Cultural organisations, journalists and political parties known as the Awami League’s soft power are back in the field in full force, and BNP politicians are attending some of their events. Udichi, a cultural organisation seen as backed by the Awami League, is holding programmes across the country to mark its founding anniversary. The director general of the government-appointed July Museum gave a message of greeting at the anniversary.
Most of Udichi’s organisers went into hiding after Sheikh Hasina fell on 5 August, but they began to regroup gradually after the BNP government took office. Udichi is known as the cultural organisation of the Communist Party, but it is widely seen as working mainly as a cultural front of the Awami League.
The Communist Party of Bangladesh (CPB) has also become active in the name of cultural work. On 27 October, when the CPB began a procession chanting the slogan ‘Joy Bangla’, activists of the Jubo Dal and the Chhatra Dal stopped it in Paltan.
Leaders of the ruling party have been seen at various programmes of the Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council. Speaking at a death anniversary event for the council’s former president, Nim Chandra Bhowmik, BNP MP Fazlur Rahman said: ‘The feet of our society have risen to the top and the heads have fallen to the bottom. Once Dhaka University produced learned and gifted people, but today that university has turned into a big madrasa.’
The MP for Kishoreganj-4 (Itna-Mithamain-Austagram) said: ‘What studying is there at Dhaka University? Nobody should enroll there. It has become a place for brutes.’
Recalling his close ties with Dr Nim Chandra Bhowmik during the Liberation War and after 15 August, Fazlur Rahman said he wanted to live another five years to see whether Bangladesh would remain a land of Bengalis or turn into the Pakistan of those who opposed independence. Without protecting the Bengali language, Bengali identity and indigenous culture, he said, the Bangladesh of 1971 cannot be kept. Bijon Kanti Sarkar, special assistant to the prime minister, was present at the event.
The Sheikh Hasina government had appointed Nim Chandra Bhowmik ambassador to Nepal. His conduct there was criticised as unprofessional and undiplomatic, and as damaging to Bangladesh’s standing. The Nepali government complained that although a Mercedes-Benz was provided for his use as ambassador, he regularly rode to dance bars on the back of a motorcycle, in breach of diplomatic etiquette.
He was also accused of repeatedly harassing an Indian woman diplomat in Kathmandu. On one occasion, according to the complaint, he tried to enter her home, was stopped by the guard and sat waiting in his car outside.
He was further accused of causing a nuisance at the home of the film actor Manisha Koirala. Nepal’s foreign secretary made a formal complaint about this conduct to the foreign secretary in Dhaka. An inquiry committee was formed, found the complaints to be true, and he was recalled from Nepal. His appointment was later cancelled.
At the death anniversary event, Sarwar Ali, a trustee of the Liberation War Museum, said: ‘Bangladesh had moved far forward under Bangabandhu’s leadership, and today the country has drifted a long way from there.’ The organisers of the Liberation War Museum, which is seen as part of an Awami League history project, were silent for a long time but are now coming forward with programmes including journalist training.
Meanwhile, leaders of the CPB, known as the Awami League’s ‘B team’, are appearing as leading voices in discussions on state media. Critics say the party’s leaders supported enforced disappearances, killings and extrajudicial executions during Sheikh Hasina’s decade and a half in power, carried out in the name of suppressing fundamentalism.
CPB leaders now take part regularly in talk shows on Bangladesh Television. A review of the guests on two BTV talk shows found that CPB leaders are invited to at least two programmes every week.
People known as Awami League propagandists also appear regularly on private television channels and in newspapers, building a case for the politics of the ousted government, which its opponents call fascist. Some of them were in prison during the interim government.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report