BANGLADESH practically emerged independent this day, 53 years ago, after a nine-month war of national liberation against the occupation forces of Pakistan. The Bangladesh war, politically presided over by the Awami League with the help of neighbouring India, was won when the Pakistan forces surrendered to the joint forces of Bangladesh and India in Dhaka on December 16, 1971.
Nevertheless, when the people of Bangladesh happily celebrate the 53rd anniversary of its national victory today, the League that politically led the liberation war is nowhere on the scene and India that helped earn the country鈥檚 independence is disliked by most of its people. Sheikh Hasina鈥檚 Awami League that had retained power through rigged elections particularly since 2014 and had autocratically ruled the country for 15 years since 2008, was overthrown amid a democratically oriented student-mass uprising on August 5 this year, forcing Hasina to flee Dhaka and take refuge in Delhi. Delhi, after all, provided continuous political and diplomatic support for Hasina鈥檚 authoritarian regime for the past 15 years, obviously in exchange for many an undue privilege granted by Dhaka. Leaders of Indian political and diplomatic establishments would do well to have some reflections on whether they did pursue the right path, in terms of doing justice to the potential of mutually beneficial relationship between the two countries, in continuously supporting the League鈥檚 authoritarian regime against the collective interests of the people of Bangladesh. The League is also free to reflect on whether the party has done justice even to itself, let alone the whole country, by distorting the liberation war narrative, repressing political opponents and intellectual dissenters, destroying various state institutions for partisan gains, weakening the economy by plunders and capital flights, committing crimes against humanity by conducting enforced disappearances and, finally, brutally killing more than a thousand political protesters before being overthrown from power.
Meanwhile, the interim government of Muhammad Yunus, installed on the victory of a bloodied student-mass uprising against the League鈥檚 autocratic regime, needs to reflect on the hopes and aspirations that the democratically oriented people had fought for in the July-August period. The slogans, written on the wall during the mass uprising, some of those are still visible in the cities, clearly suggest that the people fought to pave the way for implementing certain democratic ideals in society that the people had fought the country鈥檚 liberation war for 鈥� equality, social justice and human dignity. The interim government, which is not an elected one but derives legitimacy from the victory of the people鈥檚 movement, is not expected to solve all the problems that Bangladesh is confronting now. However, it is expected to carry out some democratic reforms that would, on the one hand, pave the way for holding genuinely free and fair national elections as soon as possible and, on the other hand, force the next elected government to run affairs of the state under the dictates of the democratic spirit of the country鈥檚 great liberation war.
