The Rise and Fall of Yunus

This week's attack on Rabindranath Tagore's ancestral home in Sirajganj is no mere incident but a stark symptom of Bangladesh's deterioration.

- NILANTHA ILANGAMUWA

Once a cultural sanctuary, it now lies desecrated by mob violence over a trivial dispute-reflecting a nation fraying under extremism, institutional decay, and political chaos. The state's feeble response exposes its waning control, while the turmoil mirrors the catastrophic misjudgements of Chief Adviser Muhammad Yunus's fractured stewardship.

Once revered worldwide as the architect of microfinance and a Nobel laureate whose work redefined social entrepreneurship, Muhammad Yunus's trajectory into Bangladesh's political arena has proved paradoxically corrosive. His appointment as the head of the caretaker government, intended to ensure impartiality and a smooth transition, has instead become synonymous with deepening partisan rancour and administrative shortsightedness. Yunus's virulent antipathy towards the Awami League, and particularly its leader Sheikh Hasina scion of the revered Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman-has become the defining characteristic of his governance.

It is widely known that Sheikh Hasina once sought to imprison Yunus on charges of financial irregularities, charges that Yunus has deftly manipulated to foment public dissent against her and to galvanise efforts not merely to dislodge her from power but to systematically excise her family's enduring imprint on Bangladesh's national consciousness.