Bangladesh today is the archetype of a Muslim, South Asian, post-colonial state. Mass protest has been followed by a military intervention; this happened in Pakistan in 1977, and it is happening now in Bangladesh.
But the military commander who intervened is much smarter and savvier than Pakistan’s General Zia-ul-Haq. Or maybe he is just like Zia; he asked the country's President to appoint an interim setup, which means following the Constitution to the maximum extent possible. He said he would consult the heads of all the political parties except Awami League.
Zia too, established contacts with all political parties except the PPP, the ruling party which was the target of his coup. Zia established himself as Chief Martial Law Administrator. The Bangladesh Army Chief did no such thing and according to a journalist in Dhaka, he is only facilitating the transition to an interim government.
It would not be a stretch to conclude that the coup makers of the 21st century have become smarter. The Bangladeshi Constitution assigns no role to the Army chief or any other military commander, any role in the transition when the Prime Minister of the country resigns from office.
According to Article 57 of the Constitution states that if the Prime Minister resigns or is removed from office, the President shall appoint one of the Members of Parliament to be the Prime Minister, who shall be the leader of the majority party in the House. If there is no clear majority party, the President shall appoint the Member of Parliament who is most likely to command the confidence of the majority of the Members of Parliament. In practice, this means that the President typically appoints a senior member of the ruling party or coalition as the interim Prime Minister, who then advises the President to dissolve Parliament and call new elections.
The two military governments that Bangladesh experienced led to the growth of the military's role in the civilian sector of the economy and government. Bangladesh military officers share a high degree of the anti-India sentiment with their Pakistani counterparts.
By no stretch of the imagination, the Awami League, which ex-Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina headed, could have lost the majority in the legislature after her resignation from the office of Prime Minister. A ruling party remains a ruling party in a parliamentary democracy even after the resignation of the Prime Minister. And therefore, it is certain that the President under normal circumstances would have asked the Awami League to form the next government.
There are two anomalies in the Bangladesh situation. First, what the Army chief is doing in this constitutional process of appointing a new Prime Minister after the incumbent has resigned is unusual. Second, the President is taking far too long to simply ask the next in line at the Awami League to assume the office of Prime Minister.
Here the situation differs from Pakistan’s situation in 1977 — the military commander is savvy and wants the constitutional machinery to play its role. But nonetheless, it is a military intervention. There are two reasons to consider this a military intervention. First, the Bangladesh President did not ask the majority party to form the next government, so this is a major deviation from the constitutional process. Second, as a journalist from Bangladesh told me, the military commander and President intend to consult all political parties in the process of appointing an interim government except the Awami League, which is the majority party.
A journalist friend insisted that that this was not a military coup, and yet with the instinct of an analyst, I exclaimed, “Maybe in this case, your situation is more akin to the Egyptian situation at the time of Mubarak’s ouster, when in the initial stages the military commanders kept waiting in the wings, but surely like Egypt, you will end up having your own Sisi.”
The Bangladeshi Army’s general staff and officers are highly politicized corporate groups, just like their Pakistani counterparts. Historically, they have developed differences and reservations with popular political forces in the country, just like Pakistan military’s top brass has always been in a faceoff with popular political forces.
The two military governments that Bangladesh experienced led to the growth of the military's role in the civilian sector of the economy and government. Bangladesh military officers share a high degree of the anti-India sentiment with their Pakistani counterparts. But obviously, successive governments in Bangladesh have not been as fanatically anti-India as our governments have been over the years. Just like Pakistani popular political leaders, like Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Benazir Bhutto, Nawaz Sharif and now Imran Khan, have operated with a deep mistrust of the military top brass, the Awami League in Bangladesh has always shown a lack of confidence towards the Bangladeshi Army since independence in 1971.
In Bangladesh, the military ranks were deliberately filled by those who fought against the Pakistani Army in the East Pakistan military operation in 1971.
In the initial years of independence, the Awami League government resisted increasing the size of the military. “In 1975 there were about 36,000 men in the defense services in Bangladesh, of whom 30,000 were in the army, 500 in the navy and 5,500 in the air force,” reads a report produced by the Bangladeshi analyst. “Out of those 36,000 men, about 28,000, including 1,000 officers, were ‘repatriates’ from West Pakistan; the remainder belonged to the former East Bengal Regiment and the new group recruited from amongst the Mukti Bahini.”
The Bangladeshi military experienced friction between these two groups from the inception of the country. "The repatriates regarded most of the freedom fighters as secularists, socialists and pro-Indian, while the freedom fighters stereotyped the repatriates as opportunists and pro-Pakistanis,” reads an analysis produced by a Bangladeshi research group. “To the repatriates, the War of Independence was fought with Indian resources and the victory was served by Indians to the Bengalis on a silver platter; to the freedom fighters, the repatriates basked in the Pakistani sun, while the whole Bengali nation was locked in a struggle of life and death. The freedom fighters, on the other hand, complained that the repatriates were greedy enough to enjoy the fruits of independence without suffering for and contributing to it.”
The politicization of the Bangladeshi military took place after the 15 August 1975 coup, carried out by a handful of junior officers with the help of two battalions of the armored corps, and was the first indication of the armed forces’ overt intention to play a political role.
“It was followed by a series of coups and counter coups until 30 May 1981, when General Zia was brutally killed by a group of about twenty mid-level officers at Chittagong in another abortive coup. Bangladesh was placed under martial law for the second time under Lieutenant General H.M. Ershad, from March 1982 to November 1986. The military-dominated civilian regime remained in power until December 1990.”
This is the unfortunate heritage of Muslim post-colonial societies in South Asia; the military assumes a particularly dominant position in society. The Pakistani and Bangladeshi situations are a classic example of how Muslim societies in South Asia have played host to the increasingly ascendent role of their militaries in politics. This could be the result of how Muslim societies perceive their histories to be exceptionally war oriented and its heroes to be military men.
Muslims in pre-colonial India were exceptional poets, musicians, orators, religious scholars, political theorists, statesmen and a lot more. But the history which is taught in Pakistan from Zia’s period onward represents Muslims as warriors. And this construction of the historical past facilitates the rise of the military as a first-rate profession. In Bangladesh, the military ranks were deliberately filled by those who fought against the Pakistani Army in the East Pakistan military operation in 1971.
There were widespread complaints against ex-Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, over her autocratic style of governance and the violent suppression of dissent. But at the same time, she turned Bangladesh's economy around. A military government would be a disaster for Bangladesh; let there be no doubts about that.
But they were later either integrated into a military culture that was highly professional or overawed by those, as I have already stated, were repatriated from West Pakistan and were opposed to the world view of the Sheikh Mujib led Awami League. Even now, the Bangladeshi Army has a culture which is anti-India. Anti-India feelings have been a reality in the Bangladesh army, as indicated by the debate in the initial years which brought forth accusations against the founding father of the nation that he had entered a secret pact with India not to increase the size of Bangladeshi military beyond a certain level.
Military coups in South Asia have become a specialty of South Asia’s Muslim societies. The origins and ethos of militaries in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan are similar—they are all offshoots of the British colonial forces. But in the case of India, the military never even thought about staging a coup. Many analysts attribute this historical fact to the especially stringent coup-proofing measures adopted by India’s first Prime Minister, Jawahar Lal Nehru, who put his generals under extremely tough surveillance. But this does not fully explain the phenomenon of military coups in South Asia’s Muslim states.
I think we need to dig deep and try to ascertain how we have constructed our history and diffused popular narratives about our past. We put too much emphasis on military men as our heroes in Pakistani society. Since Bangladesh has a similar set of outcomes, I think this could be the result of eerie similarities in the construction and diffusion of historical knowledge. The rise of militant groups in Bangladeshi society points towards this as well.
There were widespread complaints against ex-Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, over her autocratic style of governance and the violent suppression of dissent. But at the same time, she turned Bangladesh's economy around. A military government would be a disaster for Bangladesh; let there be no doubts about that. If they are unsure about the veracity of this claim, I would ask the Bangladeshi people to come and learn from Pakistan’s experience.