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THE bloody events of August 15, 1975 – when the then president Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was assassinated along with most of his family members as well as a number of his political allies – will stand in history as probably the most significant constituent factor in the way the nation has been politically divided through the middle ever since.
   The nation is divided, to say the least, in the way it interprets, as a tragedy or otherwise, the actions of the military men on that day. Some see it as the moment that democracy went into demise for years to follow while others as a necessary end to an authoritarian regime that practised democracy only in its exceptions, if at all. The nation is divided in the way it holds on to the legacy of the day. Some mourn the brutal murder of their father figure and turn that grief into the strength needed to regroup and revitalise their political creed while others draw power, quite literally, from the legacy that the young soldiers who went errant in the eyes of the law that day left behind. Also, not insignificant to the iconoclasm that dictates the fractious polity that is Bangladesh, the nation is divided on how it chooses to remember the man himself. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman is recalled either for the supreme leadership he provided in the final stages of the long struggle for independence from Pakistan, the nine-month-long War of Independence inclusive, or for the largely despotic, undemocratic rule that he presided over in the years that immediately followed, but rarely for both.
   However, a few facts can be, and perhaps need to be, admitted to by both sides of the current political divide. First, it was Sheikh Mujib’s leadership that thrust the nation to the verge of independence, and the political leadership during the 1971 war was provided, albeit in absentia, by none other than Sheikh Mujib. Many a leader – Maulana Bhashani among them – had guided the movement for independence, but it was Mujib who had taken up the baton in the latter stages of that advance, and it was his vision and oratory that brought the nation to the brink of the war that ultimately won liberation. As such, he will always remain the symbol of our independence.
   Second, it was Sheikh Mujib himself who during his rule went contrary to one of the basic tenets of the movement for independence – multi-party democracy. As if the establishment of the paramilitary Rakhhi Bahini – deliberately created to undermine the army – was not enough to arouse disgruntlement within the organs of the state and fear of extrajudicial exertions of power among the people, in decreeing one-party rule on January 21, 1975, Mujib hammered in the final nail in the coffin of democracy. And by doing so, he went squarely against the aspirations of the millions he had himself led in their struggle for an egalitarian polity.
   One claim that the killers of Sheikh Mujib frequently hide behind is that they brought an end to one-party rule. But one of the most significant legacies of their actions was the nation reverting to military and pseudo-democratic rule for years to follow. Sadly, the pitfalls of that regression are being felt in Bangladesh even today.
   A line, therefore, needs to be drawn under the events of August 15, 1975, politically as well as legally. Sheikh Mujib must be remembered and honoured for his enormous contribution to the birth of our nation. In this regard, the reinstatement of August 15 as the National Mourning Day by the High Court is welcome, and we hope that the Bangladesh Nationalist Party’s decision not to challenge the High Court decision is a sign of growing political maturity. From a legal standpoint, any extrajudicial action, murderous or not, is not only reproachable but must be subjected to a serious scrutiny of the law and justice must be ensured. This becomes more of an imperative when forcible usurpation of state power and the assassination of the country’s president are concerned.

Commission needed to probe
extrajudicial killings

THE rally that academics, writers, artistes and human rights activists staged on the Dhaka University campus on Wednesday in protest against extrajudicial killings by the law-enforcement agencies could not have come at a more opportune time. As the number of deaths in ‘crossfire’ or ‘encounter’ – two terms that the law enforcers conveniently use apparently as pretexts for their extrajudicial actions – steadily surges, it appears that the state and its managers, the government in other words, have very little or no qualms about employing extrajudicial killings as a tool in their so-called anti-crime activism. Extrajudicial killings, as has been pointed out by the politically-conscious and democratically-oriented sections of society over and over, undermine the rule of law, which presupposes that even the vilest of criminals reserves the right to be defended in a competent and credible court of law and is entitled to be treated as innocent until proven guilty. Worryingly still, given the identity of some of the victims in recent years, there are reasons to fear that extrajudicial killings have of late been used as a tool to systematically silence the voices that do not conform to the mainstream political thinking.
   It is in such a context that we commented in these columns recently that the thinking sections of society, whose political orientation is moulded by the concept of the rule of law and democratic justice, have to raise their voices against extrajudicial killings. Wednesday’s rally is, we believe, a significant first step in that direction. We support the call for an immediate stop to extrajudicial killings and institution of an independent commission to probe each alleged instance of extrajudicial killing. We also feel the political parties must demonstrate their commitment to the rule of law by taking a firm position against extrajudicial killings and by not using it as a law and order tool ever again.

SHEIKH Mujibur Rahman remains the most influential, revered as well as hated and disparaged man of Bengali history. There is no response to him which is not passionate or intense. There is no middle ground for him, a man who has outgrown several histories to occupy one which is his own and unbroken by his own death. In Bangladesh he remains the most important politician, dead or alive, directly influencing events and loyalties, which no other, including of his own blood, can hope to replicate. He also remains the least analysed politician of any time – as if by understanding him the magic of hate and love would be gone. Sheikh Mujib, therefore, has been located in the space of enigma where he can be used and utilised without having to be understood by successive generations.
   
   Mujib, the nationalist: Bengal, East Bengal and East Pakistan
   Serious historians will never doubt that Sheikh Mujib was the leader of the nationalist movement that ultimately led to the founding of Bangladesh. He became active in politics at a time when East Bengal was struggling to establish its own independent identity, by choice and by default, in the 1940s of the Calcutta-led Bengal. Given the communal environment in the region and country, politics had been split into two very separate lines; so, Bengal was also partitioned long before it was cleaved by administrative orders in 1947.
   Less discussed is the division between the Urdu-speaking Indian Muslim leadership-led Muslim League and the Bengali-led Bengal provincial Muslim League, almost torn apart from the first by conflicting nationalist ambitions. The Indian Muslim League was not a monolithic party but a conglomerate of ‘regional’ interests along religio-ethnic lines. However, central leadership was driven by its ultimate dream, a return to the ‘glory of Islamic unity’ under one central roof, the kind of aspiration that was marketed as the ‘Aligarh’ package which held that all Muslims of India were one. In this central Indian dream Bengal had little space, which was already obvious to the political leaders of Bengal then, at least in the later phase, and was proven by life under Pakistan.
   In this turbulent era and juncture of East Bengal’s history, the idea of a new geopolitical identity was being formulated and Sheikh Mujib was part of that movement. This trend had an overt expression in the United Bengal Movement, led by Abul Hashim, while covertly it generated the ‘Inner Group’, a group of young BML radicals — the first attempt to form an independent country of Bengalis after Pakistan became inevitable. This occurred in mid-1947 even before Pakistan was formed and was a critical ensemble in enlarging the nationalist movement. This group was made up of the avant-garde of the independent Bangladesh/East Pakistan/East Bengal movement and to all of them Sheikh Mujib was the face of the leader.
   
   Mujib in Pakistan: the search for the state
   Between 1947 and 1962, Bangladesh independence movement began to take shape and several clandestine attempts were made. Some like those made by the ‘Inner Group’ had support at home and also within the Indian security agencies. Its leaders like Moazzem Chowdhury even helped Mujib cross over to India but glitches prevented any meeting and Mujib was interned for a short while. An incensed Mujib never probably forgave all parties involved including the Indians. Moazzem Chowdhury says that, when Dhaka was in flames on March 26, he advised Mujib to flee to India. Mujib responded by saying, ‘Don’t you remember what happened when I went over.’ It was a year of long memories.
   Around this time, Mujib even tried to negotiate with Khoka Roy of the then Communist Party but the CP and its Russian patrons were for a civil movement not revolution. Other players like the East Pakistan Liberation Army of Jamalpur or other groups including expatriate groups of London – Uttorshuri – which included Zakaria Chowdhury amongst others did contact Sheikh Mujib because the nationalist narrative of East Pakistan nee Bengal was dominated by him. Both Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy and Maulana Bhashani played significant roles in politics but unlike them the militant nationalist face belonged primarily to Sheikh Mujib.
   After the declaration of 6-points in 1966, all political streams were swept away and it reigned supreme as a political talisman of Bengali nationalism. Pakistan’s childish response to the threat was the Agartala conspiracy case of 1969 in which Mujib was made accused number one but the people read it as an attempt to stifle the nationalist movement. In public eye he was declared innocent and the courts of Pakistan guilty. So, although the charges were sedition, a massive anti-Pakistan movement was generated. Mobs torched the courts and the judges managed to flee and save their life. Soon Mujib was sitting and negotiating while the man who ordered the trial General Ayub Khan was kicked out of power. The rest of the history is well known and while one may ask if the uncompromising position on the 6-points was the best course or not, one never questions the status of Sheikh Mujib as the paramount leader of the nationalism that birthed a state.
   
   Mujib: the head of the state and
   government
   In the state that he may fairly claim more than any other individual to have midwifed, he becomes a man of mixed memories, adored and hated almost equally. If Sheikh Mujib, the political leader took a quarter century to construct, it took only three years to become much less. One may perhaps forgive his inability to govern or even his passenger picking on the national gravy train but none expected the brutality of his many security agencies, the systematic disabling of the parliamentary system, the rise of unaccountable economic transactions at a mass scale, shutting down media and dissent and ultimately, the establishment of the BKSAL one-party rule.
   I have been told by several people that many within the party were opposed to this and that Sheikh Mujib thought he knew best so he went ahead. The price he paid for his attitude was terrible and terrifying but the killing is only part of the story because Bangladesh has not only ever recovered from the extra-parliamentary, extra-constitutional regimes that have followed one after another. Unfortunately, it began with a political experiment in autocracy.
   
   The posthumous Mujib
   It is this Mujib, the one born after 1971 that continues to flourish in Bangladesh today. Could Mujib have been otherwise? The period between 1972 and 1975 was essentially a narrative of refusal/inability to establish democratic rule, something that has accelerated after his death and has hastened in the last recent decades.
   The political contests of today still remain about his memory and anti-memory, never to be resolved. If the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and its hordes were birthed essentially to counter the Awami League, then the Awami League is also rooted to its sense of right to rule and political entitlement, unable to explore its role in establishing a non-democratic tradition.
   Yet, Sheikh Mujib was only as effective as the politics that created him, not just the 1940s variety but the longer innings he played under Pakistan. Two institutions have come to dominate our politics at the cost of others. Our political transitions are managed mostly by street agitations and other extra-parliamentary means and the constitution is utilised only to justify such changes. It doesn’t matter much if it is the street politics of 1990 or the military putsch of 1975 and thereafter, the method is clear.
   The other matter is the rise of the military within three years of a civilian-run war as the most continuous political force and its role now as the final guarantor of the state. It doesn’t take much to see that the resemblance between Pakistan and Bangladesh is more than incidental. The decline of all other institutions through acts by civil and military rulers has made the rise of the military as the most consistent state management institution almost inevitable by default. It basically means that the democratic tradition has been allowed to lapse.
   Sheikh Mujib may or may not have changed all that but he certainly had a chance more than others. He could have introduced structural democracy, an independent judiciary, free press, accountable executive, zero cronyism and all the fancy dreams which probably people had in connection with a new state. He may well have but he didn’t and instead was mired as a politician who planned to heal the ills by introducing non-democratic means and it didn’t work for anyone. In all probability, he learnt about steadfast uncompromising leadership in British India but in undemocratic Pakistan he learnt about protest but enough about democracy. Why he didn’t and why he couldn’t remain the enigma of his arrival and departure as well.
   He mirrored in a perfect way all our faces, all our triumphs and all our defeats, then and now.

AMERICA’S decision to re-divide the European continent after the fall of the Soviet Union and the disappearance of the Berlin Wall is coming home to roost. The fighting in Georgia, begun by an over-confident President Mikheil Saakashvili to reclaim the breakaway region of South Ossetia by force, provoked a major Russian military offensive. Russian peacekeepers are stationed in South Ossetia and most of the territory’s small population have been granted Russian citizenship.
   Several factors have contributed to the strength and bite of the Russian attack. President Saakashvili, in return for sending troops to Iraq, won US arms and training projects for his forces. And in his widely broadcast desire to join NATO, together with Ukraine, he touched a raw Russian nerve. Also, the manner in which the US and much of the West encouraged and recognised the unilateral independence of the Serbian province of Kosovo led to Russian warnings of possible consequences.
   President Saakashvili’s mistake was to misread America’s ability to intervene militarily on its side and the nature of the new Russian state. After eight years of political stability given to his country by Vladimir Putin and the windfall profits of Russia’s vast energy resources, Moscow is in a position to protect its interests and draw red lines the West should not cross.
   The era when Russia lay prostrate and bleeding, while the US blithely moved the sphere of NATO, the Cold War organisation, east, ever closer to the diminished but still vast Russian Federation, was over years ago, perhaps unnoticed by Mr Saakashvili.
   Wiser counsel from such men as George Kennan did not prevail in Washington at the end of the Cold War as the US sought fully to exploit its advantage. Both Washington and Bonn went back on their solemn promise to Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet president, that NATO would not move east to Moscow’s disadvantage. And after merrily incorporating former Communist states and the Baltic countries into NATO, President George W Bush announced the icing on the cake: anti-missile sites in Poland and the Czech Republic, ostensibly to guard against rogue states.
   Mr Putin, now prime minister, left the Olympic Games in Beijing to go to North Ossetia, part of the Russian Federation, to take charge of Russia’s response. While the West speculated on his stealing the thunder of the new president, Dmitry Medvedev, there are no differences in Kremlin on the wisdom of the Russian response.
   The problem of South Ossetia, together with that of Abkhazia, stemmed from the disintegration of the Soviet Union, with regions claiming independence for themselves – a third breakaway region was successfully incorporated in Georgia. Russia had warned at the time of the Kosovo crisis that acceptance of the unilateral declaration of independence for a West-favoured province of Serbia hosting a major US military base would have serious consequences. But the Bush administration chose to ignore the Russian warning and most, though not all, members of the European Union followed suit.
   Russia’s assertion of its interests in its immediate neighbourhood holds many lessons for the United States and the West. The United States has tended to prepare against a potential threat from an emerging and confident China and sought, for the most part, to dismiss a challenge from a diminished Russia.
   Moscow is now emphatically making the point that it is still – rather again – a major factor in European and world affairs and US administrations cannot ride roughshod over it.
   The major challenge from Russia will be faced by President Bush’s successor, but the beginnings of a new ball game are being unveiled during the fading days of the current presidency. Moscow is rebelling at Washington’s policy of containing and encircling Russia through a deliberate expansion of NATO to its borders and expanding Western influence in Central Asia while denying it to Russia, dismissing it as the former colonial power.
   In fact, Russia’s hands are much stronger today than they were even five years ago. Russia is coping with many problems of corruption, under-development and governance, but it is riding high on energy profits and the country has stabilised under Mr Putin’s strong, if not always democratic, rule. On the other hand, despite America’s undoubted vast power, it is enmeshed in two wars of choice and is confronting Iran’s influence.
   Inevitably, the post-Cold War geopolitical structure the US has sought to build – of remaining the supreme power in the universe far into the infinite future – is in urgent need of alteration. For one thing, Russia has demonstrated that it can, on its part, impose a military solution unilaterally, if it so desires. Second, Russia is warning its neighbours, particularly those on its immediate borders, that cosying up to the US on an anti-Russia agenda offers no solution for these countries.
   Perhaps, President Saakashvili thought that his support for the American military effort in Iraq and singing the songs of democracy would insulate him and his country from Russian ire. It is one thing for Poland, given its size and population, to thumb its nose at the Russian bear, quite another for little Georgia to anger Moscow.
   Neighbouring Ukraine, split down the middle in its stance towards Russia and the West, is also sailing in the same boat, with one section of its leaders demanding NATO membership and a Western embrace.
   President Saakashvili is learning his lesson the hard way. But on a broader level, Russia’s neighbours and the West will realise that Washington can no longer pile humiliations on Russia and tighten a noose around it without inviting retaliation. Mr Putin’s and Mr Medvedev’s Russia is very different from Boris Yeltsin’s.
   Russia will simply refuse to play by self-serving American rules: That while the US, as the world power, has full freedom to get as close as it wants to what Moscow describes as its near abroad, Moscow has no right to do so. Second, it is for the US to decide when the principle of not altering European borders by force, solemnly accepted as the post-World War II holy grail, should be breached. Third, NATO’s writ will run as close to Russian borders as Washington likes. Fourth, the US has full freedom to re-route Central Asia’s oil flow to Russian disadvantage. Mr Putin is signalling that Russia has its own rules to play by.