On February 19, 2023, my uncle, Barrister Nazmul Huda, former minister, veteran politician, and senior lawyer, bid adieu to this world.
After five janazas at the Baitul Aman masjid and the Supreme Court lawn in Dhaka, and the Joypara Pilot High School grounds, Government Padma College filed in Dohar and Shinepukur, attended by thousands, he was laid to rest in his hometown Shinepukur, Dohar.
Almost two weeks after his passing, I write this article in an attempt to summarize his complex, and often misunderstood legacy.
Nazmul Huda was born on January 6, 1943 to Nurul Huda, an industrialist, and the former President of Dhaka Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and Amina Huda. Nazmul Huda studied at Nobokumar Institution in Bakshibazar and Notre Dame College in Dhaka, before undertaking honours and master's degrees in political science at the University of Dhaka. He would later move to London in 1965 to study law and was called to the Bar by The Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn in 1969. He returned to Dhaka to join legal practice and after the country's formation in 1971, would be one of its earliest practicing Barristers, advising national and multinational corporations, and foreign embassies.
Huda then commenced his political career under the close auspices of late President Ziaur Rahman, joining his party Jatiyatabadi Ganatantrik Dal in 1977. In 1978, he became a founding member of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party(BNP), and later the youngest member of the party's standing committee. He would serve BNP for the nextfour and a half decades, until his resignation as its Vice-Chairman in 2012.
He was elected as a Member of Parliament from Dhaka-1 constituency for three consecutive terms in 1991, 1996, and 2001. After resigning from the BNP in 2012, he would then go on to lead the Bangladesh National Alliance (BNA), a coalition of 31 political parties, including Trinamul BNP (Grassroots BNP), which he chaired and sought to align with what he considered the lost essence of the BNP and true vision of late President Ziaur Rahman.
As the Information Minister (1991-1996) of the first democratically elected government to lead Bangladesh after almost a decade of military rule, he oversaw the introduction of satellite television in Bangladesh. This allowed Bangladeshi households to watch foreign TV channels, such as the BBC and CNN with a click of a button, for the first time. It put a much-needed end to the state-run BTV's monopoly over household viewership, with it having been the only channel that was available on TV -- a radically, and perhaps inconceivable context, from the hyper availability of media that we have since become accustomed to. While this introduction was underway, he arranged for parliamentary debates and election coverage from the US and UK to be screened in BTV for a couple of hours each day, as Bangladesh transitioned back into a democracy.
As the Communications Minister (2001-2006), he oversaw the construction of the Mohakhali Flyover in Dhaka, Bangladesh's first such overpass. During his tenure as the Communications Minister, the construction of over 25 major bridges was also completed to improve connectivity across the country, including but not limited to the Bangladesh-UK Friendship Bridge (aka Bhairab Bridge over the Meghna river), the 6th China-Bangladesh Friendship Bridge (over Dhaleshwari river), Arial Khan Bridge (over Arial Khan river), Gabkhan Highway Bridge (over Gabkhan Channel), Lalon Shah Bridge (over Padma river) and the Khan Jahan Ali Bridge(over Rupsa river). He also took a strong stance against the ever pressing issue of road fatalities caused by reckless driving and cost minimization practices of bus owners, and introduced a ban on vehicles over the age of twenty years in an attempt to prohibit the operation of unfit vehicles (which remains a leading cause of road deaths and injuries in the country).
Alongside politics, he maintained his legal practice. In 1997, he was elected as the President of the Bangladesh Supreme Court Bar Association, and promoted the welfare of lawyers and dignity of the Bar, as acknowledged by the current Chief Justice of Bangladesh, Hasan Foez Siddique, and Attorney General, AM Amin Uddin,when they paid tributes at his janaza in the Supreme Court. For instance, during his tenure as President, he raised funds to build the Supreme Court Bar Association Auditorium to provide a civic space within the premises of the apex court of the land for leading legal minds to debate on contemporary legal issues, which has since been used to host countless seminars, dialogues, and conferences by lawyers and judges alike.
Yet, it is not my intention to exhaustively list my uncle's major corporeal contributions to the country's infrastructure over the course of his long career as a statesman and lawyer, not least because I would not be able to, even if I tried. Nor is it my intention to address the merit of the corruption cases filed against him post-1/11 since that would require a highly technical, legal discussion on the veracity of the contested evidentiary premise on which they stood (which caused even the two branches of the Supreme Court to reach differing conclusions). Not to mention, Bangladesh's consistently dire position in the World Justice Project's Rule of Law index (currently 127 out of 140 countries) raises wider concerns about the judiciary's perceived position as the neutral arbiter of truth.
My intention instead is to attempt to untangle his politico-legal legacy by discussing the seldom acknowledged. Having suffered the brunt of Bangladesh's vindictive political system as a teenager during the military backed dictatorship in 1/11, I was resolute to keep a safe distance away from Bangladeshi politics, and therefore never ended up discussing politics with my uncle. Therefore, I had little prior knowledge to go by. However, as a researcher by training, I sought to understand his legacy by evidence-based analysis of published texts rather than salutary anecdotes by using his name as a search term in various databases ranging from Google Books to Google Scholar to SOLO (Oxford University's Bodleian Libraries' online search engine). I hoped to carve out his legacy from that which was written about him not only after his death, but more importantly before it. I soon found myself buried in an array of book excerpts, articles, and news-archives.
In most of the news reports about his passing, all invariably mentioned that he was “expelled” from BNP in 2010, while some also mentioned that he then himself resigned in 2012. None of the news reports, or indeed public discourse about his rupture with BNP, probe what the cause of his initial expulsion and later resignation was. Yet, delving into what prompted his expulsion from the BNP in 2010 and later resignation in 2012 provides essential context as to the values he stood for and his oft-forgotten legacy of challenging blind party loyalty.
On November 12, 2010, Khaleda Zia was evicted from her cantonment residence after the Directorate of Military Lands and Cantonments handed an eviction notice to her the year before on the grounds of it being contrary to land allotment rules within a cantonment. A court battle ensued which ultimately resulted in her eviction being upheld by the High Court Division of the Supreme Court. About 10 days after her eviction, Huda commented on a point of law in response to a media inquiry, arguing that a more plausible legal strategy which may have prevented the eviction is if Zia's lawyers had applied for a stay order from the High Court Division instead of waiting for the court hearing to take place. Huda also voiced disagreement with Khaleda Zia's decision to call a countrywide hartal two days before Eid-ul-Azha since it would cause the general public great hardship. Thereafter, on November 22, 2010, he was expelled from the BproposedNP for his recent "anti-organizational remarks" to the media.
Nevertheless, on April 6, 2011, his membership in the party was restored. Owing to widespread political instability and clashes between BNP demonstrators and the ruling party and law enforcement, he began insisting for the two-party leaders to urgently have a civic discussion in person to break the political standoff. This, however, fell on deaf ears, as the confrontational violence continued with the ordinary people of the nation paying its price.
In 2012, political violence in Bangladesh reached a fever pitch after the disappearance of senior BNP leader Ilias Ali on April 18. 2012. As Zafar Sobhan described in a Guardian op-ed at the time: “As news of Ali's disappearance spread, the opposition unleashed an orgy of violence in Dhaka and the northern district of Sylhet (where Ali is a former MP), smashing up vehicles and setting fire to 10 buses. One bus driver, who was asleep in his vehicle, was burned alive. During the three days of general strikes more cars were torched, and daily clashes between the protesters enforcing the general strike and police, left two protesters dead and more than 50 seriously injured.”
Thereafter, on April 25, 2012, BNP leader Khaleda Zia gave a stern ultimatum to the government, asking them to "return" Ali within four days or face even tougher action.
Due to the carnage and mayhem resulting from the seemingly endless clashes between the BNP and law enforcement agencies that crippled the country and ravaged public safety at the time, Huda did what is even more unthinkable today than it was 11 years ago: he issued a reverse ultimatum to his own political leader, Khaleda Zia. He argued that ‘in the wake of the current 'catastrophic' condition of the country, there is only 'one' way to peace, prosperity, and development -- consensus between the two-party chiefs." To that end, I urge very specifically to our leader Khaleda Zia to call Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to sit in a dialogue within June 5." On May 31, 2012, at a press conference in National Press Club, he proposed a formula for the formation of an interim government involving representatives of both the ruling and opposition parties to ensure it is fair and acceptable to both parties, in light of the 2011 constitutional amendment by the Awami League government and preceding Supreme Court decision striking down the requirement to hold national elections under a caretaker government system initially introduced in the constitution in 1996 (by the BNP, ironically at the behest of the Awami League, who at that time stood in opposition). He reiterated the need for the two leaders to engage in civic dialogue and agree on the structure and conditions of the interim government that could oversee the next (2014) election, urging “It is possible. The people are eagerly waiting for it.”
True to his word, on June 6, 2012, Huda resigned from the BNP as its Vice-Chairman over Khaleda Zia's refusal to engage in dialogue with Sheikh Hasina which he had viewed as the only way to secure democracy and public safety in Bangladesh. 11 years later, which saw the uncontested election in 2014, the arrest and solitary detention of the only opposition leader, the deaths and injuries of countless in political violence, and a highly controversial election in 2018, the importance of Huda's 2012 proposal and emphasis on holding a two-way dialogue between both political leaders to ensure the health of a two-party democracy has become more evident than ever before.
Yet, as my search results would show, my uncle's history of pushing for democratic governance over party loyalty dates back to his tenure as BNP's Information Minister in the early 90s, where he played a vital role in formulating a neutral caretaker government to ensure electoral justice -- an issue of enduring relevance today, ahead of the upcoming general elections. In March 1994, the opposition parties, led by Awami League, in the fifth Jatiya Sangsad left the chamber demanding that the government agree to their proposal for holding all future parliamentary elections under the Non-Party Caretaker Government system, headed by the Chief Justice and solely composed of judges. As Professor Nizam Ahmed outlines in the second chapter of his recently published book Democratic Governance in Bangladesh: Dilemmas of Governing (Routledge, 2022):
The demand was made following allegations of massive rigging by the ruling party to win a parliamentary by-election. The opposition argued that, since elections were traditionally rigged under party governments, it would be necessary to assign the task of holding elections to an NPCG. The government summarily rejected the opposition proposal arguing that it was unconstitutional; hence, illegal.
But all of a sudden, Information Minister Nazmul Huda, in an interview with a vernacular daily, advanced a proposal that was almost similar to the one proposed by the opposition. The action of the minister annoyed both the PM and other cabinet members, as it directly conflicted with the official policy of the government. The PM initially tried to persuade Huda to retract his statement, but Huda defended his position and expressed his determination to adhere to the proposal. In the context of his intransigent attitude, the PM asked Huda to resign, which he did promptly. In an interview with an English language weekly, Huda observed that, despite knowing there would be fallout, he still made the proposal because he was convinced that it would save the country (Dhaka Courier, November 11, 1995: 11).
Contrary to Huda's proposal, BNP would hold an uncontested election in February 1996, boycotted by the main opposition parties, and secure a predictably landslide victory. Nevertheless, the BNP would eventually concede to the demands for a caretaker government and in March 1996, the 13th amendment to the Constitution would be passed in Parliament. This amendment allowed elections to be conducted under a neutral caretaker government in June 1996, which brought the Awami League to power, with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in the reins for the first time. Despite BNP's loss to Awami League in the general election, Huda, would be re-elected in his Dhaka-1 constituency in a landslide victory, receiving almost twice as many votes in the June 1996 election (38,172 compared to the 20,005 votes received by his nearest rival, Md Hasem Ali of the Awami League) -- attesting to his impenetrable popularity among his constituency.
As a lawyer and a politician -- Huda was governed by two sets of value systems that would often come to clash: one based on the rule of law, and the other based on obedient party loyalty. The three examples above signify, at least to me, that when these value systems clashed, he acceded to a vision of democratic governance over blind partisanship, despite repeatedly and ultimately paying the price for it.As we move closer to the next round of general elections, these examples from the life of Barrister Nazmul Huda (and the political lessons contained therein) will be of more than merely anecdotal value to those who wish to learn from our history in their aspiration to preserve a democratic future for our country.
Taqbir Huda is a legal researcher currently pursuing an MSc in Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Oxford. He can be reached at [email protected].
