Mujib Year: How Hasina turned Bangladesh into 'Hirak Rajar Desh'

Ousted prime minister Sheikh Hasina said in a 2018 speech, "I always keep in mind that my father has liberated this country, so it is my foremost duty to serve the country's people."

Could there be any bigger irony than this?

Let's rewind to the first week of March 2020. The world was already reeling from the rapid outbreak of coronavirus, with many countries scrambling to impose restrictions. 

But Hasina, the then-prime minister of Bangladesh, had something else on her mind. 

Covid preparedness? That could wait. A virus outbreak that could jeopardise millions of lives? Hardly a concern. 

Hasina's sole focus was on celebrating Mujib Year, marking the centenary of her father, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's birth. 

So, schools remained open, mass gatherings continued, and most astonishingly, Bangladesh's first confirmed Covid-19 cases were allegedly kept under wraps until 8 March. 

Why? To ensure the 7 March celebration of Mujib's historic 1971 speech went ahead uninterrupted. After all, why let a pesky pandemic ruin the party?

This wasn't mere negligence—it was authoritarianism 101, where building a cult of personality trumped public welfare. The citizens' health became collateral damage in the government's mission to immortalise the nation's "Father."

Now, the financial toll of the Mujib Year has also come to light.

Over the past six years, Hasina's government spent a whopping Tk1,261 crore in public funds on Mujib Year celebrations, according to data presented by relevant ministries and government entities during an Advisory Council meeting of the interim government at the secretariat on Wednesday. 

The spending spree featured everything from commemorative postage stamps and glossy publications to elaborate programmes like "Muktir Mahanayak" and "Mujib Chirantan". 

Even during the pandemic, the government found time to launch a Mujib Year website, special mobile packages, and discounted internet services—not for Covid relief, of course, but for the celebrations.

And just like that, an event literally supposed to be a single year ballooned into a six-year political extravaganza, draining national coffers in a country grappling with spiralling inflation, widespread food insecurity, and an economy teetering on the brink.

During Hasina's regime, Bangabandhu's omnipresence became unavoidable, thanks to tens of thousands of "Bangabandhu Corners" popping up in schools, colleges, offices, and even NGOs. These corners, adorned with colourful photos, posters, and books, often became shrines to Mujib's entire family.

Schoolchildren were required to read poems and articles about him, and even recited oaths in his name during morning assemblies. Many institutions went as far as dedicating entire rooms to Bangabandhu Corners, which often included materials about his family members as well. 

And it didn't stop there. Bangladesh's 82 foreign missions were instructed to create high-end "Bangabandhu Corners," ensuring the cult crossed borders. Institutions were forced to buy new books on Mujib annually, while statues and murals of him sprouted up everywhere—from airport lounges to district entrances.

With such excess, it became glaringly obvious that while Hasina may have constantly remembered her father's pivotal role in the country's liberation, serving the people was the last thing on her mind. 

Her real mission was to etch her father's name into the nation's collective memory, no matter the cost or the consequences.

But let's not fool ourselves into thinking this was about preserving history or honouring a legacy. A closer look at Hasina's actions, as well as those of her family and her party, the Awami League, over their 16-year regime reveals a different story. 

Commemorating Mujib wasn't about celebrating the nation's founding ideals. It was about weaponising his legacy for personal, economic, and political gain, a cynical strategy that not only betrayed the people but also tarnished the last drop of legacy Mujib left behind.

That's why, after the fall of the Hasina regime on 5 August in the aftermath of an extraordinary students-led mass uprising, it wasn't just the government that bore the brunt of public anger. The symbols of Mujib's legacy became prime targets of wrath.

From attacks on Mujib's historic Dhanmondi 32 residence to the destruction of murals, statues, and Bangabandhu Corners across the nation, the message was clear: people were fed up. 

Tired of having Mujibism shoved down their throats, they revolted against the very symbols of the cult they were forced to endure.

A striking parallel can be drawn with the "Jantar Mantar Ghar" from Satyajit Ray's "Hirak Rajar Deshe". 

In the film, an insidious chamber was a tool for the tyrannical king to brainwash dissenters, compelling them to revere him as a "god" despite their dire circumstances. Similarly, Hasina sought to instil the belief among the people of Bangladesh that her father single-handedly led the nation to liberation and that she alone could uphold his legacy. 

Yet, as in the film's climax, the people eventually rose up, toppling the king's statue—a powerful symbol of the collapse of authoritarian control and the awakening of collective resistance.

Similarly, at the end of the day, it is solely and entirely Sheikh Hasina who must be held accountable for the tarnishing of Mujib's legacy. 

It's not as though she didn't know what needed to be done to preserve her father's place in history, particularly the heroic image of his pre-independence years, while distancing herself from his wrongdoings. 

All she had to do was "serve the people"–a simple yet profound duty she herself professed to uphold.

Instead of syphoning off crores of taka and justifying it under the guise of commemorating Mujib, she could have directed those funds toward meaningful initiatives to improve the nation's welfare and lift people out of their dire economic conditions.

Rather than clinging to power indefinitely, she could have granted the people their democratic rights, allowing them to practise and determine for themselves whether they truly subscribed to the ideology she inherited from her father.

But no—Hasina repeated the same grave errors her father made during 1972-75 by trying to establish Baksal, doubling down on authoritarian control at the expense of democratic principles.

She knew the way forward but willfully strayed from it. Rather than empowering the people, she sought to exalt herself, attempting to project an image larger than the nation itself.

In her attempt to establish Mujib as the "Father of the Nation," she reduced him to merely "her" father, treating the people as little more than subjects in her family's imagined kingdom.

Hasina ended up betraying the virtues of her father and embraced all the evils in him. Mujib was assassinated once in 1975, and Hasina made sure he faced the same fate again metaphorically in 2024.