The BNP, thirty plus years on
THE Bangladesh Nationalist Party observed its birthday yesterday. For the past thirty-one years, it must be acknowledged, the party has been a pivotal part of Bangladesh's politics despite the circumstances in which it was conceived and the manner in which it was born.
For those among us who tend not to remember, or who genuinely forget, let it be noted that the party was foisted on the nation by the country's first military ruler, the overall objective being the creation of a platform for Ziaur Rahman to present himself as a political figure before the people. In quite a few ways, the move was reminiscent of Field Marshal Mohammad Ayub Khan's in the early 1960s, when Pakistan's first military ruler decided in the infinity of his wisdom that he was his country's destiny. And that destiny could be arrived at through an instrument of a political party, in this case the Convention Muslim League.
There is then, when you consider history, little difference between Zia and Ayub. Both looked upon politicians with disdain and yet both needed to be politicians. Where the two dictators differed was in the way they gave shape to their political organisations. Ayub Khan simply commandeered half of the Pakistan Muslim League and claimed it for his own; Ziaur Rahman cobbled his own party into shape and welcomed into its fold political figures who had once heartily sided with Pakistan in its program of exterminating Bengalis, so-called pro-Chinese leftists who could not stomach the manner in which Bangladesh had waged and won its war of liberation, retired military and civil officers who felt uncomfortable with secular politics and a sprinkling of pro-liberation politicians who thought the BNP would give them the space they quite did not have earlier.
Fundamental to the birth of the BNP was a need on Zia's part to counter the politics of the Awami League. And that came through the adoption of a policy he and his acolytes called Bangladeshi nationalism. To Zia's detractors, and not without reason, "Bangladeshi nationalism" has been a subtle mode of return to the old, discredited two-nation theory which rent India asunder in the 1940s on the premise of communal politics.
In the years since 1978, the BNP has not deviated from its founding principles. It has been in power quite a few times and has obviously enjoyed being custodian of the state. And yet, in all its stints in office, it has hardly demonstrated an ability to govern. Its leading figures, drawn by and large from the elite class, one clearly urban-based and therefore lacking the identification with the masses that Bengali nationalist leaders propounded so well in the 1960s, have proved consistently unable to provide the country with a sense of vision.
The party has enjoyed being in office with Begum Khaleda Zia at its head. It has, on the other hand, remained hamstrung by prejudices it has never been able to shake off. Just how prevalent those prejudices are comes through Khondokar Delwar's insinuation about the Awami League being in a state of glee where its relations with "a particular state" are concerned. That particular state is, of course, India. And, to be sure, the attitude is reflective of the BNP's belief that Bangladesh is a Muslim, rather than a secular, state. That as well as the party's obsession with a redrawing of history, to the detriment of the truths established in 1971, has quite prevented it from offering Bangladesh's people a credible alternative in politics.
More than three decades into its birth, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party needs to go into introspection about its future. That will depend on how it comes to terms with its present or with those moments when it has found itself out of power. The party has, in the years since the restoration of parliamentary democracy in 1991, demonstrated a puzzling degree of indifference to politics every time it has lost an election and gone into opposition.
Its current boycott of the Jatiyo Sangsad (and that has included discussions on the annual budget) has not done it much good. If anything, this cavalier attitude to democratic politics, based as it is on such matters as seating arrangements for its legislators in parliament and the question of whether or not Begum Zia should vacate her cantonment residence, has prevented it from convincing the country that it takes governance seriously.
The Bangladesh Nationalist Party needs to turn around and go for a philosophical transformation of its ideals if it means to be a modernising force geared to addressing the future. It ought to acknowledge the mistakes it has made in the exercise of state power and rethink its position on the interpretation of national history. Most important, its focus should be on reinventing itself, as a party of the masses.
To do that, though, it must be ready to step back from all those thoughts which have, since September 1978, placed it on a confrontational path with the founding principles of the state of Bangladesh. That includes taking a transparent, unambiguous position on issues as critical as the trial of war criminals and its ties with individuals and organisations notorious for their collaboration with the Pakistan military junta in 1971.
Informed and enlightened politics is what the BNP should be ready to offer in these changed times. If it flinches from doing so, the loss will be its own.
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