The Last Sentinel of a Fractured Democracy- Begum Khaleda Jia !!!
Biswanath Bhattacharya
December 30, 2025
Khaleda Zia’s death at 80 closes not just a life but an era—an era that shaped Bangladesh with the force of a monsoon tide, unpredictable yet undeniably transformative. For more than three decades, she stood as one of the two towering poles around which the nation’s politics revolved, her rivalry with Sheikh Hasina forming the spine of Bangladesh’s democratic drama. With her passing, a familiar silhouette disappears from the country’s political horizon, leaving behind a landscape still echoing with the battles she fought, the institutions she shaped, and the storms she weathered.
She did not choose politics; politics chose her. Born in 1945, Khaleda Zia lived a quiet domestic life until the assassination of her husband, President Ziaur Rahman, in 1981 thrust her into the public arena. What began as a widow’s reluctant inheritance soon hardened into a steely political ascent. By 1984, she was leading the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, transforming grief into resolve and becoming the face of the anti-Ershad movement that ultimately toppled the military regime in 1990. Her rise was meteoric, almost mythic—like a figure carved by circumstance and sharpened by adversity.
In 1991, she shattered a glass ceiling that few in South Asia had even dared to touch. Khaleda Zia became Bangladesh’s first woman prime minister and only the second woman in the Muslim world to lead a democratic government. Her first term restored parliamentary democracy, introduced VAT, and expanded girls’ education, including free secondary schooling for rural girls—reforms that earned her international recognition and reshaped the country’s social fabric. For many, she became a symbol of possibility, a reminder that leadership could emerge from the most unexpected corners.
But her journey, like Bangladesh itself, was never linear. Her second term (2001–2006) unfolded under a darker sky. Allegations of corruption, the growing influence of her son Tarique Rahman, and the rise of extremist groups operating from Bangladeshi soil strained her government’s credibility and its relationship with India. Her alliance with Jamaat-e-Islami remains one of the most contested decisions of her career, a political gamble that continues to divide analysts and citizens alike.
Her relationship with India was a pendulum—sometimes steady, sometimes swinging sharply. She navigated sensitive moments such as the Babri Masjid demolition and the Gujarat riots, later recalling how her government worked to protect Hindu minorities during those volatile days. She interacted with Indian leaders across the political spectrum, from Narasimha Rao to Vajpayee to Manmohan Singh, each engagement layered with both cooperation and mistrust.
And then there was the rivalry—the “Battle of the Begums.” Few political duels in the world have lasted as long or cut as deep. Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina were bound by history, tragedy, and a shared determination to shape Bangladesh in their own image. Their brief unity in 1990 to oust Ershad remains a rare moment of harmony in a saga otherwise defined by confrontation. For decades, their contest polarised the nation, turning every election into a referendum on identity, ideology, and memory.
Her decline began not with defeat but with absence. The 2013 election boycott, triggered by the abolition of the caretaker government system, proved a strategic misstep that allowed Hasina to consolidate power and push the BNP to the margins. Illness, legal battles, and political isolation followed. Even after her conditional release in 2020, she remained largely confined to her home, watching from the sidelines as Bangladesh’s political landscape shifted beneath her feet.
The fall of the Hasina government in 2024 briefly reopened the political field. In one of her final public messages, Khaleda Zia called for an end to “the politics of vengeance,” a phrase that carried the weight of her own suffering and the hope of a gentler future. But time, relentless as ever, was running out.
Her death comes at a moment of profound transition. Tarique Rahman, her elder son and long-time political heir, returned to Bangladesh in December 2025 after 17 years in exile, poised to lead the BNP into the 2026 elections. Whether he can inherit not just her party but her mass appeal—her ability to command crowds, to embody defiance, to stand as a counterweight to the Awami League—remains uncertain.
Khaleda Zia leaves behind a legacy as layered as the nation she helped shape. She was admired for her resilience, criticised for her alliances, feared by her rivals, and revered by her supporters. She restored democracy, yet presided over turbulence. She empowered women, yet made compromises that unsettled many. She was, in every sense, a mirror of Bangladesh’s own contradictions—its aspirations, its confrontations, its fragile dance between power and pluralism.
As Bangladesh prepares for another electoral battle, her absence will be felt like a missing landmark—one that guided, provoked, and defined the political imagination of a nation. The era of Khaleda Zia has ended, but the story she helped write continues, its pages still turning in the restless winds of South Asian politics.
(Tripurainfo)
more articles...