Politics in Bangladesh, especially in this season of elections, appears to be replete with irony.
We have Dr Kamal Hossain providing leadership to the Jatiya Oikya Front through acknowledging the primacy of the dhaaner sheesh -- sheaf of paddy -- symbol of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party.
Of course, the former foreign minister has every right to devise a strategy for his political future through means he considers feasible. The irony here, though, is that he was once a votary of the boat symbol of the Awami League, and at one point, particularly after his defeat at the presidential election of November 1981, did not have any kind words about the sheaf of paddy.
But, yes, politics can indeed throw up surprises of an unexpected sort. Think here of Jagjivan Ram, the veteran Indian politician whose links with Indira Gandhi were at one point considered too strong to be given a shake.
He stayed with her right till the end of the Emergency. And then he moved away from her with alacrity the moment she decided to go for fresh elections in 1977. There was rich irony there. You might now be tempted to ask if politics is all about irony. Well, it often is. Sometimes, though, irony gets to be a little too pronounced to be ignored.
How does one explain the fact that Professor Abu Sayeed, having devoted his entire career to the AL, has now gravitated to the Gono Forum? To be sure, being with the Gano Forum is not a problem. Adopting the sheaf of paddy is.
When he campaigns for the Jatiya Sangsad between now and the elections, he will certainly speak of Bangabandhu, of the War of Liberation. And then will come the crucial question: How does he reconcile his old loyalty to the boat with his new enthusiasm for the sheaf of paddy?
Such reflections necessarily take one back to the past. Time was when Zulfikar Ali Bhutto declaimed in Pakistan -- and that was in 1963 -- that Field Marshal Mohammad Ayub Khan ought to be declared president for life. Bhutto was young, ambitious, brash, and oleaginous.
Three years later, he turned his back on his benefactor and went about plotting his downfall. That is irony for you, as there was irony in Nikita Khrushchev’s condemnation of Joseph Stalin in 1956. A Stalin loyalist, he nevertheless gathered the courage to defy his leader three years after the latter’s death.
The story will not be complete without a reference to Malaysia, where an authoritarian Mahathir Mohamad left no stone unturned to humiliate his one-time protégé Anwar Ibrahim on charges of sodomy. Today, as he serves a fresh new stint in office as head of government, he oversees the former victim of his predatory politics prepare to take over from him.
In the South Asian sub-continent, political irony has been part of history for as long as we can remember. Muhammad Ali Jinnah was an active and leading figure in the Indian National Congress, until his growing differences with Gandhi caused him to change course.
Here was a secular, thoroughly modern politician compelled to look for new moorings. He ended up providing absolute leadership to the Muslim League. The Jamaat-e-Islami of Abul A’ala Maududi condemned the idea of Pakistan and denigrated Jinnah, revered by his people as Quaid-e-Azam, as Kafir-e-Azam. In 1971, it took upon itself the role of a brutal defender of Pakistan through assisting the Pakistan army in the genocide of Bengalis.
Sher-e-Bangla’s United Front ministry in East Bengal was dismissed barely two months after it was elected overwhelmingly in March 1954. That did not stop him from subsequently joining the central government in Karachi as interior minister and later as governor of East Bengal.
They were flip-flops, yes. But that rich tenor of irony cannot be missed in any study of the man. And here’s more irony for us: Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy was a vocal defender of the Pakistan concept in the 1940s and served as Pakistan’s prime minister in the 1950s. Once he was gone from the scene in late 1963, it was for his disciple Sheikh Mujibur Rahman to map the path to a future outside Pakistan for the Bengalis.
Speaking of Pakistan, irony has somehow become ingrained in the country’s political culture. The military has continued to dominate the show. It was the military which raised ZA Bhutto to the pinnacle of power; and it was the military which sent him to the gallows. Minus the gallows, the military has been behaving exactly the same way with Nawaz Sharif.
The new showboy of the military is Imran Khan. One quite cannot predict how the future will turn out for a man whose rise to office, as distinct from power, was engineered by the soldiers.
Much irony is being played out in Sri Lanka these days. Once a minister in Mahinda Rajapaksa’s government, Maithripala Sirisena turned against his leader, teamed up with Ranil Wickremesinghe, and defeated Rajapaksa for the presidency. His friendship with Wickremesinghe going sour, he has tried bringing his former leader back into the corridors of power, as prime minister. It is irony that has precipitated a grave constitutional crisis for the country.
Badruddoza Chowdhury’s father Kafiluddin Chowdhury had AL politics ingrained in him. Reza Kibria’s father died upholding the spirit of the AL. A sad spectacle today is of the Bangabandhu soldier Kader Siddiqui taking comfortably to the sheaf of paddy in his new pursuit of politics.
“Irony,” said Elizabeth Bibesco once, “is the hygiene of the mind.”
That opens the door to newer arguments, certainly.
Syed Badrul Ahsan is Editor-in-Charge, The Asian Age.