This is based on a personal blog post from August 2005.

He is the absolute leader of his people. He has led them through war, and now he is trying to steer them through peace. But all is not well, and our leader is forsaking liberty, assuming dictatorial power. Meanwhile ambitious politicians are plotting. The leader is assassinated, by his trusted friend, who says – it’s not that I love him less, it’s I love my country more. But it is soon evident that the conniving politicians are seeking power for themselves. The dead leader’s ally raises arm. Havoc, it is cried, and let loose are the dogs of war. Out of confusion arises a new strongman with a new order. Liberty takes a back seat for many years.

Julius Caesar, Brutus, Cassius, Mark Anthony, and Augustus Caesar; or Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, rival factions in Bangladesh army and Awami League, Zia-ur-Rahman, and eventually Hussein Muhammad Ershad.

Where I live, they have been marking the Victory in the Pacific Theatre. Our neighbours in the subcontinent are celebrating the end of the Empire. In Bangladesh, 15 August is the day of a violent coup.

Sheikh Sahib won a mandate in December 1970 that is hard to match in any free election – his party won 160 out 162 seats in an election that was held under his political opponents. In March 1971, during the final showdown with the Pakistan army, his command over the country was so absolute that General Tikka Khan could not find a judge to swear him into the office of the governor. And when a dozen or so majors killed him four years later, his own party brushed his dead body aside, and no one raised a voice in protest.

The coup unleashed counter coups. By the end of the year, the civilian leadership of our freedom movement was dead or removed from politics. People who resisted Pakistan army militarily in 1971 turned their guns on each other. Almost all of the leading freedom fighters were dead by 1981. The legacy of the late 1970s still divided the country until very recently.

Suppose Mujib had not returned from Pakistani gaol? Suppose he was hanged by Yahya? It’s reasonable to argue that the same factions that turned on each other in late 1975 would have fought it out in early 1972. Would Tajuddin Ahmed be able to resist an Indian ‘request’ of a military presence to ‘assist’ his government? And if such a request were not made, would he be able to stop a multi-sided power struggle involving the Mushtaque clique, young leaders of the Bengal Liberation Front, communists, factions within the army supporting Zia, Khaled Musharraf and others, with the collaborators and other pro-Pakistan forces waiting in the wings? Who would have won such a struggle, and what price would we have to pay for it?

These questions are impossible to answer. Fortunately we didn’t have to face them because Sheikh Sahib returned. Yes his government was an abysmal failure in many ways. But his presence, more than anything else, ensured Bangladesh’s existence as a sovereign state.

Now, after all these years, the contours of our politics are again changing under a shroud of secrecy and opaque dealings that one can call palace conspiracy. Fortunately, this time round, things have not turned violent like 1975. Let’s hope that it stays that way.