By Ashish Singh
This article, based on an interview with Bangladeshi-Swedish writer Anisur Rahman, examines the crisis of legitimacy, sovereignty, and direction confronting Bangladesh today. Rahman’s reflections are not merely reactions to current events; they are rooted in a long memory of the nation’s unfinished struggles since 1971 and an acute concern about the erosion of its secular and democratic foundations.
One year into the interim government led by Muhammad Yunus, Rahman sees little sign of an electoral roadmap. Instead, he argues, the regime’s underlying mission is to rewrite history, weaken the secular-progressive future envisioned in the liberation movement, and embed Bangladesh within a foreign-sponsored order. According to him, the interim administration’s survival depends not on popular mandate but on opaque commitments to external actors, particularly the United States.
The role of foreign powers runs through Rahman’s analysis like a central thread. He claims that Bangladesh today is managed as a “colonial land of the US”, prepared to serve Western strategic interests under the framework of the Burma Act of 2022. He draws attention to alleged military activities, unexplained deaths, and the presence of foreign personnel in sensitive regions, framing these developments as symptoms of compromised sovereignty. In this view, domestic governance has been subordinated to an external design that undermines both national dignity and regional trust.
Regional dynamics further complicate the picture. The visit of Pakistani ministers, Rahman argues, represents a profound affront to the spirit of independence, reviving the unhealed wounds of 1971. Until Pakistan acknowledges its historical crimes—massacres, rapes, and destruction committed during the Liberation War—and settles outstanding economic claims, such exchanges remain, in his view, an insult to the ideals on which Bangladesh was founded.
Domestically, the so-called July Declaration illustrates, for Rahman, the ways in which constitutional order is being eroded. He interprets the move as an attempt to empower extremist forces allied with the interim administration—groups aligned with the National Citizens Party, Jamaat-e-Islami, and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party—while sidelining pro-1971 platforms such as the Awami League. The result, he warns, is a creeping Talibanisation of politics under the cover of legality and consensus-building.
Rahman’s critique is sharp, but it raises broader questions that transcend Bangladesh’s immediate politics. How do interim regimes claim legitimacy in the absence of elections? How do small states preserve sovereignty when global powers impose strategic frameworks like the Burma Act? And how does a nation founded on secular and progressive ideals defend itself from the erosion of those very principles?
Through Rahman’s lens, Bangladesh stands at a dangerous crossroads. The crisis is not only about when elections will be held, but about whether the country can preserve its independence, historical memory, and democratic trajectory in the face of both internal manipulation and external pressure. His warning is stark: without vigilance, the secular dream of 1971 risks being replaced by a foreign-scripted order that Bangladesh never chose.
(Ashish Singh is a social and political scientist.)
