Divide and rule, siding with radicals—Yunus has learned what will keep him in power

Muhammad Yunus, head of interim government | Reuters/Mohammad Ponir Hossain

If politics is about mastering the art of turning adversities into opportunities, Muhammad Yunus, Chief Adviser to Bangladesh’s interim government, has been a fast learner. The founder of Grameen Bank, a microfinance specialised community development bank founded in Bangladesh, has an impressive resume that reflects an outstanding career. He has been an economist, an entrepreneur, an educator, and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for the Grameen Bank and pioneering the concepts of microcredit and microfinance. 

But one thing that Yunus has not been is a career politician. When he took over as the caretaker of Bangladesh, three days after former prime minister Sheikh Hasina fled the country in a military helicopter on 5 August, hardly any one thought that Yunus, a political novice, would be able to navigate the choppy waters of Bangladesh’s politics and last more than three months. 

It’s been four months since then and not only has Yunus been able to hold on to power, he seems to be in no hurry to let go of it, brushing aside all talks of elections early next year by insisting that polls can be held only after electoral reforms are in place. 

On Monday, Yunus said, “Election can be arranged at a time between the end of 2025 and first half of 2026”. But he had a rider. “And if we add to this the expected level of reforms in the electoral process and in light of the recommendations of the Election Reforms Commission and based on the national consensus, then it may take at least another six months,” the Dhaka Tribune quoted him as saying.

Rewriting history, rebooting terror

When Yunus took over as the caretaker, Bangladesh was at war with its own history. Such was the anger against Hasina that even statues of her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who happens to be the Father of the Nation, were brought down. The most famous address in Dhaka, Dhanmondi 32, where Mujib was assassinated with most of his family members, was burnt down and his party Awami League’s offices were set on fire. 

As a deft politician, Yunus took no time to gauge the mood of the nation and turned hurdles in the way of governing a nation in turmoil into an opportunity to become popular. Last month, Mujib’s portrait was removed from the Bangladesh president’s office. Article 4A of Bangladesh’s constitution, which has not been amended or scrapped till now, says: “The Portrait of the Father of the Nation, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman shall be preserved and displayed” in key government offices. The Yunus government has also cancelled national holidays marking Mujib’s birth and death anniversaries and brought in new currency notes removing Mujib’s image from them.

On Monday, 16 December, which marked the 54th Vijay Diwas, while commemorating the Pakistan military’s surrender to the Indian Army and the liberation of Bangladesh in 1971, Yunus made no mention of Mujib or India’s role in the war. Rather, he used the occasion to mount a scathing attack on Hasina, calling her administration the “world’s worst autocratic government”.

All this should come as no surprise as Yunus, in an interview to Voice of America on 3 October, had said: “The past is gone for sure. Now we will build up in new way. People also want that.” 

But more than rewriting history, what has bothered Dhaka watchers is Yunus’ seeming acceptance of the rise of radicalism in Bangladesh since Hasina’s exit. “Among other incidents that a section of Bangladesh’s civil society members consider warning signs are the public rallies and poster campaign by the banned terror group, Hizb ut Tahir and the release of Mufti Jashimuddin Rahmani, chief of the Ansarullah Bangla Team, an Al-Qaeda-inspired militant outfit renamed as Ansar al Islam,” journalist Snigdhendu Bhattacharya wrote in The Diplomat.

Veena Sikri, the High Commissioner of India to Bangladesh from 2003 to 2006, told ThePrint that the Jamaat-e-Islami and its student wing, Islami Chhatra Shibir, had played a central and significant role in the events leading to the interim government’s appointment. 

Dhaka journalist Sahidul Hasan Khokon said not just during the students’ revolution, but in the day-to-day functioning of the Yunus administration, the Jamaat retains a significant role. “Yunus has realised he can hold on to power if he lets radical groups like Jamaat have their way in Bangladesh. We should not forget that one of the first things Yunus had done since assuming power was to lift the ban on Jamaat,” Khokon said. 

Khokon added that for the world Yunus is the very face of secularism and modernity, with his liberal views, foreign degrees, and prestigious international teaching assignments. “But beneath all that, there is a shrewd politician who knows the political benefits of siding with radicals.

Divide and rule

Perhaps the harshest criticism that the Yunus administration has received  is for its inability to stop the attacks on Hindus in Bangladesh. As targeted attacks on the minority Hindu population, that make up about 7.95 per cent of Bangladesh’s population, made daily headlines, Yunus responded by saying that attacks on Hindus in Bangladesh were not communal in nature, and that the issue was being “exaggerated”.

The attacks were covered by most Bangladeshi dailies and, according to Prothom Alo, the country’s most widely circulated newspaper, between 5 and 20 August alone, at least 1,068 houses and businesses belonging to minorities were looted and vandalised.

The Yunus administration responded to the reports by putting the face of the Hindu resistance movement in Bangladesh, former ISKCON monk Chinmoy Krishna Das Brahmachari, behind bars on sedition charges. But his administration’s most effective strategy, according to Khokon, has been to divide the Hindus. 

The Secretary General of the Bangladesh National Hindu Grand Alliance, Gobinda Chandra Pramanik, has said there have been sporadic incidents here and there, but Hindus as a whole are safe in Bangladesh. Pramanik said in an interview that attacks on Hindus in Bangladesh is mostly India’s propaganda and that such incidents have not taken place.

“I have often said the worst enemy of Bangladeshi Hindus are Bangladeshi Hindu leaders. Yunus has succeeded in getting the support of some of these leaders in his attempt to dismiss attacks on Hindus as India’s propaganda to defame Bangladesh,” Khokon said. To divide and rule has been an old trick seasoned politicians play. Yunus seems to have mastered that too. 

Deep Halder is an author and journalist. He tweets @deepscribble. Views are personal.

(Edited by Aamaan Alam Khan)