Sheikh Hasina's Death Sentence: Bangladesh Repeats Its Political Trauma of 1975

"History...is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake." James Joyce's Stephen Daedalus quote aptly characterizes the recurring political tragedies in South Asia. Bangladesh's former president Sheikh Hasina now faces a death sentence, tried in absentia for crimes against humanity following her exile after the 2024 student-led uprising.

In a haunting historical parallel, Hasina confronts the same fate that befell her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rehman, who was killed without dignity in 1975 in a newly independent Bangladesh. While India currently provides her refuge, this verdict effectively closes any path to her homeland.

Sheikh Hasina's sentencing represents a critical juncture in Bangladesh's volatile political landscape, eerily echoing past cycles of power and retribution. Once viewed as continuing her father's democratic legacy, she now stands condemned by the state as contradicting the liberation era's promises—just as her father was. The allegations against her—corruption, mass repression, forced disappearances, and suppression of opposition—fueled the 2024 "revolution." This narrative simultaneously legitimizes the uprising and symbolically severs ties with the political dynasty that influenced Bangladesh for five decades.

The trial's legitimacy remains questionable, conducted without her presence and clouded by concerns of political motivation. For Hasina's supporters, this represents vengeance disguised as justice; for opponents, it marks a delayed accountability for democratic deterioration and authoritarian governance. This moral division reflects Bangladesh's persistent tensions between secularism and religious nationalism, dynastic politics versus populist movements, and liberation memories against subsequent disillusionment. South Asian history is marked by such binaries, where carefully selected symbols gain more importance than actual reality.

Hasina's exile heightens her symbolic significance. India's decision to shelter her transcends humanitarian concerns, reinforcing the historical connections binding these nations since 1971. While critics label these interdependencies as hegemonic, supporters view them as fraternal. For India, harboring Hasina serves as a reminder of shared history and security cooperation. For Bangladesh's new leadership, however, it represents provocation, undermining their claims of breaking with the past. India no longer holds its status as Bangladesh's birth ally, reviving cross-border political tensions reminiscent of earlier decades.

The most poignant aspect emerges in Hasina's personal trajectory. She embodies South Asian history's circularity, where leaders transition from being hailed as saviors to condemned as tyrants within one lifetime—similar to Pakistan's Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, Gen Pervez Musharraf, and Nawaz Sharif. The pattern appears almost deliberately symmetrical: leaders shaped by trauma, ultimately undone by the same violent political disruptions they once employed to seize and maintain power.

Sheikh Hasina's case thus transcends one political figure's downfall. It manifests a national struggle with memory, legitimacy, and unresolved historical burdens. Bangladesh confronts its ghosts not through reconciliation but through repetition, reenacting old conflicts under the guise of renewal. Nations failing to reconcile with their past are doomed to relive it repeatedly, as if awakening were impossible. Joyce's nightmare becomes the nation's own: persistent, cyclical, and resistant to awakening.

(Nishtha Gautam is a Delhi-based author and academic)

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author