Party System Institutionalization and Pernicious Polarization in Bangladesh

Polarization as a Tool for Party System Institutionalization

Party system institutionalization refers to predictable patterns of intra-party competition. A highly institutionalized party system would exhibit a higher level of stability in terms of parties’ maintaining strong bonds with the grassroots and retaining their core constituencies. A poorly institutionalized party system would be more chaotic in the sense that the parties might not have an adequate social bond with the grassroots level and, therefore, voters might switch parties more frequently, jeopardizing the electoral fortune of the parties.

Although scholars have identified many dimensions of party system institutionalization, the most relevant ones here are stability in party competition, lack of electoral volatility, and strong roots in society (Mainwaring and Trocal 2006, 206–27). In many emerging democracies, party system institutionalization, in terms of establishing a strong bond with the voters and stabilizing their electoral behavior, is a tricky business (Mainwaring and Zoco 2007 ). Because they did not arise out of socioeconomic changes like their western counterparts, the quickest way for these parties to create a dependable constituency is to organize people around some known social cleavage or cleavages (Manning 2005, 718). Manning explains that, in post-1990 Africa, parties “grew not out of socioeconomic cleavages or struggles over the nature of state authority, but out of elites’ urgent need for electoral vehicles, which would allow them to compete in newly devised rules of the political game. Often the easiest basis for mobilizing support is via the politicization of ethnicity” (Manning 2005, 715).

While Manning offers a rather neutral assessment of cleavage-based party system institutionalization, others have been more critical. Randall and Svåsand caution us that “the very opportunity of party institutionalization provided by exclusive forms of cleavage, above all religion and ethnicity, could be at odds with the institutionalization of the party system through restricting the possibilities for cross party competition, and undermining the ethos of mutual acceptance amongst parties as well as the confidence of at least a section of the public in political parties” (Randall and Svåsand 2002, 9). Hence, polarization resulting from such cleavage-dependent politics could present the illusion of a party system that has achieved a high level of institutionalization, as evidenced by predictability in electoral turnout and the strength of the social relations between major parties and their constituencies.

In an emerging democracy like Bangladesh, party system institutionalization based on manufactured political cleavages that feed on founding myths of the nation can be counterproductive in terms of producing and sustaining a liberal democratic system. In a country that is nearly homogenous ethnically, linguistically, and religiously, political cleavages are not based on some objective measure of difference between groups, but artificially created to secure a constituency for different political parties. The Bengali/secular vs. Bangladeshi/Islamist divide goes back to the debate over what constitutes the core element of national identity, which started forming in the post-independence era under a military dictatorship. But its effect on the quality of democracy is similar to that of party system institutionalization based on ethnic/religious cleavages in other emerging democracies.

As data from Varieties of Democracy (Coppedge et al. 2018) show, since 1991 Bangladesh has consistently scored high in terms of party system institutionalization (0.7 on a 0 to 1 scale, where 0 is the worst and 1 is the best), a score that has not decreased over the years. But the same dataset shows that, since 2001, the country has consistently performed poorly in terms of respect for counterarguments and parties’ willingness to compromise. This indicates that polarization might have regularized the institutional aspects of democracy, but at the same time it has made the uncooperative and confrontational nature of interaction between political parties a predictable pattern of behavior. Stability has not automatically translated into higher-quality democracy, at least not in terms of social and political tolerance and respect for pluralism.

After the return of democracy in 1991, major parties in Bangladesh needed to stabilize their respective constituencies. Both the liberal/center-Left Bangladesh Awami League (AL) and the conservative/center-Right Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) appeared identical in their support for electoral democracy and market economy. Thus, they were mostly indistinguishable in terms of their programmatic appeals to the voters. They were also facing the challenge of electoral volatility from one general election to the other. In a winner-take-all arrangement such as Bangladesh’s first-past-the-post parliamentary system, losing an election means losing all policymaking and rent-generating power. Therefore, to stabilize their constituencies and solidify voters into political camps, these parties fueled the country’s identity debate. Although the political elite activated the latent identity cleavage, it has historical roots, largely as a result of the unfinished nation-building project in a country that became independent from two different rulers (Britain and Pakistan) in the same century, based on two different nationalist narratives.

Although a debate over national identity has always existed in Bangladesh, it sharpened in the years following the institution of the 2010 Tribunal. It took a particularly intense form in the first half of 2013. On February 5, 2013, people started gathering at Shahbag, a commuter hub in the capital, Dhaka, to condemn the Tribunal’s verdict in a case involving an influential leader of the Islamist political party Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami (BJI). In Bangladeshi politics, BJI has not been very successful electorally, but over the years it has turned out to be a king maker via its political representation in the national assembly (Islam and Islam 2018, 12). Immediately after independence, BJI, along with other Islamist parties, was banned from Bangladeshi politics for their alleged collaboration with the Pakistani army in the 1971 liberation war. But Major Zia rehabilitated these stigmatized political elements during his military dictatorship. His successor, General Ershad, followed the same policy (Linter 2002, 3). By collaborating with the center-Right BNP, which has a moderate Islamist orientation, and by slowly cultivating a grassroots network throughout the country, BJI has been very successful in removing the stigma associated with the war. The rise of a generation of Bangladeshis who had not experienced the war first hand also helped to, as Linter says, “correct” the situation (Linter 2002, 3). Over the years, BJI achieved the status of the “largest and most active” Islamist party (Hossain and Siddiquee 2004, 384) in the country. This, along with the popularity of some of its top leadership as Islamist preachers, made the party politically influential. But not everyone has stopped questioning its role in the 1971 war. The segment of the population that associates itself more with the secular and language-based identity is particularly opposed to BJI’s brand of politics.

Against this backdrop, the Tribunal sentenced BJI leader, Qader Molla, to life in prison, igniting a very polarized discourse. The Bangladesh Online Activist Forum (BOAN) called for gathering at Shahbag, where people demanded harsher punishment for Qader Molla, then the Assistant Secretary General of BJI, who was convicted of multiple crimes against humanity.

Soon Shahbag became center stage for what some analysts initially thought was the biggest nonpartisan apolitical movement in the post-authoritarian era. But, as the movement grew stronger, it added more demands, such as banning religion-based politics and outlawing BJI for the involvement of its top leadership in war crimes. Around the same time, a counter-movement started to form, whose members did not consider the Tribunal to be legitimate. Rather, they viewed it as a puppet in the hands of the ruling government. They felt that by “targeting” the Islamist opposition forces for their involvement in the 1971 war, the ruling AL was making its path clear for the next general election, which was to take place in 2014. They were also concerned that abolishing religion from politics would downgrade the religious identity of the world’s fourth-largest Muslim country. Hence, this counter-movement wanted the government to abolish the Tribunal and recommended serious punishment for Tribunal supporters for their anti-Islamist nature. As the anti-Tribunal movement started gaining support, it also added more demands for reorganizing the state and society to conform to a conservative version of Islam. Soon these two movements were embroiled in a polarized identity discourse. Pro-Tribunal forces worried that the activities of Islamist political forces (many of whom were charged with crimes against humanity) had been undermining the secular Bengali (language-based ethnicity) identity of Bangladesh. Conversely, the anti-Tribunal forces viewed the Tribunal as a political tool of the ruling AL government because the prosecution seemed to be targeting the top leaders of the opposition parties.

What evades the eyes of a casual observer, though, is what the AL and the BNP stood to gain from this polarization. Hence, an alternative explanation would take into account that what started as two separate civil society movements around the activities of the Tribunal might have become an identity crisis manufactured by the elites of these two political parties. These two movements represented the struggle between AL and BNP to create a stable niche for themselves. When these parties decided to support their preferred civil society movements, the fighting over the Tribunal expanded beyond its original focus, and polarization intensified. The following two sections discuss the structural roots of and the institutional incentives for the polarizing strategies that the major political parties employed in Bangladesh.

Structural Legacy: Unresolved Identity Crisis from Precolonial Bengal to Post-Independence Bangladesh

Confusion over what constitutes the core element of national identity in Bangladesh stems from two separate nationalist movements focusing on two different ingredients of nationhood—religion and language. Religion has played an influential role in the formation of national identity in South Asia, and Bangladesh is no exception. However, British colonialism changed the dynamics of religious politics in the region. Hindus and Muslims in the Indian subcontinent were pitted against each other in a divisive struggle to secure colonial patronage. Due to uneven socioeconomic development, the Hindu–Muslim divide did not lead to class conflict; instead it took the form of solidarity among the Muslims.

In this way, religious identity became a central instrument for political mobilization in colonial India. The Bengali Muslim political elite carefully constructed an identity for Bengali-speaking Muslims, who lagged behind the Hindus in terms of access to state institutions and resources. That is why the Bengalis had little trouble imagining themselves as part of a nation based on Islam when Pakistan was born in 1947 following the “two-nations theory.” ⁵ However, the cultural differences between the two wings of Pakistan were too much to handle. The nonaccommodative and discriminatory posture of the Urdu-speaking elite in West Pakistan toward the East generated resentment among Bengalis (Misra 1972, 29).

West Pakistan’s efforts to quell the eastern wing’s cultural uniqueness further alienated Bengalis. Attempts at cultural homogenization and economic discrimination galvanized the Bengali Muslims in the East against the Muslims in the West. To assert their political and economic autonomy and cultural self-determination, Bengali Muslims started focusing on the other important element of their national identity—the Bengali language. Thus, a people who had supported the creation of an undivided Pakistan for Muslims started a liberation war to create their own nation-state around a language-based identity. The Pakistani army chose to play the religion card to justify genocide in East Pakistan, branding the Bengalis as kafirs or infidels. This galvanized East Pakistani public opinion against Islamist politics and gave the pro-liberation political elites an opportunity to focus on secularism as the cornerstone of Bengali nationalism (Huque and Akhter 1987, 202–03).

Islamist political entities in East Pakistan at that time sided with the Pakistani army because they were not persuaded that a separate nation-state for the Bengalis was a good idea. Elora Shehabuddin (2008, 589) explains: “During the 9-month war that followed, the Jamaat of the erstwhile East Pakistan gained notoriety in secularist and nationalist circles for speaking out against the country’s independence, for collaborating with the West Pakistani army and for participating in mass rapes and killings.” Some members of the political party now known as BJI participated in paramilitary forces, such as Razakar, Al-Badar, and Al-Shams, that committed war crimes. Thus, while secular elements in East Pakistan were cultivating an alternative nationalist narrative for Bengalis, the Islamists hung on to a religion-based narrative.

These two narratives provided fertile ground for competition over foundational myths in post-independent Bangladesh, where either language or religion has been opportunistically used as a basis of polarizing politics whenever a political crisis requiring mass mobilization has erupted. The divisive nationalist rhetoric and agenda of the political parties in present-day Bangladesh testifies to this trend. Partha Ghosh captures this dilemma nicely when he states: “If Bangladesh asserts its Islamic identity, it cannot justify its liberation struggle, as that was not only directed against Islamic Pakistan, but also was actively supported by ‘Hindu’ India. Alternatively, if it displays its Bengali credentials, it turns the risk of merging its identity beyond recognition into that of West Bengal” (Ghosh 1993, 698). ⁶

The first constitution of independent Bangladesh was an effort to separate religion from politics. But AL (the party that led the country to independence) conflated secularism with the ethnic identity of the majority Bengali population. The “spirit of the liberation war” came to be defined as an ideology that respects people’s private practice of religion but discourages religion’s intrusion into statecraft (Majumder 2016). Therefore, the 1972 constitution enshrined secularism as one of four state principles. There was not much conflict over religious institutions’ influence in the state affairs. The bitter history of religious nationalism in undivided Pakistan and the need to build a separate identity inspired the rise of secularism. Bangladeshi secularism in the early years was often called “poly-religious” by ultra-leftists because instead of banning religion from society and politics altogether, Bangladesh had a very lenient interpretation of secularism supporting freedom of religion (Khondker 2010, 190). All major religions received equal airtime on radio and television. People were free to practice religion in the private sphere. Even the secular leaders themselves often used religious symbolism and language in an effort to befriend the rich countries in the Arab world, which were a valuable source of foreign aid (Huque and Akhter 1987, 204).

However, the AL government did not have sufficient time to elaborate on this idea of secularism and to make it popular with the majority of Bangladeshis, who were suffering from famine and natural disasters immediately following independence. Concrete benefits of the liberation war—in the form of better living standards, equal opportunities, and more accountable government—were prioritized over identity discourse. Growing anti-Indian sentiment did not contribute positively to the situation either. Rashiduzzaman explains: “The critiques of Awami League government and its leader, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the professed secularism … in the early 1970s was an Indian ploy to increase Hindu influence. The Bangladeshi Muslim’s anxiety to stress their religious identity and growing anti-Indian feelings marked the beginning of opposition politics in the newly independent nation” (Rashiduzzaman 1994, 984). Although there were grievances at the mass level, no political entrepreneur was strong enough to capitalize on them. But these grievances created a background against which the military dictatorship could institutionalize Islam in politics after the assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

Following the assassination, Bangladesh experienced a 15-year military dictatorship under Major Zia and General Ershad, successively. Zia tried to solve his legitimacy crisis by forming the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). The party appeared in 1978, and even though it carried the stench of dictatorship, it managed to become popular, for two reasons. The first is the “freedom fighter” status of its founding father. Zia was a decorated soldier who fought in the 1971 liberation war and commanded an entire sector. But the advantage of being on the right side of the liberation war was insufficient on its own for this party to flourish. Zia understood from the beginning that to carve out a niche, BNP needed a different ideology that challenged the AL’s claim to represent true nationalism and distinguish BNP from AL (Mohsin 2004).

BNP’s ideological void was soon filled with an alternative version of nationalism. In sharp contrast to the AL-championed Bengali nationalism—that is, a secular Bengali language–based national identity focused on the supposed ethnic homogeneity of the nation—BNP came up with a nationalism based on Islamist political identity, which is popularly known as Bangladeshi nationalism. Zia also took initiatives to give religion institutional standing in Bangladeshi politics by dropping secularism from the constitution and rehabilitating religion-based politics. Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami (BJI) restarted its political activity with the blessing of both Major Zia and General Ershad (Ganguly 2006). General Ershad, who rose to power after Major Zia’s assassination, followed in his predecessor’s footsteps by further institutionalizing Islam in Bangladeshi politics.

Since the reintroduction of democracy in 1991, the country has oscillated between calls for secular Bengali identity and an Islamist Bangladeshi identity as parties competing for power try to establish a secure constituency and shield themselves from electoral volatility. This brings us to a discussion of institutional incentives that encourage political parties in Bangladesh to use polarizing tactics.

Institutional Incentives for Polarization In a “Winner-Takes-All” System

Bangladesh has had a majoritarian first-past-the post system since 1991. In the 350-seat parliament (Jatiya Sangsad), members are elected from single-member constituencies through plurality votes (except for the 50 seats reserved for women). Although the country has dozens of big and small political parties, over the past 27 years it has been slowly moving toward a two-party system dominated by the ruling AL and the main opposition BNP. Defectors from both parties have often managed to establish new political parties, but they have not proven very successful at surviving on their own. Ultimately, they had to forge some kind of coalition with one or the other major parties to ensure their existence, partly because these smaller factions lack organizational strength and grassroots networks.

Nor does the country’s ideological polarity allow for the growth of any alternative and new ideas. BJI, the far-Right party that lost its registration in August 2013, emerged in Bangladeshi politics during the dictatorial era. Its meager success in national elections has been compensated by its close association with BNP, which ensured cabinet positions for its members in the 2001–2006 administration. In addition to the BNP and the AL, a third major political party, JP, also emerged during the military dictatorship but has never formed a government on its own after restoration of democracy.

Immediately following independence, AL had a socialist platform, but over the years it has fully embraced a free market economy. The party is widely perceived as liberal/center-Left due to its commitment to secularism and language-based identity. Conversely, BNP, BJI, and JP are considered to be conservative parties because of their religion-based politics. Additional fringe socialist and Islamist parties have little to no parliamentary representation.

Political parties in Bangladesh are ill-equipped to perform their roles in a way that comports with a traditional Westminster model of government, for two reasons. The first is the “winner-takes-all” approach. Bangladesh is one of the most corrupt countries in the world, and institutional checks and balances are minimal or in some cases nonexistent. The party that wins political power through parliamentary election receives relatively unfettered access to state resources and institutions, which contributes to nepotism, politicization of the bureaucracy, and use of law enforcement agencies (and often the judiciary) to persecute political opponents and civil society members (Osman 2010). If the winning party achieves a supermajority in the parliament, it also gets to amend the constitution and change electoral laws in a way that might increase its chances of retaining power by restricting electoral competition or compromising its “free and fair nature” (M. Islam 2015). Riaz (2016) calls this the “dominant party approach,” where both AL and BNP act in an authoritarian manner after coming to power through a democratic process. This is why, since 1991, Bangladesh has consistently received only a “partially free” rating from Freedom House.

When the opposition becomes a minority in parliament, it may not have much power to influence policymaking. Even when the opposition has a strong presence in the national assembly, it often prefers to take its demands to the street, organizing protests, sit-ins, and strikes, and using political violence instead of debating and discussing policies in the national assembly (S. Islam 2001). This is the second major problem that obstructs the political parties from performing their roles as responsible political actors, and it often contributes to drawn-out policy processes.

This culture of confrontation and noncompromise, coupled with the two major parties’ authoritarian tendencies, is what sets the tone for electoral volatility in the country. The fact that the voters alternate in their choice of government every five years should not come as a surprise, but rather be treated as a reaction to the corrupt and near-authoritarian rule of the two major political parties in each cycle. Despite big promises and impressive election manifestos, when the parties finally start running the country, the lack of constitutional restrictions on rent seeking yields a return to corruption and squandering of state resources, which disenchants the population and tilts them toward the opposition, ⁷ Alamgir observes that, in the four elections that took place between 1991 and 2008, “nationwide balloting had dealt a loss to the incumbent coalition, with a margin of defeat perhaps reflecting the level of public unease with its conduct while in office. In 1996, AL won 50 seats that BNP had won five years earlier. In 2001, BNP won 89 seats that AL had won in 1996. And in 2008, AL won 145 seats that BNP had won in 2001” (Alamgir 2009, 42).

The political parties get creative in responding to this electoral volatility because being away from the treasury bench can mean more than losing the responsibility of running the country; it is linked to their power and privilege and often their very survival as political actors. Whenever one of the major parties is in opposition, it gives voice to public grievances against the ruling party by amalgamating those grievances in a neat package that classifies the problems on a national identity dimension. Since both parties act pretty much the same way while in power, their mobilizational tactics do not depend on articulating novel programs based on a certain class ideology. Rather, their tactics depend on their ability to bundle the existing problems of corruption and mismanagement with identity and cultural issues. Only against this backdrop of two dominant political parties and their divisive discourse can the rise of polarization over the Tribunal be understood.

International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) and the Crystallization of Politics of Polarization

As it had promised during the 2008 election campaign, AL established the International Crimes Tribunal in 2010. Although it was long overdue in terms of delivering justice for the victims of war crimes in 1971, the establishment of the Tribunal opened new wounds instead of healing old ones. As it started delivering verdicts, it encountered a legitimacy crisis from both pro-prosecution and anti-prosecution groups. Pro-prosecution groups like the Shahbag movement were unhappy because they thought the sentences did not correspond to the gravity of the crimes committed. The anti-prosecution faction saw the Tribunal as a puppet in the hands of the government, helping it to eliminate its political opponents in the name of justice. The status of the people charged with crimes against humanity (many of them were renowned politicians and Islamist figures in the country) and the swift planning and execution of the Tribunal overshadowed its legitimacy.

Commenting on achieving both procedural perfection and justice in the Bangladeshi context, Bergsmo and Novic write that “in the era of institutionalized complementarity, such a national attempt to investigate and prosecute war crimes should be welcomed by international community. Yet in the context of limited resources and a polarized political environment, effectively achieving reconciliation and deterrence will depend above all on professionalism and fairness” (Bergsmo and Novic 2011, 503). Against this background of a desire for both justice and fairness, identity politics began to unfold in February 2013 with the formation of the Shahbag movement.

Narratives and counter-narratives started emerging from both the pro- and anti-Tribunal movements, validating their respective positions and delegitimizing the claims of the opposing side. Even though they started as nonpartisan movements, they could not avoid the influence of polarizing political parties. For example, demands from the pro-Tribunal Shabag movement to ban BJI for the alleged collaboration of its leadership during the liberation war in 1971 and to prohibit religion-based politics started to bear an uncanny resemblance to the government narrative on the issue of war crimes (Gomez 2013).

As the government quickly co-opted the Shahbag movement, the anti-Tribunal forces started their own campaign to vilify it. They creatively appealed to the religious sentiments of the people as well as their frustration with law and order and corruption under the AL government. They bundled these issues together in a manner that incorporated the “illegitimacy” of the Tribunal and immorality of the people who were supporting it. Morality, legitimacy, and identity created a powerful political platform. BNP chairperson, Begum Khaleda Zia, widow of party founder Major Zia, publicly called the pro-Tribunal Shahbag movement a congregation of “immoral atheists.” Some of the organizers of the Shahbag movement were in fact self-professed atheists. But it became a matter of serious concern when Begum Zia used her oratorical skills to create a link between the dormant “atheist/secularist” phobia in a large segment of the population and the reason to delegitimize the demands of the pro-Tribunal forces. Because secularism had never been defined properly in the Bangladeshi context by its promoters, the atheist identity of some organizers of the pro-Tribunal Shahbag movement became synonymous with secularism, and anti-Tribunal forces came to view them as the agents of the ruling party. Instead of removing this confusion from people’s minds, both AL and BNP, along with their respective forms of civil society and partisan media, reinforced it by creating sharp lines between pro- and anti-Tribunal forces in terms of either their religious beliefs or their commitment to secularism.

Use of Rhetoric and Symbol and Polarization at the Mass Level

The rhetoric and symbols used by both sides intensified the debate by creating new moralistic categories of right and wrong, just and immoral. It is beyond the scope of this article to discuss in detail the politics of symbolism that transpired over the entire period of the Tribunal, but it is important to mention three defining moments between February and May 2013 that fueled polarization at the mass level.

The first was the murder of blogger Rajib, a self-proclaimed atheist blogger/pro-Tribunal activist who was brutally murdered in front of his own house by anti-Tribunal activists. Pro-Tribunal and secular groups were quick to call Rajib the first victim of a renewed identity politics. ⁸ Anti-Shahbag FaceBook groups such as Basher Kella, on the other hand, condemned Rajib’s atheist lifestyle and writings. Around the same time, some interesting vocabulary was introduced to identify pro- and anti-Tribunal forces. Chaagu, a very derogatory Bengali term meaning a person with the intellectual capacity of a sheep, became popular with the pro-Shahbag elements as a way to describe the anti-Tribunal elements. Anti-Tribunal people were even directly called Razakars, ⁹ or collaborators/traitors in the 1971 war. The anti-Tribunal group, on the other hand, started using the term Awami League er Dalal (boot lickers of Awami League) to identify the people who supported the Tribunal.

Before the Rajib episode had subsided, the Sayeede fiasco took place. Maulana Delwar Hossain Sayeede was a member of parliament and a very famous religious figure in the country when the Tribunal gave him a death sentence for his actions during the war. Anti-Tribunal forces started a rumor that Sayeede’s face had appeared on the moon. In the Bangladeshi context, this propaganda had a strong polarizing effect. According to his supporters, the reason Sayeede’s face was visible on the moon was because he was a saint-like person, incapable of committing the crimes he had been convicted of. Thus the Tribunal had been condemned by Heaven.

The immense power of such propaganda became apparent when violence erupted following law enforcement agencies’ efforts to control the mob that took to the streets to overturn the verdict against Sayeede. The channels of communication used for this purpose were diverse. It started with announcements from local mosques over the microphone used for Azan (the call for prayer) in different parts of the country. Anti-Tribunal social media pages posted and reposted the rumor numerous times. Pro-Shahbag pages replied with caricature and mockery. Though it was not universally accepted by all Bangladeshis, the point remains that the polarizing actors told a story tapping into the religious feelings and grievances about the Tribunal among a section of society. They carefully chose the myth that appealed to the “inner Muslim” of even a nonpracticing Muslim in the country. Sayeede’s death sentence and the subsequent propaganda campaign triggered a violent backlash involving burning public property, killing law enforcement officers, and brutal retaliation against civilians by the police.

The third major manifestation of mass polarization occurred when a little-known Islamist movement, Hefazat-i-Islam (HEI), started voicing its concerns over the “atheist” nature of the Shahbag movement and affiliated blogs. Initially HEI presented a 13-point set of demands to the government, one of which was a call to prosecute bloggers who, in their view, had committed blasphemy. To show their commitment, HEI organized a siege and grand rally in Dhaka on May 5, 2013. This protest brought thousands of people from all corners of the country to the capital. During this ill-coordinated, confusing protest against the government, violence erupted. ¹⁰

During later investigations by journalists, some of the people who participated in the siege program revealed they knew little or nothing about blogging, social networks, or the Internet. They were made to believe that people demanding capital punishment for war criminals at Shahbag were all atheists and therefore had to be immediately stopped.

These events were neither isolated nor sporadic. They indicate a systematic manipulation of the population to further certain political interests. The Tribunal became a lightning rod around which major political parties, with their associated civil society movements, were creating and reiterating their narratives of right and wrong and their own standard of judging a good Muslim or a true Bengali. AL aligned itself with the Shabag movement by publicly supporting its cause, often calling it a movement worthy of upholding the spirit of the liberation war and the ideal of a secular Bangladesh. BNP chose to align with the anti-Tribunal movement. Thus, both parties contributed to a Manichean narrative that branded every pro-Tribunal citizen as an immoral/atheist/anti-Muslim/AL supporter and everyone opposing the Tribunal as a bigot/backward-looking/traitor/BNP/BJI supporter. The Tribunal successfully ended its job of prosecuting war criminals in 2015, ¹¹ and all its sentences have been carried out (BBC News 2016). The Shahbag movement lost its momentum due to allegations of government co-optation in 2013, the same year it gained popularity. HEI did not stage any big showdowns after the May 5, 2013, event. Now that the dust has settled, the impact on democracy of this intense phase of polarization is more visible.

Outcome for Democracy

Political polarization in Bangladesh in the post-authoritarian era has been accentuated over time by increasing electoral volatility. The short but sharp form that it took during the Tribunal episode has created problems for a young democracy—in terms of dragging out legislative processes, encouraging demands for policy changes through extragovernmental forms of political participation (strikes, sit-ins etc.) instigating violence and social intolerance, eroding freedom of expression, and encouraging an authoritarian turn in the ruling government.

From an initial scan of the quality of democracy, not much has changed since the beginning of polarized politics after the restoration of democracy in 1991. Some of the features that we witness in present-day Bangladesh have always been a part of its political culture. The tradition of protests outside parliament by the opposition and the ruling party’s tendency to use force to quell them is still present. This has impeded the normal functioning of parliament (Azad and Crothers 2012, 207). As Jahan (2002) explains this dismal situation: “Neither party is willing to accept electoral defeat and serve as a ‘loyal opposition’ in parliament. As a result, parliament has never functioned properly. Each election has been followed by prolonged boycott of parliament by the political opposition. The government in power has also indulged in acts of suppression and harassment of political opposition. Both parties have nurtured thugs and criminal elements to intimidate the opposition. Both have attempted to control government and nongovernment institutions by appointing partisan supporters to head key institutions” (p. 223).

The ruling AL government, which came to power with a landslide victory in 2008 and won the 2014 election almost uncontested, has been criticized for trying to control state institutions and harassing the opposition, neither of which is new in Bangladeshi politics. But what has changed since the last episode of polarization over the Tribunal is the increasing imbalance between the ruling party and the opposition. Two things are mostly responsible for this situation—the loss of the top and middle leadership of the opposition due to the Tribunal’s verdicts and also the BNP’s strategic blunder in boycotting the 2014 general election over the issue of a nonpartisan caretaker government. ¹² AL won the election, and BNP lost its major opposition party status in parliament. The lack of a transfer of power between the two major parties in 2014, which had been a defining feature of Bangladeshi politics since 1991, strengthened the winner, AL, in a winner-takes-all system. In its 10 years of rule since 2008, the government has done many commendable things, such as prosecuting war criminals, and maintaining a steady GDP growth rate. But, at the same time, it has had the opportunity to continue for 10 long years the intimidating and oppressive tactics that are used by the victorious party in parliamentary elections. The prosecution of the top leadership of BNP and BJI at the Tribunal, canceling the registration of BJI as a political party, the recent long-term sentencing of BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia on corruption charges have all rendered the opposition parties individually and collectively very weak. So, what had previously been a case of democratic careening now has some early indications of taking a turn toward authoritarianism.

Measures of the quality of democracy are useful in discerning this trend. Varieties of Democracy data for 2018 (Coppedge et al. 2018) indicate that Bangladesh is experiencing an alarming downturn in terms of freedom from political killing and torture by the government. If we compare today’s government with previous governments after the reintroduction of multiparty democracy, we see that for the period of 1990 to 1999 Bangladesh scored at a medium level (0.48) on a zero to one scale of freedom from torture and killing, where a low score is less freedom and a high score is more. It moved up to 0.5 for the years 2000, 2001, 2002, and 2003 before falling to 0.4 for the next few years. In 2008, though, things started deteriorating as the country experienced more state-level physical violence. The score kept falling, and in 2016 reached its lowest level in the post-authoritarian era at .28.

The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index ¹³ also shows that overall, Bangladesh has fallen from the category of a flawed democracy in 2006, where elections were relatively free and fair and opposition harassment was at a minimal level, to the category of a hybrid regime in 2008, where widespread corruption, oppression of the opposition, a compromised judiciary, and curtailed freedom of expression are routine. In 2017, Bangladesh’s democracy score dipped to its lowest point since the Index was started in 2006. Freedom House had consistently ranked Bangladesh as partially free since the restoration of democracy, but has expressed concern over the deteriorating civil and political rights situation in recent times and degraded the country’s score beginning in 2014.

The most tenuous civil right in the country is probably the freedom of expression. Polarization over the Tribunal issue has had both direct and indirect effects on freedom of the press. The propaganda war on social media by both pro- and anti-Tribunal factions showed the immense power alternative media can wield in shaping public opinion. Considering that, it is little surprise that over the past five years the government has arrested what Human Rights Watch (2018) reports as “scores of people” under section 57 of the Information and Communication Technology Act for criticizing its activities on social media, blogs, and online newspapers. The indirect effect on freedom of expression comes from what Freedom House in 2018 called the “culture of impunity” created by the government’s inability or unwillingness to prosecute perpetrators responsible for attacks on independent bloggers with an atheist orientation and human rights activists, while simultaneously arresting government critics (Freedom House 2018).

Freedom of expression and minority rights are also compromised by the religiously or linguistically exclusionary narratives on opposite sides that reinforce each other and disallow any conciliatory views. Minority rights are undermined as both poles exclude non-Bengalis and non-Muslims from their respective narratives. Even before controversy over national identity took this divisive form, the AL government failed to recognize ethnic minority groups in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (people who do not speak Bengali) as indigenous groups. The 15th amendment to the country’s constitution promulgated under AL established the hegemonic Bengali identity as the identity for all groups of people, overlooking ethnic and cultural diversity protected in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. ¹⁴ On the other hand, territorially based Bangladeshi nationalism put excessive emphasis on Islam as part of national identity. Such strict categorization leaves out the religious minorities in the country. Thanks to polarizing narratives privileging Islam, violence against religious minorities is on the rise in the country. ¹⁵

A recent surge of attacks against religious minorities, atheist writers, and activists also indicates a problem with social cohesion and respect for diversity and pluralism. AL’s victory over the Tribunal issue came with a price. Witnessing the popularity of the anti-Tribunal forces and the strength of their narrative, the government decided to appease the Islamists. So even though HEI could not stop the Tribunal, Islamists have managed to extract some concessions from the government from time to time on important social and cultural issues. The most controversial one is the decision to take all poems and stories written by non-Muslim writers out of primary- and secondary-level Bengali textbooks. Barry and Manik (2017) report: “First graders studying the alphabet were taught that ‘o’ stands for ‘orna,’ a scarf worn by devout Muslim girls starting at puberty, not for ‘ol,’ a type of yam; and a sixth-grade travelogue describing a visit to the Hindu-dominated north of India was replaced by one about the Nile in Egypt.” This creeping Islamization of the education system might not seem that threatening, but in the broader perspective it represents a paradox—the very same party that upholds the secular spirit of the nation also institutionalizes Islam’s privileged position in society. It encourages bigotry and instigates violence, as evidenced by the murder of several atheist bloggers in the past few years.

The identity-based divide has invaded all policy discussions and infused political discourse with partisan intractability. This has degraded the ability of the government and opposition to cooperate or reach consensus on unrelated policy issues such as education reform, quota system reform, ¹⁶ or the abolition of the caretaker government.

All in all, identity-based polarization delivered short-term benefits to political parties in Bangladesh. When it comes to consolidating democracy or solidifying the national identity of the people of Bangladesh after 47 years of independence, however, it has produced grim prospects on both counts.