4 months ago
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Khaleda Zia, Bangladesh
The passing of Khaleda Zia, Bangladesh’s archetypal pistillate Prime Minister and long-time main of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), marks the extremity of an epoch successful the country’s post-Independence governmental history.
Her decades-long rivalry with Sheikh Hasina was not simply idiosyncratic but was besides a continuation of an older ideological conflict implicit Bangladesh’s individuality and governmental destiny — 1 rooted successful the competing legacies of Ziaur Rahman and Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. For years, the persistent hostility betwixt Bengali nationalism and Islamist forces has prevented Bangladesh from afloat realising its economical and antiauthoritarian potential. Khaleda Zia’s passing coincides with the instrumentality of her son, Tarique Rahman. He present faces the formidable task of charting an autarkic people for the BNP portion playing a stabilising relation successful nationalist politics.
M. Jeyaram,
Sholavandan, Tamil Nadu
The interest present is little astir bequest and much astir the contiguous vacuum. Bangladesh needs institutions that emergence supra personalities. Ensuring credible elections, judicial independency and abstraction for dissent volition honour her stated committedness to antiauthoritarian norms. For neighbours, including India, a unchangeable and plural Bangladesh is what matters. Quiet diplomatic engagement that supports antiauthoritarian processes, not factions, is the astir applicable mode guardant astatine this delicate moment.
A. Myilsami,
Coimbatore
As the BNP confronts its biggest test, the federation itself faces a larger issue: however to steer its aboriginal distant from the perils of mismanagement, reconstruct organization trust, and physique a governmental situation worthy of its antiauthoritarian inheritance. History volition justice Khaleda Zia with complexity.
Vijay Singh Adhikari,
Nainital, Uttarakhand
China’s signal
China has scaled up its intimidation of Taiwan and its assertion rests connected an unresolved civilian warfare and contested history. In contrast, Russia’s assertion implicit Ukrainian territory rests connected neither consent nor law. Yet, precedent matters much than nuance successful geopolitics. If Ukraine’s sovereignty tin beryllium partitioned nether ongoing “peace” initiatives and sanctified by diplomacy nether duress, China could mention time, powerfulness and persistence to warrant reunification by coercion.
The information lies successful the erosion of a halfway principle: borders cannot beryllium changed by force. Ukraine, then, is not lone defending its territory. It is defending a tenet whose illness would echo successful the Taiwan Strait and beyond.
R. Narayanan,
Navi Mumbai
