The Future of Bangladesh in Confrontation with India and Close to China

The future of Bangladesh in confrontation with India and close to China

The future of Bangladesh in confrontation with India and close to China, after Sheikh Hasina, the Prime Minister of Bangladesh, fled the country to India as a refugee on Tuesday, August 5, 2024, following a three-week uprising of the people against his discriminatory policies. His rival, Begum Khaleda Zia, has been released from house arrest and it is expected that her party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, will be one of the most popular parties forming the future government of this country. It is worth mentioning that since the 1990s, Bangladesh’s politics has always been shaped under the shadow of the competition between these two female politicians.

Since 1991, when Begum Khaleda Zia became the Prime Minister of Bangladesh, a tough rival like Begum Sheikh Hasina emerged against her, and Bangladesh’s politics has since always been shaped under the shadow of these two figures, each of whom is the legacy of the founding fathers of Bangladesh.

Begum Khaleda Zia is the heir of a party that her husband, General Ziaur Rahman, the former president, founded in 1978, and after the assassination of her husband in the coup of 1981, it is this Begum Khaleda Zia who leads the Bangladesh Nationalist Party.

On the other hand, Sheikh Hasina is the heir of a paternal legacy, being remembered in history as the founder of independent Bangladesh.

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the father of Sheikh Hasina, earned the title Father of the Nation due to his leadership role during Bangladesh’s independence from Pakistan in the late 1960s. He can be compared to General George Washington, one of the founding fathers of the United States and the hero of the American War of Independence, who is famous as the Father of his Country. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman also founded the Awami League Party.

However, this text aims to analyze the political performance of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and the legacy of its leaders, General Ziaur Rahman and his wife Begum Khaleda Zia, who are likely to form the future government of the country after the end of the interim government.

Before focusing on the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, it is necessary to mention that in Bangladesh, in addition to the army, two important and powerful parties have often taken charge of governing the country amidst military coups. The first party is the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), a nationalist party of Bangladesh, and the other is the Bangladesh Awami League (BAL), which has largely dominated the political landscape of Bangladesh, being the arena of struggle between these two major parties.

In addition, the two powerful parties in Bangladesh are the Jamaat-e-Islami party, which has ideological ties with the Muslim Brotherhood, and the student wing of this party sparked protests against the government of Sheikh Hasina, the leader of the Awami League party. The main allies of the Nationalist Party of Bangladesh are the Nationalist Party.

Therefore, the political future of Bangladesh is likely to be in the hands of the Nationalist Party and its ally, the Jamaat-e-Islami party.

It should be noted that during the rule of Sheikh Hasina’s government, the Jamaat-e-Islami party in Bangladesh has been banned from participating in elections since 2013 by court order, and in 2024 its activities were also prohibited as an illegal party.

Now, after this brief introduction, we will delve into the main topic of this article, which is the Nationalist Party of Bangladesh.

The Party of the Freedom Fighters of the Battlefield, also known as the Party of the Freedom Fighters, is actually the largest and most powerful political party in the country. With its strong student and youth wings, it has always strived to promote democracy in the country. For example, the uprising of the party’s student wing in 1990 against the authoritarian government of the then President General Hussain Muhammad Ershad, who ruled Bangladesh under military dictatorship for 9 years, led to his downfall and the restoration of democracy in Bangladesh.

However, the formation of the Nationalist Party of Bangladesh is closely linked to the unstable conditions of the country.

After the assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman on August 15, 1975, during a military coup and in the chaotic and crisis-ridden environment that the new President Moshtaque Ahmed’s government was caught in, and his government also fell victim to the coup and was in power for only three months, some politicians, regardless of party, group, and ideological affiliations, gathered around General Ziaur Rahman, the Chief of Army Staff, and formed a front with various factions and even conflicting spectrums to save Bangladesh under a national unity government with the aim of returning to balanced politics.

A front that included various Islamic groups such as the Islamic Coalition Party, Hizb ut-Tahrir, National People’s Party, Communist Party, Socialist Party, and Workers’ Party, all of which, like the Tudeh Party in Iran in the 20th century, were supporters of the Soviet Communist Party. These left-wing parties in Bangladesh were also supporters of Communist China in the past and continue to pursue a friendly policy with China today.

Therefore, this party can be compared in terms of breadth, diversity of ideologies, and the presence of various politicians with the National Front of Iran, which was formed in 1950 with the goal of nationalizing Iran’s oil industry.

Therefore, the Bangladeshi Nationalist Party is not just a party but a front of important individuals, representing different religions and ideologies, under which an alliance of nationalists, democrats, Islamists, and socialists has been created with the aim of achieving economic and social justice.

The inception of this front, like the initial formation of the National Front in Iran, which emerged from the political turmoil following the unsuccessful assassination attempt on the Shah on February 4, 1949, and the general unrest in the country in the 1950s due to various assassinations, was closed in the atmosphere of coup and assassinations.

With these interpretations, the initial circle of the National Party of Bangladesh was also formed in the midst of multiple coups and anti-coups during 1975, right after the assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the second Prime Minister of Bangladesh, and the massacre of his family members in a military coup.

Therefore, in the 1970s, in a situation where Bangladesh witnessed several army coups every year, political figures with sometimes conflicting ideological inclinations from Islamist Brotherhood sympathizers to Maoist leftists concluded that under the leadership of General Ziaur Rahman, the army commander, they could unite and save the country.

However, in order to merge the two right-wing factions of Islamist and left-wing supporters of China and sometimes the Soviet Union under the banner of the National Front of Bangladesh, General Ziaur Rahman tried to distance his party from Bengali nationalism, which was the cause of the wars of independence from Pakistan.

For this reason, as soon as he seized power, Ziaur Rahman put friendship with Pakistan and China instead of friendship with India, which was the legacy of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his affiliated party, the Awami League, on the agenda and also improved his relations with the West and Europe.

Meanwhile, both China and Pakistan had also opened their doors to Europe and the United States during that era.

In such unrest conditions, the Nationalist Front was founded on September 1, 1978 by the then President General Zia-ul-Haq, who was a military officer and the second president of the country.

General Zia-ul-Haq can also be compared to Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury of the United States and one of the founding fathers who was a commander in the American War of Independence.

Zia-ul-Haq, as one of the founding fathers of Bangladesh and a hero of the Pakistan-India Independence Wars in 1965 and the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1972, received two bravery medals during the Liberation War of Bangladesh from Pakistan.

He revived the multi-party system in Bangladesh by founding the Nationalist Party, which had turned into a single-party system during the presidency of Mujib-ur-Rahman, and established a semi-presidential governance system in Bangladesh.

Ziaur Rahman Azadi laid the foundation of press freedom, freedom of expression, and free market economy alongside Islamic policies in his country. It is worth mentioning that General Ziaur Rahman, in addition to advocating for a free economy, also paid attention to the weaker sections of society. Considering the economic mistakes of the Mujib government, which led Bangladesh into a severe famine in 1974 during his tenure as Prime Minister from 1972 to 1975, Ziaur Rahman initiated supportive and social policies such as extensive irrigation programs and widespread canal digging mechanisms for agricultural fields. This led to increased food production for Bangladesh, alleviating famine and hunger.

General Ziaur Rahman also, during his four-year rule, brought stability to the country and industrialized agriculture. He was a pioneer in establishing a regional cooperation group in South Asia, which four years after his assassination in 1985, became the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). SAARC, as an intergovernmental organization among South Asian countries, established the South Asian Free Trade Area in 2006, functioning similarly to the European Union among South Asian countries.

Ziaur Rahman also improved his country’s relations with the West and China during his rule and set aside the policy of alliance with India, which was the legacy of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the second Prime Minister and the founder of independent Bangladesh after the civil war and separation from Pakistan.

Ultimately, General Ziaur Rahman, who had thwarted twenty military coups during his four-year presidency and had become notorious for his harshness and ruthlessness by holding military trials and executing coup plotters, fell victim to the twenty-first army coup by coup plotters on the thirtieth of May 1981.

Therefore, after another bloody coup in which Ziaur Rahman was the victim this time, his wife, Begum Khaleda Zia, took over the leadership of the National Front party and continued her wife’s policies. A decade after her husband’s assassination in 1991, Begum Khaleda Zia was elected as the first female Prime Minister of Bangladesh and in her first democratic move, she changed the semi-presidential system to a parliamentary republic governance system, which is a more democratic form of governance. In her first term as Prime Minister, Begum Khaleda Zia initiated a series of extensive educational, economic, and administrative reforms.

Until the 1990s, the average school attendance period for students was only two years, with only one girl attending school for every three boys.

However, Khalida Zia, through her efforts, not only made primary education free and mandatory in the country but also declared free education for girls in schools up to the tenth grade. Due to Khalida Zia’s relentless efforts to improve the democratic, economic, and social conditions of Bangladesh, on May 24, 2011, the New Jersey State Senate honored Khalida Zia with the title ‘Fighter for Democracy’.

With these interpretations, from a party politics perspective, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party can be seen as a center-left liberal-leaning party since its establishment in the 1970s, believing in social democracy and interested in emulating the policies of social liberal parties in Europe.

This party is also a believer in Islam and a justice-centered society, while supporting private ownership and a free market economy. Although the party considers itself socialist in its financial policies, it also supports economic liberalism and limited government intervention in the economy.

General Ziaur Rahman himself was also a supporter of social justice and aimed to achieve equal distribution of wealth and social welfare among different segments of society. He referred to this as the doctrine of unity in his affiliated party, but strongly opposed the interventionist economic policies inherited from Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s legacy and his party, the Awami League.

In terms of nationalism, this party believes in Bangladeshi Nationalism but is against Bengali Nationalism.

In fact, since the Nationalist Party of Bangladesh is the alternative to the Awami League Party, unlike his rival Sheikh Mujibur Rahman who believed in Bengali nationalism and emphasized Bengali identity and similarities with India, General Ziaur Rahman believed that Bangladeshi nationalism ideology is superior due to its inherent appeal, encompassing the indigenous people of Bangladesh and distinguishing the people of Bangladesh from the Bengalis in India.

In the context of the religious policies of the National Front of Bangladesh, it must be acknowledged that although General Ziaur Rahman, during his brief four-year rule in Bangladesh, added two amendments to Article 25 of the Bangladeshi Constitution in line with the Islamization process of the country. He emphasized on establishing fraternal relations with Muslim countries, and instead of relations with India as a secular state, he prioritized relations with Pakistan as an Islamic state. He set aside the secular and socialist policies of the previous government of Mujib-ur-Rahman to create warmer relations with the Islamic world, greatly influencing Bangladeshi society. However, due to the nationalist nature of his party, he also supported religious freedom and a policy of tolerance and acceptance as components of Bangladeshi nationalism.

For this reason, some of the early founders of the National Front of Bangladesh included non-Muslims, and Ziaur Rahman himself opposed the formation of an Islamic government and rejected theocracy as a system of governance.

Therefore, perhaps the National Front of Bangladesh can be seen as a combination of adherence to traditional Bengali customs and Islamic moderate thought due to its conservative ideological nature.

Since the Islamic party in Bangladesh considers the National Front as its allies and the National Front has more harmony with Islam, supporters of the Islamic Jamaat prefer to align with the National Front rather than with the Awami League, which officially considers itself a secular party. They feel that their Islamic goals will be better achieved in a coalition with the National Front.

The hypothesis is not far from reality, as in recent years, the National Front in Bangladesh has leaned towards Islamic factions from its previous position as a moderate liberal-leaning party.

From a foreign policy and international relations perspective, it can be said that the National Party of Bangladesh has, over more than four decades, included warm and friendly relations with the Western world, the Islamic world, and the Third World in its foreign policy agenda.

Although Bangladesh has tried to maintain balanced relations with India alongside its three-pronged policy, it has not been very successful. The policies of the nationalist party of Bangladesh can be defined as Indosceptic, showing fear of India in its relations with the neighboring country. In recent years, tensions have always been evident in India-Bangladesh relations, especially in the form of AntiHinduism, which is animosity towards the Hindu race in the policies of this party. Particularly, the view regarding Bangladeshi Hindus and accusing them of dual loyalty and allegiance to India has been very common among the Islamic parties, especially the United Party of Nationalist Bangladesh.

It is worth mentioning that General Zia-ul-Haq also never had good relations with India during his rule, and his government prioritized anti-India policies and alliances with the Soviet Union.

His wife, Begum Khaleda Zia, as the leader of the Nationalist Front party, has continued anti-India policies even after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

During her first term as Prime Minister in 1991, Begum Khaleda Zia emphasized in an interview with the English-language Indian newspaper The Hindu that Bangladesh was not willing to see any major power emerge in the South Asian region, as it would jeopardize the peace and security of the region.

It was natural that the emerging power in South Asia in the 1990s was India, and Khaleda Zia indirectly referred to her party’s dissatisfaction with India.

Therefore, the anti-India policy was so intertwined with the fabric of the nationalist party that some high-ranking members of the party, including the Secretary-General of the Bangladeshi Nationalist Party, supported a campaign titled ‘Boycott India’ in 2024.

In response to the India-centric policies of this party, it should be noted that the party must remember the policy of friendship with the United States and China, both of which are part of the foreign policy legacy of General Ziaur Rahman. During his rule, he created an environment for attracting foreign investments to Bangladesh by implementing liberal economic policies.

Although in the first term of Prime Minister Khaleda Zia in 1996-1991, she maintained a balanced policy of friendship with the West along with friendship with the East, in the second term of her premiership in 2001-2006, Khaleda Zia and her party pursued a Look East Foreign Policy, designed to reduce the country’s strategic dependence and financial need for foreign investment in India.

However, in the world of 2024, where fostering friendship among nations and different governments to balance foreign policy and prevent strategic dependence on one or more countries is on the agenda of many leaders and political parties, the enmity of the Bangladeshi National Front with India does not seem logical, and friendship with China and Pakistan, if this party comes to power, will certainly be detrimental to Bangladesh in the future.

The reason is that China’s Debt-Trap Diplomacy, alongside its authoritarian and undemocratic policies, through the ambitious Belt and Road Initiative, is posing a threat to weaker partners. This initiative has ensnared many African countries over the past two decades. There is a risk that a country like Bangladesh, which has been plagued by numerous bloody coups, could fall victim to China’s ambitions, especially when it comes to Pakistan. On the other hand, it is better to prioritize friendship with India, following the policy of ‘Friendship to All and Malice to None,’ instead of engaging in anti-India policies. This shift will ensure that Bangladesh’s national interests are secured and guaranteed in the best possible way.