By Daya Varma
Notwithstanding compromises made by the Sheikh Hasina-led Awami League in the past, its impressive victory against Zia Khaleda’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) in the December 29 elections in Bangladesh is a refreshing development and a decisive verdict against fundamentalism.
The Indian subcontinent is never short of springing surprises of optimism notwithstanding chronic poverty and interludes of violence and discord. The backward nation of Nepal rose like no one had ever imagined; a despotic monarch is gone and the Communist Party of Nepal is on a pragmatic rather than a reckless path. The ever powerful General Musharraf is finally gone; that is an achievement although no one is sure that the control of the Pakistan Army on civil life has ended. Vajpayee’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which allowed the massacre of thousands of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002, had to lick its wounds in the 2004 parliamentary elections. Not only that – in the recent provincial elections too, BJP’s hold on some states and its influence in other provinces has declined. The Mumbai terrorist attack has not materialized into a major India-Pakistan conflict – at least as yet. In the recent elections in Kashmir, far more people went to the polls than can be accounted for due to police and army coercion; an entirely new situation is ripe for a meaningful solution.
To top it all, the people of Bangladesh did something which surprised even the hardened skeptics. First they forced an election against the wishes of the military-cum-bureaucracy. And when the elections were finally held on December 29, 2008, fundamentalists were not just edged out but rather trounced. It is estimated that the voting percentage was nearly 70%; this in itself was a momentous warning to military-bureaucratic rule, which invariably thrives on promises to root out political and other forms of corruption.
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(Submitted by Feroz Mehdi)