Bangladesh today is looking to find a balance between its cultural and religious identity, which is what the country has always been yearning for and the February 12 elections may give them that opportunity, says M. Humayun Kabir, veteran diplomat who fought in the 1971-liberation war.
“People of Bangladesh today have a new consciousness, a new sense of purpose. They think Bangladesh could be better than what it was before. This is a new regeneration of Bangladesh, a new kind of orientation coming to the people of Bangladesh. And who is driving this? The younger generation,” Kabir, who was Bangladesh’s Ambassador to the United States, told StratNewsGlobal during an interview in Dhaka.
He said being a 1971 war veteran and part of that generation which got Bangladesh its independence, he is able to identify the “distinctiveness” of the current Bangladeshi youth.
“They demand more. They are more conscious. They have more connectivity. They are more aware of what’s happening in the outside world. So they are a different breed and they actually led the whole process and people joined them (during the July-August 2024 uprising).
Kabir, who served in Kolkata as deputy high commissioner in 1999, said post the July 2024 uprising “there is a new consciousness in Bangladesh about our own identity.”
“We are a people who were deprived of our rights, particularly human rights. We were people who were dominated by outside people under different kind of excuses and we have not been governed well… So we need to govern ourselves better. We need to stand up for our own dignity, based on dignity and equality and we think we can do better than what we have done before,” he said.
Bangladesh fought for its liberation to uphold that dignity but “somehow that was compromised. We need to have an equitable society. We fought during our liberation war against discrimination. Unfortunately Bangladesh is now a discriminated society or divided society. So the new generation’s aspiration is that we should be an equitable society or just society,” he added.
Referendum Prospects
According to Kabir, the referendum vote, which is also happening 12 February will bring much-needed constitutional reforms that will usher in a “new Bangladesh”.
“Aspirations are there and so now the question is how do we translate those aspirations into reality,” he said, adding that the referendum exercise for which Bangladeshis will be on a ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ vote will lead to certain constitutional reforms.
Both Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami, that are currently in the fray, have urged the public to vote ‘Yes’ in the referendum repeatedly during their election campaigns.
Kabir explained that Bangladesh today has “two carriers of identity” – culture and religion.
“This election will also prove that we can be Bengalis as much as religious people. We can be religious as much as we can be a Bengali-speaking (nation). So, what we are looking for is syncretisation,” he added.
Kabir also categorically said that Bangladesh is “not discarding or ignoring” what was achieved during the 1971 Liberation War. “That’s our existence”
But, he said, in present day Bangladesh there is a need to “reorganise” the state because governance never really took shape in a robust form in the country.
“The spirit of the Liberation War was not properly implemented and then it ran into frustration of the people,” he argued, therefore, going forward there will be “blending and readjustment”.
