Bangladesh's On 'Reset': Hasina On Trial, Return Of Jamaat, Bangabandhu's Legacy Erased

Last Updated:June 03, 2025, 07:30 IST

The realignment is particularly significant for India as Bangladesh now seems to be going against all the ideas that made it a friendly neighbour

It is a turning of the tables – a dismantling of former PM Sheikh Hasina and her Awami League legacy using the tools she once wielded to consolidate power. (Image: AFP/File)

Bangladesh is undergoing a dramatic political and geopolitical realignment: ouster, ban and now trial for “crimes against humanity" for former prime minister Sheikh Hasina; destruction of Bangabandhu’s (Sheikh Mujibur Rahman) residence, statues, murals and now erasing his legacy; lifting the ban on the Jamaat-e-Islami and allowing it to register as a political party among other changes.

The realignment is particularly significant for India as Bangladesh now seems to be going against all the ideas that made it a friendly neighbour.

In less than a year since the fall of Sheikh Hasina’s government, the country has seen the unthinkable – Hasina facing trial for alleged mass murder, the Jamaat poised to return to electoral politics, and the conscious removal of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s image from currency notes.

On Monday, the office of chief adviser Muhammad Yunus posted a statement on X (formerly Twitter) stating that Bangladesh Bank governor Dr Ahsan H Mansur, accompanied by finance adviser Salehuddin Ahmed, law adviser Asif Nazrul, Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) affairs adviser Supradip Chakma and local government adviser Asif Mahmud Sajeeb Bhuiyan, handed over images of six newly designed banknotes. This was following a meeting of the advisory council at Yunus’s office, and the new currencies now represent Bangladesh’s heritage replacing Bangabandhu’s portraits.

RADICAL RECALIBRATION

All of it orchestrated – or at least enabled – by Yunus, whose apparent internationalist posture masks a far more radical domestic recalibration.

Even though it seems to be a developing situation, for India it has opened up a new front in the east. Hasina’s trial is more than a legal process – it is now a political theatre with high stakes.

Once the architect of Bangladesh’s war crimes tribunal, she now finds herself a defendant before the same institution, the convicted ‘war criminals’ or ‘razakars’ walked out of prison.

The charges against Hasina stem from the deadly crackdown on protesters during the mass uprising last year, which eventually led to her ouster on August 5, 2024. Symbolically and institutionally, it is a turning of the tables – a dismantling of Hasina and her Awami League legacy using the tools she once wielded to consolidate power.

JAMAAT-E-ISLAMI

The return of Jamaat-e-Islami to the political fold signals the most profound shift in everything Bangladesh ever stood for.

The Jamaat-e-Islami, or Jamaat – known as an offshoot of Jamaat-e-Pakistan – is a political party from the erstwhile East Pakistan that opposed the formation of Bangladesh. Once vilified for its role in the 1971 Liberation War and banned from politics, the party is now being rehabilitated into the mainstream.

It is a controversial move, deeply polarising in a country where collective memory of 1971 still shapes its political landscape. Yet, the interim government appears unfazed and determined, perhaps, to move Bangladesh toward a new political compact that transcends the long-standing binary of the Awami League and BNP.

Nowhere is this transformation more symbolically potent than in the deliberate removal of ‘Bangabandhu’ Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s image from currency notes. In a country where his likeness was once sacrosanct, this does not seem like a minor bureaucratic decision.

It is an ideological shift – an attempt to reset the nation’s foundational narrative. The interim regime is not just managing a transition, it is reimagining and resetting the national memory itself.

FACING ELECTION HEAT AT HOME, YUNUS LOOKS ABROAD

Yunus, meanwhile, is now positioning himself as Bangladesh’s global statesman. His recent visit to Japan, capped by a billion-dollar economic support package, was as much about attracting investment as it was about affirming legitimacy on the world stage.

His current meeting with the Chinese minister-led delegation and blueprint of further collaboration added to this new affirmation. He is trying to deploy his international reputation – and Nobel Prize pedigree – to recast Bangladesh not as a crisis-ridden state but as a reformist project under careful stewardship.

And yet, for all its velocity, this reset carries risk of a region plunging into instability yet again. The erasure of icons, the deliberate rehabilitation of political pariahs, and the trial of a former PM are not mere procedural acts – they are foundational decisions.

The interim government is now scripting a new Bangladesh, but whether that script leads to national healing or renewed polarisation will depend on what comes next – elections, accountability, and a broader societal consensus. At this moment, the country is not just in transition but is actively rewriting the terms of its political identity even as the world is watching.

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News world Bangladesh's On 'Reset': Hasina On Trial, Return Of Jamaat, Bangabandhu's Legacy Erased