Liberation 2.0?

India must be actively involved to prevent Bangladesh's return to the East Pakistan days

- Subrata Saha

IN a national broadcast on August 5, 2024, Bangladesh Army Chief General Waker-Uz-Zaman, dressed in combat fatigues, announced that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had resigned, and that the military would establish an interim government. "The country has suffered a lot, the economy has been hit and many people have been killed-it is time to stop the violence." Zaman also announced his plans to consult the president to form a caretaker government. Within three days, on the August 8, Muhammad Yunus took oath as the chief adviser of the country's interim government.

The protests in Bangladesh, which started last month over civil service job quotas, very rapidly escalated into an intensely politicised movement demanding Prime Minister Hasina's resignation. The violence resulted in over 400 deaths since July. Like all previous political turmoil in Bangladesh-or erstwhile East Pakistan-the minority Hindu population, now fallen to about eight per cent, were at the receiving end of the violence. Besides the tragic loss of lives, perhaps the most shocking image that appeared was protesters climbing the statue of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the central figure of Bangladesh's liberation, using hammers to break the statue. Incidentally, Rahman was assassinated by a group of disgruntled Bangladesh Army officials on August 15, 1975, along with most of his family members, except two daughters, one of them being the ousted Prime Minister Hasina.