A few lessons from the yore by Professor M Rashiduzzaman

 

STUCK between its earlier East Pakistani identity and its current independent state demeanour, Bangladesh encountered through two political lives. In the 1954 elections, the United Front, an alliance of the rival parties, stunningly defeated the ruling East Pakistan Muslim League. It was the best of time for the United Front, but, on the contrary, for the Muslim League, it was the beginning of the worst of time. A broader question: what were the pre-1971 East Pakistani legacies transported to independent Bangladesh? Did the Muslim League’s 1954 collapse rally the East Pakistani parties that as well trickled into post-1971 Bangladesh? There is much to learn from Bangladesh’s pre-1971 past although a great deal of that chronicle is now defunct in official and public amnesia.

Neither East Pakistani nor Bangladeshi parties followed most western liberal democracies — a common phenomenon in post-colonial countries. Like the 1972–75 AL/BKSAL rule in Bangladesh, the East Pakistan Muslim League, in certain ways, matched its previous single party eminence from 1947 to 1954. Accusations of political intolerance and civil rights violations went against both Muslim League and Awami League governments at different intervals. Hegemonic proclivities blamed on the Muslim League’s East Pakistan administration likewise reappeared in post-independent Bangladesh at various times. Those predilections are amongst the hot-button issues of Bangladesh politics today and they are amongst the key elements of this discussion

Like the Awami League in Bangladesh, the East Pakistan Muslim League, in the past, also asserted its sole entitlement to power from its historical role in the creation of Pakistan in 1947 and from the Muslim League’s victory in the Bengal legislature’s election in 1946. A few amongst the top Muslim League leaders, both in East and West Pakistan, still wedded to the party’s old glory, made applauding pleas for their party which, however, did not inspire the multitude in East Pakistan in the 1950s. None of the provincial prime ministers — Khawaja Nazimuddin and Nurul Amin had the riveting popularity that Mujib enjoyed later in Bangladesh. Khawaja Nazimuddin had been Pakistan’s prime minister from October 1951 until 1953 when he was removed from that elevated position. He had not earnestly tried to return to East Pakistan politics since that episode.When he returned from the Pakistan jail, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman endorsed the Awami League’s exclusive grip on the newly independent country when he became the awesomely powerful prime minister without sharing authority with any other party or groups or individuals, who were too active in the 1971 Bangladesh campaign. His serious challenge came from the Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal, the radical offshoot of the party’s student front. The Awami League further claimed its unchallenged authority from its explicit victory in the 1970 elections. Barely three years after independence, the Awami League, in 1975, suddenly switched Bangladesh to a presidential form of government with the Bangladesh Krishak Sramik Dal as the only legal party with the recounted civil liberty restrictions. However, that AL/BKSAL rule unexpectedly ended when a violent coup killed Mujib with most members of his family on August 15, 1975 — the BKSAL stood dissolved and the earlier Awami League was, for a span, not visibly active.

Besides, Nazimuddin, a scion of the Urdu-speaking Nawab family in Dhaka, did not have a mainstream base in East Pakistan. Nurul Amin, a veteran politician and an excellent gentleman in personal life, did not manipulate the 1954 election to stay in power. He acknowledged his defeat by a former student leader. Most Muslim League leaders in East Pakistan, and West Pakistan also, were too old to venture into their (Muslim League) party open-endedly staying in power. Compared with the elderly Muslim League leaders, Mujib and his cohorts were younger, active and ambitious. To an extent, the Awami League leaders carried a bitter memory of the earlier United Front times (1954–58) when their main partner (Krishak Sramik Party) offered them less than their perceived share of power.

After the 1954 election, those groups and leaders who highlighted East Pakistan’s language demands and numerous regional grievances gained more political traction. Moreover, the Muslim League failed to retrieve its earlier dominance in East Pakistan while the reeling unpopularity baggage fell over the party since the police firing that killed a few civilians and students on February 21, 1952. They gathered on the Dhaka University campus to claim Bangla as one of Pakistan’s state languages. Anyhow, the Muslim League, still in power, suffered the disastrous defeat in 1954. The East Pakistan Muslim League had other constraints too. Even at the height of its initial rule, the non-Bengali senior bureaucrats inhibited the East Pakistan Muslim League administration, according to various anecdotes. On the other hand, the post-1971 Bangladeshi bureaucracy augmented the Awami League supremacy under Mujib and later. Additionally, the East Pakistan Muslim League was also under the thumb of the All-Pakistan Muslim League headquartered in West Pakistan. While the Muslim League waned so miserably to its opponents in 1954, the 1973 poll, the first voting in independent Bangladesh, was virtually without serious challengers.

The East Pakistan Muslim League-led government’s alleged culpability for the 1952 language killing unleashed the unbending Bhasha Andolan (language movement) — it became the noose around the Muslim League’s neck when the 1954 voting took place. Overall, its partisan authority was still weaker than what the Awami League domination later established for itself in Bangladesh. And, in the regional context, the Muslim Lelague’s sustainability was much more fleeting than the post-1947 Indian National Congress Party’s staying power in India, which really helped the big neighbour to establish its parliamentary institutions.

Once the discredited Muslim League was out of government in 1954, the United Front, the congregation of variegated parties, fell apart. East Pakistani governance deteriorated as the coalition parties chronically changed their sides, for one reason or the other. To a degree, the 1958 martial law in Pakistan justified its unconstitutional interventions on the pretext of East Pakistan’s volatile politics and a range of other excuses. As a result, the anticipated 1959 election never took place and the Ayub regime, repulsive towards parties and politicians, cast a blow to the political parties’ future. Even when Ayub revived parties primarily for bolstering his own interests, the politicians were no longer what they were before 1958. The rump of the long-standing Muslim League did not inherit the party’s influential trajectory in the past. The elderly politicians tried in vain to restore the missing parliamentary democracy where parties were essential to the government’s sustenance. Neither institutionalised parties nor competitive elections took their roots in East Pakistan and other parts of the country during the Ayub regime.

Did the Bangladesh Awami League repeat the same missteps of the earlier East Pakistan Muslim League’s single party dominance? East Pakistan survived for only about two decades, from 1947 to 1971, but Bangladesh’s longevity just crossed half a century as of this writing albeit with a history of volatile politics. The Awami League’s single party rule in the initial years of Bangladesh extracted a heavy price in the most violent coup of 1975, which had thrown the ruling AL/BKSAL into a stupor for many years. When the military leaders switched to civilian regime, it was not the parliamentary regime where the executive treasured solid parties. Those administrations were a little comparable to the Ayub regime. From the time when the parliamentary government returned to Bangladesh in 1991, a working bipartisanship existing between the centre-right Bangladesh Nationalist Party and centre-left Awami League from 1991 to 2006. The period was, in some ways, reminiscent of the years from 1954 to 1958 when changing coalition cabinets demonstrated obvious enthusiasm among the politicians. However, the years from 1991 and 2006 also divided Bangladesh by the intense protests and non-stop demonstrations between the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and the Awami League. When one party won the election, the other party vehemently rejected the outcomes — partisan walloping of ‘rigging’ and ‘subtle rigging’ still resonate from the past.

After the 1975 tragedy, the Awami League first returned to power in 1996 and then in the next election in 2001, the Awami League lost to the Bangladesh Nationalist Party. After the military-backed caretaker government’s supervised election in 2008, the Awami League regained power with a modicum of support of the smaller parties. After that, the party alignments changed ominously. Prime minister Sheikh Hasina upended the non-partisan election supervision and the election disputes nosedived into unyielding confrontations.

Following two exceptionally controversial elections in 2014 and 2018, blemished by boycotts, death, violence and heavy swindling, the Awami League again reached the height of power as the virtual solo authority. At this writing, Bangladesh stands at the abyss of dreadful party politics and an unyielding stand-off over elections. Are asymmetric parties in Bangladesh and former East Pakistan the disquieting twins? Did their saga go back to 1947 when Pakistan was born? Certain equivalence exists between the parties in the earlier East Pakistan and the independent Bangladesh, but the two manifestations are less than identical.

Nevertheless, a few lessons from the 1954 elections that toppled the Muslim League’s dominance in East Pakistan and the subsequent Bangladeshi parties’ encounters are pertinent to the understanding of the existing deadlock haunting Bangladesh: (a) the East Pakistan Muslim Lelague’s earlier miscalculation of its supremacy later reappeared in Bangladesh with tragic and lop-sided consequences; (b) the obliteration of a hegemony does not necessarily guarantee stable political parties as evidenced in East Pakistan; (c) the single-party control deepens frustration and gaps between parties and the political actors; and (d) the worst of all, it polarises the country.

Bangladeshi parties now edge on the unfulfilled institutional paradigms, on the one end, and intermittent single party domination, on the other, that excludes, on one excuse and the other, the rival parties, their mentors, and cohorts. Bangladesh needs reforms that bid for the big and smaller parties coming together with a changed mindset for structural realignments. Along with the cherished civil rights, a liberal democracy needs a band of competing parties plus free and fair elections. Political parties, worthy of their names, face a paradoxical mission — legitimately acquiring sustainable power as well as gracefully staying out of it after losing a fair contest.

 

M Rashiduzzaman is a retired academic. He writes from Glassboro, NJ, USA.  This article pulls from his expected book – Parties and Politics in East Pakistan 1947-71: Political Inheritances of Bangladesh.

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