Last updated on August 8th, 2024 at 01:14 pm
Sheikh Hasina, the Prime Minister of Bangladesh has resigned as the protesters attacked the Gono Bhaban, her state residence today at around 4 P.M., 5 August 2024. As a result, an interim government is on the way to be formed led by Army Chief General Waker-Uz-Zaman who refused to cooperate with Sheikh Hasina to suppress the protests during the curfew sealing her fate.
She has been under immense pressure as a Prime Minister of the country since the anti-quota protestation rocked the country in early July this year. The government declared a curfew and strengthened the police force to suppress the countrywide protestation.
The country has seen nearly 400 deaths as a result of the clash between the protesters, security personnel and the ruling party men.
The fear of mass arrest of students and the protest organisers gripped the country for almost a month, and ultimately resulted in the resignation of Sheikh Hasina in the early period of her fourth term as Prime Minister.
However, hundreds of thousands celebrate that the Awami League Government has fallen, ending an authoritative and repressive era while thousands like me are utterly broken to see that the golden time of Bangladesh and in fact the period of secular polity ended.
Although Awami League and Sheikh Hasina may not be the best party or person to lead the nation, it led by Sheikh Hasina single-handedly has had the country emerged from the so-called “bottomless basket” to an emerging one economically.
Keeping aside her totalitarian attitude, Bangladesh has experienced immense progress in many sectors, especially in infrastructure, human development, communal harmony and women empowerment. I think many Bangladeshis would agree with me that numerous mega projects would remain still dreams had it not been for Sheikh Hasina.
Because every newly assumed ruling party had always maintained a tendency to repel the projects started by the outgoing party, creating a vicious cycle.
The nation would still have remained a breeding ground for Islamic fanaticism and terrorism had it not been suppressed or handled by Sheikh Hasina with an iron feast, the way she held on to the power. The dreams of Islamists of theocracy would have been fulfilled by now the way the nation had been steered with sectarianism undermining secular polity nearly two decades ago. The communal harmony would have been worse had it not been Awami League to handle it, though it failed to do it way less than expected.
Awami League was the party-led independence movement during Bangladesh’s struggle for freedom from Pakistani oppression in 1971 empowered by secularism.
Yet the party’s dream of ruling the country ended at an unprecedented and unexpected time and month in which the party celebrated the death anniversary of its founding father of the nation, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
Though Bangladesh has experienced unprecedented progress in many social sectors, it is now time for us to see what the future has in store for us.
However, some people are dreaming about turning the country into a Muslim state with Islam as its ruling ideology. Fanaticism again has found the foothold of exclusivism. Vandalising the statue of Themis on the Supreme Court premises in Bangladesh speaks volumes of what the nation can expect from the protesters in the near future. The statue was under attack by a section of Islamic fanatics a few years ago.
“History does not always repeat itself. Sometimes it just yells, ‘Can’t you remember anything I told you?’ and lets fly with a club”.
John W. Cambell Jr.
Moreover, the fate of outgoing party men, religious and intellectual minorities, atheists and libertarian-minded remain uncertain and at the mercy of time. People who desire to see the nation shattered and plunged into the financial gutter will certainly see their heyday ahead.
The agitators have already started vandalising houses, property and temples of religious minorities. Looting of properties and businesses and killing of outgoing party men going unabated. Communal harmony is already taking its toll.
Nonetheless, some people grew monotony to see one ruling woman for a long time, and also people need to relearn and re-educate with the history of Bangladesh written two decades ago. And why the Bangladesh Army refused to support Sheikh Hasina in such an important trajectory of time is I think purely an internal motive driven by fear of losing the career opportunity in the UN Peacekeeping, Bangladesh being the second largest contributor.
How better or fairer the future regimes will do than Awami League only time will tell by repeating the unexpected in an unprecedented manner.
As the American writer John W. Cambell Jr. writes “History does not always repeat itself. Sometimes it just yells, ‘Can’t you remember anything I told you?’ and lets fly with a club.”
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