The BNP and that missing 28th point

Syed Badrul Ahsan:

The steps taken by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party in recent weeks toward initiating a reform of the state of Bangladesh certainly make good reading. That the party has come forth with the program, encapsulated in as many as 27 points and defined as the Structural Reform of the State, is encouraging given that for the first time since it was last in power, it has felt the necessity of shaping a policy plank it hopes will propel it back to power.

The BNP would have the nation know that through these 27 points it means to reform the state of Bangladesh. There certainly can be no argument on the goals -- law and order, an end to corruption, depoliticizing state institutions, et cetera -- it has set for itself.

There is little question that Bangladesh's people would like to move into a more secure and egalitarian future, that they look forward to a stable social order where governance will be beyond question.

But reforming the state appears to be a tall order, especially when the party has carefully avoided dealing with the issue of how it means to reinterpret its attitude to the history of the country.

Even as the party wages its campaign for elections that should be above board, there is the very legitimate inquiry of whether, if at all, it means to carry out reforms within its internal structure on this question of how it means to handle the nation's history.

The question is one of grave significance, given the record set by the founder of the BNP and upheld by party leaders and activists, in an interpretation of Bangladesh's history that has not gone down well with the people of the country.

Let it be recalled that following the violent removal of constitutional government and the assassination of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, his family and the four national leaders in 1975, General Ziaur Rahman and his junta turned the entire narrative of the War of Liberation on its head.

The beginning was made through Khondokar Abdul Hamid, the journalist-turned-Zia confidant, informing an Ekushey audience at the Bangla Academy in February 1976 of the new concept of nationalism the regime intended to foist on the country.

In the garb of “Bangladeshi nationalism,” the idea was clearly aimed at an undermining of Bengali nationalism that had been at work throughout the 1960s and in 1971, served as the engine driving the nation's armed struggle for freedom.

“Bangladeshi nationalism” was a clear deviation from the fundamental moorings of the state of Bangladesh. It caused a major cleavage in politics, indeed giving rise to the feeling -- and for very credible reasons -- that it was an assault on secular politics in the country. In clear terms, “Bangladeshi nationalism” was a first step in the inauguration of anti-history in the years between 1975 and 1996.

The BNP would like to reform Bangladesh, to remake it, which is all fine. But it has said nothing at all about the spurious nationalism it has worked on. Hamid's announcement at Bangla Academy came in tandem with the patent move by the regime to organize a “seerat conference,” presided over by MG Tawab, the air force chief, at Suhrawardy Udyan. That was a second step in the rolling back of the cardinal principles on which the Bengali nation waged a sustained guerrilla war against the Pakistan occupation forces in 1971.

General Zia's adherents would have done themselves and the country much good had they focused on the move by the regime in its early days to incorporate the odious Indemnity Ordinance in the fifth amendment to the constitution in 1979.

That the ordinance, indeed the legal barriers to a prosecution of the assassins of the Father of the Nation, shamed the country before the world, is a point on which the BNP needs to expend clarity of thought. The fifth amendment violated the constitution. The BNP owes it to history to repudiate the act.

And history, for 21 years and again for five years -- between 2001 and 2006 -- was the casualty. Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the Mujibnagar government, the political dimensions of the War of Liberation were simply airbrushed out of the national historical narrative.

The ramifications were grave. An entire generation of Bengalis, born after the war, grew into youth on false notions of national history. They were prevented from learning of the actual nature of the struggle for national self-expression and it was not until June 1996, when the Awami League returned to power, that history in its formidable nature was restored.

The BNP's 27 points speak of all the good the party means to do if it returns to power. One has no arguments with that objective. But the party has not explained the reasons why it accommodated, in its years in office, elements notorious for their collaboration with the Yahya-Tikka-Niazi occupation regime of 1971. Through placing these local enemies of Bangladesh in ministerial positions in the country whose very emergence they violently opposed, the party humiliated the nation.

The party has said nothing about this past record. That is unfortunate. In recent days, Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir has admirably condemned the assault on Hindu temples in a region of the country. That is a departure from the horrific images the nation was treated to when the BNP returned to power in October 2001. It is precisely this sort of image, as its secretary general sees it, that the BNP ought to develop and project and build on as it moves into an election year which promises to be stimulating.

Tampering with history has caused incalculable damage to Bangladesh. The legacy of military rule, along with the sordid tale of a violent coup d'etat led by a minister for commerce and carried out by a bunch of majors and colonels, effectively put a brake on the goals we had set for ourselves as a people's republic.

The ramifications continue to cloud our view of the world and the world's opinion of us as a nation ready and willing to graduate to full and unfettered secular democracy.

The BNP's 27 points are appreciable. The 28th should have been there as well, as a pledge that the party, besides advocating a reform of the country, will reinvent itself through a promise to restore the historical structure of the state that was systematically and viciously damaged in the age of darkness we the people were compelled to stumble through.

In a very proper sense of the meaning, the BNP ought to become, finally, part of the national political mainstream. That will take courage and vision. That will demand an ability on its part to reverse its misplaced position on national history.

This nation cannot afford to have a repeat of the years 1975-1996 and 2001-2006.

Writer: Journalist and biographer

Courtesy: Dhaka Tribune