Bangladesh's troubled history and questions about its political future

Salil Tripathi brings together many strands from the country's history and politics to explain why it looks as it does today: A new nation, still looking to find closure on its blood-soaked past

The land of monsoons and martyrs: A new history of Bangladesh by Salil Tripathi

Published by 

Aleph Book Company

206 pages ₹1,299

 In 2014, Salil Tripathi wrote his first book on Bangladesh. It was called The Colonel Who Would Not Repent: The Bangladesh War and its Unquiet Legacy, and it covered the period from the killing of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman till his daughter Sheikh Hasina was elected as Prime Minister of Bangladesh in 2009. This volume takes the story forward to politics and society in 2026. To those who have read the previous book, some parts will seem familiar. But it brings together many strands from that country’s history and politics to explain why Bangladesh looks as it does today: A new nation, still looking to find closure on its blood-soaked past.

 

 

Because the book is about Bangladesh, you don’t really get a satisfying  account of the complexities of Pakistani politics that led to its creation and after, though the references to General Zia hint at a new direction Pakistan was taking. What was the debate among the elite in Pakistan about the restiveness in East Pakistan? Has Pakistan managed to overcome the humiliation and loss that a lost war represented? The Indian part of the story is related in detail, including an account of a Cabinet meeting at which a blunt Chief of Army Staff, General SHFJ Manekshaw told Prime Minister Indira Gandhi he would get the government’s chestnuts out of the fire provided the timing of the war and its strategy was left to him. It broadly supports the widely held Indian notion that idealism and domestic politics rather than cold strategy was the motivating factor in Mrs Gandhi declaring war on Pakistan and the creation of Bangladesh. This argument sets younger Bangladeshis’ teeth on edge.

 

The core of the book is the story of Lt Col Farooq Rahman, a junior officer in the Bangladesh Army who helped to “mastermind” the 1975 coup in which Mujibur Rahman and most of his family were murdered. During the first interview Mr Tripathi conducted for the book, in 1986, Farooq unabashedly proclaimed his role when he announced, “We killed him… he had to go.” That event and the murders enforced disappearances, rape and pillaging by the Pakistan Army that followed, and the role of the razakars (collaborators) shaped the country’s future political trajectory. The book explores the contradictions of a newly liberated country’s leadership that did to its people precisely what had been done to it. He describes an intolerant streak in the Sheikh’s personality, a trait mimicked by his daughter when she became Prime Minister. It argues that Ms Hasina’s downfall was caused by a permanent prism of pain and personal loss that shaped her politics, buttressed by the state’s coercive apparatus that she used to eliminate everyone who challenged her vision of Bangladesh, whether it was political rivals, judges, journalists or intellectuals. In the moves to bring war criminals to justice and memorialise the martyrs of the war lay a denial of the aspirations of younger people, who sought decent jobs, quality education and health care from her.

 

But, Mr Tripathi says, Mohammad Yunus, who was interim Prime Minister following a youth uprising, could not really address those challenges and succumbed to bypassing the Constitution. India’s closeness to Sheikh Hasina caused a kind of schizophrenia in the relationship: On the one hand, the Bharatiya Janata Party leadership went on about infiltration and Bangladeshi “termites”. On the other, it supported Ms Hasina. In that country, one version of Bangladeshi nationalism was supplanted by another vision of it, leading to profound alienation with India.

 

In Ms Hasina’s downfall, however, lies another threat. In the past, the Jamaat-e-Islami was banned because it was seen as a Pakistani collaborator. But now, because of his many visits to Bangladesh over the years, Mr Tripathi is able to see with clear eyes the Islamisation of Bangladeshi society, which prides itself on being both Bengali and Muslim, and because of that, culturally different from Pakistan. But linguistic identity is slowly being replaced by religious identity, and India, with its shrill anchors and purveyors of majoritarianism, is not helping.

 

The contradiction extends to the empowerment of women. Despite two women Prime Ministers, the country is weighed down by patriarchy. The book illustrates the limits of political power when it comes to women’s rights and the adage that the status of women is usually an issue that only women of status discuss.

 

Mr Tripathi’s research is intensive and formidable and because of his background as a human rights activist and a reporter, he brings to the book an understanding of Bangladesh that is both broad and deep. He writes with compassion and empathy. The accounts of those raped and violated during the war are harrowing because they are stated so baldly. How can a nation heal when it has gone through so much?

 

Mr Tripathi says one of the problems of Bangladesh is its culture of impunity. But equally he worries about unceasing search for retribution and justice. From this book, you get the sense that the country is trembling on a precipice. Mr Tripathi takes you there. This book must be read by everyone who is interested in history, politics and the making of nations.