Viewing the decline of their creator's popularity, the Frankenstein of the Rakhi Bahini turned, not exactly on Mujib, but on his followers. By the end of 1974, four thousand Awami Leaguers were believed to have been murdered, including five ministers. Mujib then belatedly distanced himself from the Rakhi Bahini, and called in the regular army to restore a semblance of order. This exposed the army to the full extent of the national problem.
On 28th December, Mujib declared a state of emergency effectively martial law, minus the army. He thus put the constitution the covenant between the ruler and the ruled aside, abandoning the three-year old document as a legacy of colonial rule. The Awami League was swept away by its leader. It was a civilian coup.
In January 1975, Mujib had himself declared president. "Mujib, not the Bangladesh army, had removed the constraints on the arbitrary uses of power (p 102)."
What was to take the place of the Awami League? It was to be BAKSAL, Mujib's expression of the one-party state. "Thus in a more significant way, BAKSAL was meant to serve the purpose of the Bangabandhu's personal dictatorship, not the cause of national development and unity. BAKSAL was proof positive that Mujib intended to convert the country into a personal fiefdom for himself and his family members, and his many detractors did not need convincing that their once respected leader, not they, was the real threat to the nation's 'democratic' future (p 105)." The country was headed towards a de facto and despotic monarchy.
Thus was violence visited upon its author: on 15th August, 1975, a group of army officers stormed into Mujib's residence and killed him and his entire family, with the fateful exception of his daughters Sheikh Hasina and Sheikh Rehana, who were out of the country.
A grateful nation heaped every reward on the deliverers, from ambassadorships to political immunity (known as the Indemnity Ordnance, which was incorporated into the constitution as an amendment in the 1980s by the parliament of General Zia's party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP)). There the matter would have ended, had not the cold war ended abruptly.
Western governments had no longer any need of military rulers, and General Ershad was noisily removed ostensibly by 'people power', much as the 'colour' revolutions would later be orchestrated by western democracies. In Africa, there were only three democracies in 1989; in 1991, there were thirty. I have remarked on this remarkable turn of events elsewhere, so I won't go into details here.
Suffice it to say, with General Ershad locked up illegally in prison, there were only two candidates for the post of prime minister, the country having switched to a parliamentary system in a rigged referendum in 1991: General Zia's widow, Khaleda Zia, and Sheikh Mujib's eldest daughter, Sheikh Hasina, now leader of the party her father had tried to strangle, the Awami League. In the first and only free election since 1990, it was fortunate for the 'instruments of heaven', as we must describe the assassins, that Khaleda Zia came to power, and stayed there until 1996. For as soon as her rival, Hasina, came to power in a doctored election (Buggins's turn, you see), she began to proceed to try the assassins.
Let us pause to reflect on the Indemnity Ordnance conferring immunity on the assassins. John Locke's doctrine of 'appeal to heaven' has not envisaged a situation where the emissaries of heaven might be tried for responding to such an appeal. The Indemnity Ordnance can be seen as a major constitutional innovation to safeguard those who would prevent descent into a state of war from civil society, which was clearly what Sheikh Mujib was attempting to do, and which he partly succeeded in doing. Locke says:
-- as if when men quitting the state of nature entered into society, they agreed that all of them but one, should be under the restraint of laws, but that he should still retain all the liberty of the state of nature, increased with power, and made licentious by impunity. This is to think, that men are so foolish, that they take care to avoid what mischiefs may be done them by pole-cats, or foxes; but are content, nay, think it safety, to be devoured by lions."
The devouring lion, and its brood, had to be done away with. And protection had to be conferred on the lion-hunters. Locke quotes Barclay with respect to the conditions under which a king can 'unking' himself. One of them occurs "if he have a purpose and design to ruin the kingdom and commonwealth", and then mentions the crimes of Nero and Caligula.
Which brings us to the question of Caligula's daughter. Was it necessary to put her to death as well? Unfortunately, in a dynastic age, it was. But, it will be argued, we have come a long way since then. Have we? A casual glance at South Asia shows how important is the dynasty in politics. Dynastic politics flouts the conventional wisdom that "politicians, like diapers, must be changed and for the same reason". The dynasties of Mujib and Zia have been around since the '80s, and their collective pong reaches up to high heaven. Still the people of Bangladesh hold their noses and vote for them. The assassins are going to hang, not for killing Mujib's family, but for failing to kill Mujib's family: the two daughters survived.
The pattern that emerges is this: the assassins of 1975 are hailed as heroes till 1996; the dynasty under Sheikh Hasina acquires state power in that year, loses it in the election of 2001, when proceedings against the assassins stop, and are resumed again after the daughter again returns to power in December, 2008. A dynastic vendetta? A lynching? Victor's justice? It has been all three.
Unfortunately for the heroes, the Indemnity Ordnance had not been passed with a full quorum of parliament: this was the question the clever lawyers of the Awami League put to the judiciary. Naturally, being a question of fact, the judiciary had to pronounce the ordnance invalid. The next stage was a kangaroo court's decision to have the assassins executed "by firing squad, and if the criminal code did not allow for that, to be hanged to death." The learned magistrate had apparently forgotten that Bangladesh does not shoot offenders; a lapse of memory to be attributed to sycophancy in serving the House of Mujib.
The higher judiciary was to be less pliable.
Seven High Court judges refused to hear the lower court's verdict: they declared themselves 'embarrassed' without explaining why. The names of these High Court judges should be engraved in gold not golden letters in the premises of the High Court. To any student of law, the reason for their refusal was transparently obvious they did not wish to embroil the judiciary in a moral issue that had no legal redress without, at the same time, politicizing the judiciary. The distinction between law and morality has been clearly drawn by Immanuel Kant. The best illustration of the discrepancy was provided by Chief Justice Taney. A devout Catholic, he had emancipated all his slaves; yet, when the Dred Scott case came up, he had to assert that 'a black man has no rights'. This decision undermined the prestige of the Supreme Court: yet Taney was merely stating the law, keeping his deeply held belief that slavery was an evil to himself. The seven judges of the Bangladesh Supreme Court similarly, no doubt, wished to draw a line between morality and the law: this, they felt, was a moral issue, not a legal one, certainly not an open and shut case of murder.
On 28th December, Mujib declared a state of emergency effectively martial law, minus the army. He thus put the constitution the covenant between the ruler and the ruled aside, abandoning the three-year old document as a legacy of colonial rule. The Awami League was swept away by its leader. It was a civilian coup.
In January 1975, Mujib had himself declared president. "Mujib, not the Bangladesh army, had removed the constraints on the arbitrary uses of power (p 102)."
What was to take the place of the Awami League? It was to be BAKSAL, Mujib's expression of the one-party state. "Thus in a more significant way, BAKSAL was meant to serve the purpose of the Bangabandhu's personal dictatorship, not the cause of national development and unity. BAKSAL was proof positive that Mujib intended to convert the country into a personal fiefdom for himself and his family members, and his many detractors did not need convincing that their once respected leader, not they, was the real threat to the nation's 'democratic' future (p 105)." The country was headed towards a de facto and despotic monarchy.
A grateful nation heaped every reward on the deliverers, from ambassadorships to political immunity (known as the Indemnity Ordnance, which was incorporated into the constitution as an amendment in the 1980s by the parliament of General Zia's party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP)). There the matter would have ended, had not the cold war ended abruptly.
Western governments had no longer any need of military rulers, and General Ershad was noisily removed ostensibly by 'people power', much as the 'colour' revolutions would later be orchestrated by western democracies. In Africa, there were only three democracies in 1989; in 1991, there were thirty. I have remarked on this remarkable turn of events elsewhere, so I won't go into details here.
Suffice it to say, with General Ershad locked up illegally in prison, there were only two candidates for the post of prime minister, the country having switched to a parliamentary system in a rigged referendum in 1991: General Zia's widow, Khaleda Zia, and Sheikh Mujib's eldest daughter, Sheikh Hasina, now leader of the party her father had tried to strangle, the Awami League. In the first and only free election since 1990, it was fortunate for the 'instruments of heaven', as we must describe the assassins, that Khaleda Zia came to power, and stayed there until 1996. For as soon as her rival, Hasina, came to power in a doctored election (Buggins's turn, you see), she began to proceed to try the assassins.
Let us pause to reflect on the Indemnity Ordnance conferring immunity on the assassins. John Locke's doctrine of 'appeal to heaven' has not envisaged a situation where the emissaries of heaven might be tried for responding to such an appeal. The Indemnity Ordnance can be seen as a major constitutional innovation to safeguard those who would prevent descent into a state of war from civil society, which was clearly what Sheikh Mujib was attempting to do, and which he partly succeeded in doing. Locke says:
-- as if when men quitting the state of nature entered into society, they agreed that all of them but one, should be under the restraint of laws, but that he should still retain all the liberty of the state of nature, increased with power, and made licentious by impunity. This is to think, that men are so foolish, that they take care to avoid what mischiefs may be done them by pole-cats, or foxes; but are content, nay, think it safety, to be devoured by lions."
The devouring lion, and its brood, had to be done away with. And protection had to be conferred on the lion-hunters. Locke quotes Barclay with respect to the conditions under which a king can 'unking' himself. One of them occurs "if he have a purpose and design to ruin the kingdom and commonwealth", and then mentions the crimes of Nero and Caligula.
Which brings us to the question of Caligula's daughter. Was it necessary to put her to death as well? Unfortunately, in a dynastic age, it was. But, it will be argued, we have come a long way since then. Have we? A casual glance at South Asia shows how important is the dynasty in politics. Dynastic politics flouts the conventional wisdom that "politicians, like diapers, must be changed and for the same reason". The dynasties of Mujib and Zia have been around since the '80s, and their collective pong reaches up to high heaven. Still the people of Bangladesh hold their noses and vote for them. The assassins are going to hang, not for killing Mujib's family, but for failing to kill Mujib's family: the two daughters survived.
The pattern that emerges is this: the assassins of 1975 are hailed as heroes till 1996; the dynasty under Sheikh Hasina acquires state power in that year, loses it in the election of 2001, when proceedings against the assassins stop, and are resumed again after the daughter again returns to power in December, 2008. A dynastic vendetta? A lynching? Victor's justice? It has been all three.
Unfortunately for the heroes, the Indemnity Ordnance had not been passed with a full quorum of parliament: this was the question the clever lawyers of the Awami League put to the judiciary. Naturally, being a question of fact, the judiciary had to pronounce the ordnance invalid. The next stage was a kangaroo court's decision to have the assassins executed "by firing squad, and if the criminal code did not allow for that, to be hanged to death." The learned magistrate had apparently forgotten that Bangladesh does not shoot offenders; a lapse of memory to be attributed to sycophancy in serving the House of Mujib.
The higher judiciary was to be less pliable.
Seven High Court judges refused to hear the lower court's verdict: they declared themselves 'embarrassed' without explaining why. The names of these High Court judges should be engraved in gold not golden letters in the premises of the High Court. To any student of law, the reason for their refusal was transparently obvious they did not wish to embroil the judiciary in a moral issue that had no legal redress without, at the same time, politicizing the judiciary. The distinction between law and morality has been clearly drawn by Immanuel Kant. The best illustration of the discrepancy was provided by Chief Justice Taney. A devout Catholic, he had emancipated all his slaves; yet, when the Dred Scott case came up, he had to assert that 'a black man has no rights'. This decision undermined the prestige of the Supreme Court: yet Taney was merely stating the law, keeping his deeply held belief that slavery was an evil to himself. The seven judges of the Bangladesh Supreme Court similarly, no doubt, wished to draw a line between morality and the law: this, they felt, was a moral issue, not a legal one, certainly not an open and shut case of murder.
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