Even as India and Bangladesh’s relations remain frosty, Pakistan’s founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s death anniversary is being observed in Dhaka. What gives? Is Bangladesh in search of a new father of the nation?

If you mess with founding figures, you often end up messing with your head. You don’t need Freud to understand the pitfalls of a father complex; you only need to look at the Indian subcontinent’s troubled history and how countries have clung to their founding fathers to maintain a semblance of stability. In India, MK Gandhi’s questionable sleeping habits or his advice to Hindus during the bloody Noakhali riots of 1946 are ignored, as he continues to grace currency notes and remains the nation’s conscience keeper, even in the afterlife. In Pakistan, Jinnah’s Shia lineage, his Parsi wife, and his love for pork are whitewashed from history, as he remains the Quaid-e-Azam. Until 5 August this year, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman enjoyed similar historical whitewashing and held the status of Father of the Nation in Bangladesh. 

After Mujib and most of his family were killed by the army in 1975, he became synonymous with Bangladesh. His statues dotted the country’s map, films and TV serials about him were produced with unfailing regularity, and stamps and graphic novels were released on his birth anniversary. However, on 5 August, his daughter Sheikh Hasina, the longest-serving prime minister of Bangladesh, had to flee the country in a military helicopter after student protests over quota reforms in government jobs turned into a rallying cry for her ouster. 

In images and videos broadcast from Bangladesh, Mujib’s statues were pulled down, his official residence Dhanmondi 32, which also housed the Bangabandhu Memorial Museum, was set on fire, and a raucous mob did the ‘lungi dance’ in full glare of TV cameras on his death anniversary. This begs the question: if a nation scratches out its founding figure from its collective memory, who fills that void? In a historic, or as some would say unthinkable, move, Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s death anniversary was commemorated in Dhaka for the first time in the country’s history. The event was organised by the Nawab Salimullah Academy at the Tofazzal Hossain Manik Miah Hall at the National Press Club in Dhaka, featuring Urdu songs and poetry to honour Jinnah’s legacy, according to the Dhaka Tribune.

“If Bangladesh had not been part of Pakistan in 1947, we would have been in the same position as Kashmir today, with the Indian junta holding weapons to our necks. Bangladesh gained independence because of Pakistan, which Jinnah helped create,” The News International quoted Md Samsuddin, the convener of the event, as saying. “Why should we change the name of Allama Iqbal Hall or Jinnah Avenue? These changes were made because Delhi wanted them, but we did not. Bangladesh must foster strong relations with China and Pakistan,” he added.

Until Hasina’s ouster, such an event and public proclamations praising Jinnah would have been unthinkable. Now, as Mujib has almost become a persona non grata in his own country, will Jinnah take his place?

Exit India, enter Pakistan?

In the age of 30-second attention spans, the TikTok generation in Bangladesh may find it difficult to recall what happened to their country more than half a century ago. But a simple Google search will tell them that East Pakistan became Bangladesh to escape West Pakistan’s linguistic, cultural, and political impositions. The people fought a bloody war and endured the excesses of the West Pakistani Army to reject Urdu and preserve the Bangla language, asserting their right to self-determination. There are many versions of the events between 26 March and 16 December, 1971, but no unbiased historian would dispute that the East Bengali guerrilla fighters, known as the ‘Mukti Bahini,’ were trained and helped by the Indian military to fight back the West Pakistani Army. 

Since 2010, the International Crimes Tribunal of Bangladesh has indicted, tried, and sentenced several people to life imprisonment or death for their actions during the conflict. What were those actions? An estimated 3 million people were killed, and between 2,00,000 and 4,00,000 Bengali women were raped during ‘Operation Searchlight,’ launched by then-Pakistani president General Yahya Khan to subdue the Bangladeshi population. In ‘The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide’, American journalist Gary J Bass gives a harrowing account of the loss Bangladesh suffered at the hands of Pakistan.

West Pakistan eventually surrendered on 16 December, 1971, known as ‘Victory Day,’ and Bangladesh was born. Since then, through Bangladesh’s troubled journey with secularism and democracy, India has, for most parts, been a steady partner. Relations between the two countries thickened under Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Hasina. Their camaraderie made India and Bangladesh close strategic partners in counter-terrorism and the largest trading partners in the Indian subcontinent.  

Not everything was well in Bangladesh’s civil society vis-à-vis India even before Hasina’s ouster, though. Bangladeshi fans were out on Dhaka streets celebrating India loss to Australia in the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup 2023 final on 19 November at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad.      

The ‘Boycott India’ campaign, calling for a ban on all Indian products in Bangladesh, began soon after Hasina returned to power on 7 January this year. Bangladesh watchers attributed the growing animosity toward India in Bangladesh to Hasina’s authoritarian rule, which allegedly stifled free speech, jailed political opponents, and expanded the syndicate raj over the country. In Dhaka, whispers branded Hasina as Modi’s dictator. 

Now that Hasina is gone, an interim government led by Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus is in place, and Bangladesh’s relations with Pakistan are visibly improving. 

Nahid Islam, student activist and adviser for information and broadcasting to the interim government, has said Bangladesh wants to resolve the issue of the 1971 Liberation War with Pakistan and strengthen relations between the two countries to ensure a democratic South Asia.

“The comments by Islam, one of the leaders of the students’ movement that toppled the regime of former premier Sheikh Hasina last month, came in the backdrop of a series of meetings between senior players in the interim government led by Muhammad Yunus and Pakistan’s high commissioner to Bangladesh, Syed Ahmed Maroof,” reported the Hindustan Times.

During the meeting with Islam on 1 September, Maroof reportedly said that Pakistan wants to “solve the question of 1971.” 

If 1971 is “solved” and Mujib is relegated to the dustbin of history, can Jinnah’s rise in Bangladesh be stopped?

Also read: Bangladesh protests have implications for India. New Delhi must engage at military level

No Hilsa after Hasina

The commemoration of Jinnah’s death anniversary in Dhaka and the pleasantries exchanged between Islam and Maroof are not stray events. International security analyst and professor, Dr Shahiduzzaman told media persons that Bangladesh should have a nuclear treaty with Pakistan to counter India. 

Lt Col Manoj K Channan (Retd) argues that Bangladesh’s tilt toward Pakistan, especially in the context of military cooperation, could strain diplomatic relations between Dhaka and New Delhi. “India may interpret these actions as Bangladesh attempting to distance itself from its past alignment with India, which could reduce India’s leverage in the region,” he wrote.

Meanwhile, Bangladesh’s fisheries minister Farida Akhtar said that Bangladesh can’t allow the famed Hilsa fish to be exported to India anymore. “It’s an expensive fish and we notice that our own people are unable to have it as all goes to India and what is left behind is too expensive for our people,” she said.

The BBC noted this as “a clear departure from deposed former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s renowned ‘hilsa diplomacy’.

As relations between India and the new Bangladesh become frosty, it is important to remember a nugget from history. Before the Partition of India, in undivided Bengal, the young Sheikh Mujib was an ardent supporter of Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy who later became the prime minister of Pakistan. Suhrawardy, in turn, was a favourite of Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Personal ambitions and the course of history after India’s Partition in 1947 and Bangladesh’s birth in 1971 made Jinnah an inconvenient truth in Bangladesh. As the wheels of history turn, will Jinnah rise again in Bangladesh, formerly known as East Pakistan?

Deep Halder is an author and journalist. He tweets @deepscribble. Views are personal.

(Edited by Aamaan Alam Khan)