,200 statues and murals depicting Mujib were destroyed across Bangladesh.
Mujib’s private residence at 32 Dhanmondi, the place where he was assassinated on August 15, 1975 and which housed historic papers, documents, pictures and other memorabilia of the Bangladesh freedom struggle, was turned into a charred shell.
The Mujibnagar Memorial Complex in Meherpur, where he stood tall among other sculpted heroes of the Liberation War, is also in ruins. Statues including one depicting the surrender of Pakistani General A.A.K.Niazi to the Indian army Lt.Gen. J.S.Aurora that signalled the end of East Pakistan and the birth of Bangladesh on December 16, 1971, were smashed.
The destruction of the surrender ceremony statues amounts to rejecting Bangladesh’s liberation from Pakistan and India’s role in the birth of Bangladesh, indeed a shocking turn in the history of India-Bangladesh relations.
August 15 Erased from History
In a further blow to Mujib’s hallowed memory, the new Council of Advisors to President Muhammad Shahabuddin, unanimously decided that August 15 will no longer be a national holiday. In other words, Bangladesh will not observe the day on which its creator was gunned down
On August 15, an anti-Mujib group beat up with sticks and steel pipes a pro-Mujib group as the latter was gathering at 32 Dhanmondi (the ancestral residence of the Mujib’s family) to light lamps in remembrance of his brutal assassination 49 years ago.
“Fugitive and dictator Sheikh Hasina has ordered her goons and militia forces to come to the site so they can produce a counter-revolution,” an angry 26 year old Imraul Hasan Kayes, told AFP.
“We are here to guard our revolution so that it doesn’t slip out of our hands,” the young Bangladeshi declared.
Fate of all Dictators
Now, the question arises as to whether all dictators meet the same fate as Hasina and Mujib. Many dictators got killed, like Hitler and Mussolini. Some escaped execution but only to be denounced, vilified and thrown into the dustbin of history.
Generally speaking, the longer a dictator stays in power, the greater the likelihood of his being thrown out, disgraced and even killed brutally.
According to British politician Enoch Powell something of this sort could happen to all politicians, even if they are not dictators.
Simon Sebag Montefiore quotes Powell as saying: “All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure.”
In other words, the longer the leader stays in power, the greater the chances of his making mistakes and becoming unpopular.
Hallmarks of Dictatorship
Dictators typically exhibit three tendencies: (1) to think that they need more time to realise the objectives they wanted to achieve when they seized power; (2) to adopt any means including the foulest to continue in power; (3) to continue to use foul methods, imagining that more rather than less of these will enable them to achieve their goals.
But their extremism invariably results in total alienation from the masses they seek to serve, who then develop an unquenchable thirst for revenge.
Dictators are aware of such an unpleasant end, and yet, they continue doing what they are doing in the belief that more of the same will give the desired results and that moderation will spell danger to their position.
“Dictators ride on tigers from which they dare not dismount” Winston Churchill said.
Montefiore gives several grisly examples of what irate masses can do. In 1996, the pro-Soviet former Afghanistan President, Najibullah, was castrated, dragged through the streets and hanged. Edward II, notorious for homosexual relationships, was killed with a red-hot metal rod.
Benito Mussolini and his mistress were suspended upside down in a town square for the public to view. It signalled the end of his pretensions to both “Caesarian heroism and Casanovan machismo,” says Montefiore.
And when Stalin suffered a stroke in 1953, there were no doctors to attend to him because he had arrested dozens of doctors for “treason”. The Soviet dictator lay in his own urine for more than 12 hours before his henchmen dared to call a doctor.
Stalin was not murdered. He was the author of his own destruction, comments Montefiore.
Tyranny as an Artform
Tyranny is an art form which dictators excel in, says Montefiore.
“All tyrannies are virtuoso displays over many years of cunning, risk-taking, terror, delusion, narcissism, showmanship and charm, distilled into a spectacle of total personal control. Tyrants are the greatest of all actor-managers — omnipotent impresarios”
“Uninhibited bloodletting can also work — as Bashar al-Assad and Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have demonstrated.”
But this will not work for ever. Treason, outside interference or a tsunami of mass rebellion (as in Bangladesh, Egypt and Tunisia for example) could end dictatorships in days.
For a dictatorship to last long, it has to ensure a degree of economic prosperity and justice. When these are no long assured, their fall is inevitable.
A dictator meticulously collects around himself, people who feed him with “facts” and “assessments” he likes to hear rather than truth”. He shuts himself from the harsh reality outside and indulges in actions that only increase the wrath of the masses. Both Hasina and Mujib preferred to traverse this path and met the destined end.
Personality Cult
Writing in The Daily Star the Bangladeshi political commentator Badiuzzaman Bay says that a dictator’s passion for building a personality cult, may seem to pay off in the beginning of a revolution. But stretched beyond a point and over time, the personality cult causes mass revulsion, that results in senseless vandalism.
Calling for an end to the creation of personality cults, Bay seeks a re-evaluation of Mujib’s legacy to suit Bangladesh’s rational needs.
“Over the years, we have seen how the Awami League regime and the intelligentsia cultivated a blind, and an unquestioning adulation, suppressing any nuanced and dispassionate study of the man who led a very eventful life.”
“We have seen how the personality cult around Mujib was continually enhanced through an infinite mix of Bangabandhu-themed monuments, billboards, textbooks, notes and coins, postage stamps, etc.”
“His posters were churned out and plastered everywhere, his portraits hung in every government office. From hospitals to universities to safari parks to high-tech centres to bridges and expressways—everything bears his name.”
“His words were turned into catchphrases, his speeches tirelessly rebroadcast on state television. His life spawned innumerable books, shorts, and movies, often through state sponsorship, giving him a saint-like status. And anyone who dared to question it would be silenced through various legal tools.”
“Even Bangabandhu would have found this deification quite distasteful, had he been alive today,” Bay avers.
Cuban Ideal
He points out to Cuba, where the Fidel Castro revolution has lasted and thrived, without any display of a personality cult.
“In Cuba, you will not see any statues of Fidel Castro. In fact, naming of any street, institution, locality or monument after Castro is prohibited by law,” Bay says.
Supporters of the personality cult should remember that the cult could self-destruct and that it would be in the interest of the personality they promote to portray him or her in full with all the warts.
“Bangabandhu is fondly remembered for his remarkable affinity with ordinary people. The candour with which he interacted with them is legendary. He will still remain the Father of the Nation, but more human, more relatable, more in alignment with other heroes of our independence. And for that, it is essential that he be restudied and reimagined by subjecting his life and legacy to broader interpretations,” Badiuzzaman Bay says.
If only Mujib’s daughter Hasina had done that when she was in power, his house, his museum and his statues would have remained as testimony to a major turning point in Bangladesh’s history.
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