Bangladesh people’s protest demanding an anti-communal Constitution and conduct of free and fair elections offers lessons for India

The ripples of the protests and regime change in Bangladesh will be felt across the world and in India, writes S.N. Sahu.

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IT is indeed extraordinary that members of the Bangladeshi University Teachers' Network (UTN) apart from strengthening the historic agitation of students of that country spearheading a mass protest against the Sheikh Hasina government, have come out with a written statement for framing a new Constitution of Bangladesh through a Constituent Assembly.

The UTN issued that statement in a press conference organised on the eve of Hasina's resignation as Prime Minister and her subsequent decision to flee the country.

University teachers of Bangladesh in the forefront

It is quite illuminating to note that the UTN admitted that the resignation of Hasina and the dissolution of her government would not provide a remedy to the long-festering problems of Bangladesh.

These problems, the UTN states, are caused by unfair and corrupt electoral practices, the persistence of discrimination in every aspect of governance and society and communal and autocratic features of the present Constitution.

Nowhere in the statement did the UTN demand an Islamic State or predominance of any religion, including Islam, in determining the nature of the State or governance.

Nehru's prescient words on the role of the universities

Such demands made by the people of Bangladesh, specifically the university teachers, bring to mind the words of India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru who, while speaking at Allahabad University, outlined the role a university should play and said it "stands for humanism, for tolerance, for reason, for progress, for the adventure of ideas and for the search for truth".

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He articulated that mission for a university when the country faced a communal conflagration following Partition and warned that "if the temple of learning becomes a home of narrow bigotry and petty objectives, how then will the nation prosper or a people grow in stature?"

"We are not," he said, "going to reach our goal through crookedness or flirting with evil in the hope that it may lead to good."

The teachers and students of the universities of Bangladesh did not flirt with evil and, certainly, they rejected a crooked path. They joined the mass protest for a non-communal and non-discriminatory Constitution and conduct of free and fair elections.

Demand for a new secular Constitution of Bangladesh

The UTN statement asserting for "an anti-discriminatory, democratic" nation by first establishing an interim government and Constituent Assembly reminds us of the demand of our freedom fighters for such institutions for building a new India free from exploitation.

It is heartening that the statement of UTN makes it abundantly clear that the interim government and Constituent Assembly should be mandated to eradicate from the country's current Constitution "all autocratic, communal, anti-people and discriminatory clauses".

In other words, the UTN wants a secular and democratic framework of governance upholding equality and equal opportunity for all regardless of faith or any other identity.

Demand for free and fair elections

The UTN also demands that the interim government of Bangladesh must be accountable and transparent "for creating an appropriate democratic environment for a fair election and the proper pathways for the implication of the mass uprising's true demand for an 'anti-discriminatory' Bangladesh".

The absence of free and fair elections in Bangladesh is the principal cause behind people's mounting anger against the regime which ruled them without securing their legitimate support through ballot.

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That anger was building up over the years of Hasina's regime. The massive protest of people in that country in the face of repression and death caused by State-sponsored violence and even force employed by private militias with the active support of the regimes has offered a lesson to India that muzzling of dissent would bring people to the streets for the cause of defence of the Constitution.

Free and fair elections in India and Bangladesh questioned

The manner in which the voters in several states of India made the issue of saving the Constitution of India an electoral issue in the recently concluded elections and caused the loss of majority strength to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the Lok Sabha drives home the point that it is people who are more keen for constitutional scheme of governance than the rulers who often trample upon their rights by getting intoxicated by power and authority.

Culture of protest and dissent must be upheld

Here in India, the regime of Prime Minister Narendra Modi must be mindful of the lessons from people's historic protest in Bangladesh. Modi himself sarcastically described protesting farmers against three farm laws as "andolanojivis"— agitational life-forms, insinuating that they were people who only lived for agitation.

Tragically, in Bangladesh Hasina called the protestors razakars, which has historical baggage because razakars were those who supported Pakistan during Bangladesh's Liberation War. Such denigration of the culture of protest and dissent would not be tolerated by people.

The people's protest in Bangladesh questioned the conduct of elections because those were not free and fair. Sheikh Hasina assumed office as Prime Minister of a country where the opposition had boycotted the elections and she behaved as an autocrat.

"We were an occupied country as long as she (Sheikh Hasina) was there," said Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus. He proceeded to add, "She was behaving like an occupation force, a dictator, a general, controlling everything." "Today," he asserted, "all the people of Bangladesh feel liberated."

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India is plagued by the same problem and voices have been raised against the domination and control exercised by Narendra Modi on the whole range of institutions of governance.

Now, based on data available on the website of the Election Commission of India (ECI), the Association for Democratic Reforms and Vote for Democracy are questioning the blatantly partisan role played by the ECI in violating the purity of the electoral process with impunity. The ECI has not responded to the points raised by these two bodies.

The demand of the people of Bangladesh for a secular Constitution and the conduct of free and free elections would have a far-reaching impact across the world and specifically in India and other South Asian countries.

The rulers of India must derive appropriate lessons not to fiddle with the Constitution and remain tuned to the pulse of "We the people" who have come forward in its defence.