The Future of Bangladesh in Opposition to India and Closer to China
The future of Bangladesh in opposition to India and closer to China after Sheikh Hasina, the Prime Minister of Bangladesh, fled the country on Monday, August 5, 2024, following a three-week uprising by the people against her discriminatory policies and sought asylum in India. Her rival, Begum Khaleda Zia, was released from house arrest, and it is expected that her party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, will be one of the most likely parties to form the next government in the country. It is worth mentioning that since the 1990s, Bangladeshi politics has always been shaped and established under the shadow of the rivalry between these two female politicians.
Since 1991, when Begum Khaleda Zia became the Prime Minister of Bangladesh, a fierce rival in the form of Begum Sheikh Hasina emerged against her, and since then, Bangladeshi politics has always been shaped under the influence of these two figures, each inheriting the legacy of the founding fathers of Bangladesh.
Begum Khaleda Zia is the heir to the party founded by her husband, General Ziaur Rahman, the then-President, in 1978. After her husband’s assassination in the 1981 coup, it was Begum Khaleda Zia who took over the leadership of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party.
In contrast, Sheikh Hasina is also the heir to a father who is remembered in history as the founder of independent Bangladesh.
Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Sheikh Hasina’s father, played a leading role in the independence of Bangladesh from Pakistan in the late 1960s and was therefore dubbed the ‘Father of the Nation.’ He is comparable to General George Washington, one of the founding fathers of the United States and a hero of the American War of Independence, who was famously known as the ‘Father of his Country.’ Sheikh Mujibur Rahman also founded the Awami League Party.
However, this article aims to analyze and review the political record 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 next government in the country after the end of the interim government.
Before focusing on the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, it is necessary to mention that in Bangladesh, besides the military, two important and powerful parties, which have often been subject to occasional coups by the military, have always held the helm of the country’s administration. The first is the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and the other is the Bangladesh Awami League (BAL), which has often been the arena of political battles between these two major parties.
In addition to these two powerful parties, the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami party, which also has ideological affinities with the Muslim Brotherhood, and whose student wing sparked protests against Sheikh Hasina’s government, the leader of the Awami League, is one of the main allies of the Bangladesh 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 Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh was banned from participating in elections by court order during Sheikh Hasina’s government since 2013, and in 2024 it was also banned as an illegal party.
Now, after this brief introduction, we will turn to the main topic of this article, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party.
This party, also known as the ‘Party of the Freedom Fighters of the Battlefield,’ is in fact the largest and most powerful political party in the country. With a strong student wing and a youth wing, it has always strived for the revival of democracy in the country. For example, one can mention the uprising of the party’s student wing in 1990 against the autocratic rule of then-President General Hussain Muhammad Ershad, who ruled Bangladesh under military dictatorship for nine years. The protests by the student and youth wing of the Nationalist Party led to his downfall and the revival of democracy in Bangladesh.
However, the formation of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party is closely tied to the chaotic conditions of the country.
After the assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman on August 15, 1975, during a military coup, and in the chaos and crisis that engulfed the new President Mushtaq Ahmed, whose government also fell victim to a coup and lasted only three months, a group of politicians, regardless of party and ideological affiliations, gathered around the Chief of Army Staff, General Ziaur Rahman, and formed a front with various and even contradictory spectrums to save Bangladesh under a national unity government with the aim of returning to balanced politics.
This front consisted of various Islamists, such as the Jamaat-e-Islami, Hizb ut-Tahrir, the National Awami Party, the Communist Party, the Socialist Party, and the Workers’ Party, each of which, like the Tudeh Party in Iran in the 1940s and 1950s that supported the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, these leftist parties in old Bangladesh were supporters of Communist China and today also pursue a policy of friendship with China.
Therefore, this party can be compared to the National Front of Iran, which was formed in 1949 with the aim of nationalizing Iran’s oil industry, in terms of its breadth and diversity of ideology and the presence of various politicians.
Thus, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party is not just a party but a front of important individuals and personalities of different religions and ideologies that have created an alliance of nationalists, democracy advocates, Islamists, and socialists under its umbrella, who have joined this large front with the aim of creating economic and social justice.
The seed of this front, like the initial circle of the National Front of Iran that emerged from the political vacuum created by the failed assassination of the Shah on February 4, 1949, and the general chaos of the country in the 1940s and multiple assassinations, was sown in the atmosphere of coups and assassinations.
With these interpretations, the initial circle of the National Party of Bangladesh was also formed in the atmosphere of multiple coups and counter-coups throughout 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, when Bangladesh witnessed several military coups each year, political figures with occasionally contradictory ideological leanings, from Islamist Brotherhood members to Maoist leftists, concluded that under the leadership of General Ziaur Rahman, the army commander, they could unite and save the country.
However, due to the combination of the right-wing Islamist and left-wing pro-China and sometimes Soviet factions within the framework of the National Front of Bangladesh, General Ziaur Rahman tried to keep his party away from Bengali nationalism, which was the cause of the independence wars from Pakistan.
As a result, upon taking power, Ziaur Rahman prioritized a policy of friendship with Pakistan and China instead of friendship with India, which was the legacy of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his party, the Awami League, and also improved relations with the West and Europe.
Similarly, both China and Pakistan at that time opened their doors to Europe and the United States.
Thus, in such turbulent conditions, the Nationalist Front was founded on September 1, 1978, by the then-President General Ziaur Rahman, who was a military officer and the second president of the country.
General Ziaur Rahman 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.
Ziaur Rahman, as one of the founding fathers of Bangladesh and a hero of the independence wars from Pakistan in 1965 and the liberation war of Bangladesh, which took place during the independence struggle from Pakistan in 1972, received two medals of bravery.
By founding the Nationalist Party, he revived the multi-party system in Bangladesh, which had become a one-party system during the presidency of Mujibur Rahman, and established a semi-presidential system of governance in Bangladesh.
Ziaur Rahman established press freedom, freedom of speech, and a free market economy along with Islamist policies in his country. It is worth noting that General Ziaur Rahman, alongside promoting a free economy, did not overlook the weaker segments of society and, in response to the economic mismanagement of Mujibur Rahman’s government, which led Bangladesh into a major famine in 1974 during his premiership from 1972 to 1975, initiated supportive and social policies such as extensive irrigation programs through the mechanism of channeling agricultural fields, which facilitated more food production for Bangladesh and alleviated famine and hunger.
During his four-year rule, General Ziaur Rahman also established stability in the country, industrialized agriculture, and took the lead in creating a regional cooperation group in South Asia, which four years after his assassination in 1985, was established as the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) as an intergovernmental organization among South Asian countries, establishing a geopolitical alliance. This regional body founded the South Asian Free Trade Area in 2006, which functions 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 abandoned the policy of alliance with India, which was the legacy of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the second Prime Minister and founder of independent Bangladesh after the civil war and separation from Pakistan.
Ultimately, General Ziaur Rahman, who thwarted twenty military coups during his four-year presidency and became known for his severity and ruthlessness through military trials and the execution of coup officers, was gunned down in the twenty-first military coup by coup officers on May 30, 1981.
Therefore, after another bloody coup in which Ziaur Rahman became a victim, his wife, Begum Khaleda Zia, took over the leadership of the National Front and continued her husband’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 transformed the semi-presidential system into a parliamentary republic, which is a more democratic form of governance. During her first term as Prime Minister, Begum Khaleda Zia implemented a series of extensive educational, economic, and administrative reforms.
Until the 1990s, the average schooling duration for students was only two years, and out of every three boys, only one girl attended school.
However, Khaleda Zia, through her efforts, made primary education free and compulsory in the country and announced that girls’ education in schools would be free up to the tenth grade. Due to Begum Khaleda Zia’s relentless efforts to improve the democratic conditions and the economic and social situation in Bangladesh, on May 24, 2011, the New Jersey State Senate praised her as a ‘Fighter for Democracy.’
With these interpretations, from the perspective of party policies, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party can be considered a party with center-left, liberal tendencies, and committed to social democracy, interested in emulating the social-liberal political practices of European parties since its establishment in the 1970s.
At the same time, it is a party that believes in Islam and a justice-oriented society, while also supporting private ownership and a free market economy. Although it considers itself socialist in its financial policies, it also advocates for economic liberalism and limited government intervention in the economy.
General Ziaur Rahman himself was a supporter of social justice and considered the equal distribution of wealth and social welfare among the populace as a unifying doctrine for his party, but he strongly opposed government interventionist policies in the economy, which were the legacy of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his party, the Awami League.
In terms of nationalism, this party believes in Bangladeshi Nationalism but opposes Bengali Nationalism.
In fact, since the Bangladesh Nationalist Party is an alternative to the Awami League Party, unlike its rival Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who believed in Bengali nationalism and preferred Bengali identity and similarity with India, General Ziaur Rahman believed that the ideology of Bangladeshi nationalism, due to its inherent appeal that includes the indigenous people of Bangladesh and distinguishes the people of Bangladesh from the Bengali people of India, is superior to Bengali nationalism.
Regarding religious policies, it must be acknowledged that although General Ziaur Rahman, during his short four-year rule in Bangladesh, added two amendments to Article 25 of the Bangladeshi Constitution emphasizing fraternal relations with Muslim countries, and personally prioritized relations with Pakistan as an Islamic state over India as a secular state, sidelining the secularist and socialist policies of Mushtaq Ahmed’s government to foster warmer relations with the Islamic world, and significantly influenced Bangladeshi society, he simultaneously supported religious freedom and tolerance as components of Bangladeshi nationalism due to the nationalist nature of his party.
For this reason, some of the initial founders of the Bangladesh National Front were non-Muslims, and Ziaur Rahman himself opposed the formation of an Islamic government and rejected theocracy as a system of governance.
Therefore, the Bangladesh National Front can perhaps be considered a combination of adherence to traditional Bangladeshi customs and moderate Islam due to its conservative ideological nature.
However, since the Jamaat-e-Islami party of Bangladesh is an ally of this front and the Bangladesh National Front aligns more with Islam, the supporters of the Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami prefer an alliance with the National Front over an alliance with the Awami League, which officially considers itself a secular party. They feel that their Islamist goals will be better and more fully realized in coalition with the National Front.
This hypothesis is not far from reality, and in recent years, the Bangladesh National Front has shifted from a party with moderate liberal tendencies towards Islamist factions.
From the perspective of foreign policy and international relations, it must be said that the Bangladesh National Party, throughout more than four decades of political activity, has pursued warm and friendly relations with the Western world, the Islamic world, and the Third World as part of its foreign policy.
Although alongside this three-pronged policy, it has tried to maintain balanced relations with India, it has not achieved much success in this regard, to the extent that the policies of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party can be defined in terms of Indosceptic relations with its neighboring country, India. In recent years, tensions in relations between India and Bangladesh, particularly in the form of Anti-Hinduism, have been evident in the policies of this party, especially since this perspective regarding Bangladeshi Hindus and accusing Hindus of dual loyalty and their allegiance to India has been very common among the Islamist parties allied with the Bangladesh Nationalist Party.
It is worth recalling that General Ziaur Rahman himself never had good relations with India during his rule, and his government pursued a policy of opposition to India and the Soviet Union.
His wife, Begum Khaleda Zia, as the leader of the Bangladesh Nationalist Front, has always continued the policies of opposition to India even after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
In an interview with the Indian English-language newspaper The Hindu during her first term as Prime Minister in 1991, Begum Khaleda Zia emphasized that Bangladesh does not want any major power to emerge in the South Asian region, as such an event would jeopardize regional peace and security.
Naturally, 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 policy of opposition to India is so intertwined with the fabric of the Nationalist Party that some senior members of this party, including the Secretary-General of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party in 2024, supported a campaign called ‘Boycott India.’
In contrast to the Indosceptic policies of this party, it is necessary to mention the policy of friendship with the United States and China, both of which are the legacy of General Ziaur Rahman’s foreign policy. During his rule, he laid the groundwork for attracting foreign investments in Bangladesh through the implementation of liberal economic policies.
Although during Begum Khaleda Zia’s first term as Prime Minister from 1991 to 1996, the policy of friendship with the West was also pursued alongside the policy of friendship with the East, in her second term from 2001 to 2006, Khaleda Zia and her party pursued the ‘Look East Foreign Policy,’ which was designed to reduce the country’s strategic dependency and financial need for foreign investments from India.
However, in the world of 2024, where the friendship between nations and different governments is pursued to balance foreign policy and prevent strategic dependency on one or several countries, the enmity of the Bangladesh National Front with India does not seem logical, and the policy of friendship with China and Pakistan, if this party comes to power, will certainly be detrimental to Bangladesh in the future.
This is because China’s Debt Trap Diplomacy, along with its authoritarian and non-democratic policies under the ambitious Belt and Road Initiative, poses a threat to weaker partners, which has already affected most African countries over the past two decades. There is a risk that a country like Bangladesh, which has always been plagued by multiple bloody coups, alongside Pakistan, could fall victim to China’s ambitions. On the other hand, friendship with Pakistan should be replaced by friendship with India and in the framework of the policy ‘Friendship to All and Malice to None’ to best ensure and guarantee Bangladesh’s national interests.