Opinion Deep divide

Tuesday morning’s firebombing of a bus in eastern Bangladesh is the latest incident in a spate of political violence that has often taken the form of arson attacks on vehicles and has already claimed more than 50 lives since early January. This violence stems directly from the call to enforce a nationwide blockade given by opposition leader Khaleda Zia last month around the anniversary of last year’s general election that saw Hasina’s Awami League (AL) return to power almost unchallenged, given Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party’s (BNP’s) poll boycott.

Zia has been confined to her party office since January 3 — with the government even cutting off the electricity (since restored), telephone, cable and internet connections on Saturday. A number of BNP members and leaders have been detained. But the BNP’s fundamentalist allies, the Jamaat-e-Islami and Hefazat-e-Islam, have been responsible for largescale violence across Bangladesh and particularly in Dhaka ever since the 1971 war crimes trials began pronouncing verdicts against Jamaat leaders. In this larger battle for Bangladesh’s identity, the BNP has not made matters easy by abandoning the electoral path for street agitation.

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The risk that Bangladesh runs is not of a failure of governance, as Hasina’s tenure has seen the country make progress on socio-economic indicators. It is the complete collapse of its politics, which can make governance successes redundant. Since the elections, government and opposition have shown little eagerness to bridge their deep and bitter divide to negotiate a way out of the turmoil. The AL and BNP must talk to each other and their leaders must abandon the practice of mutual recriminations. As Bangladesh’s most important neighbour, India must waste no effort in impressing this necessity upon Dhaka.