It is a remarkable characteristic of modern personality cults that they are declared to be alien to the fundamental laws and principles of every political system by their own representatives. Democratic politicians tend to relegate the phenomenon to totalitarian or at least authoritarian forms of government. Many dictators on the other hand claim the popular nature of their respective cults. Saparmurat Niyasov, better known as Turkmenbashi, who cultivated one of the most excessive leader cults in recent years, once said: “I’m personally against seeing my pictures and statues in the streets – but it’s what the people want.” Most communist leaders invoked feudal relics in the superstructure to explain the appearance of personality cults in their own party-states, which were purportedly built on a scientific and rational worldview. Even the architects of the massive leader cults in Nazi Germany or Benito Mussolini’s fascist dictatorship in Italy tried to quell the impression of having deliberately relied on the emotional appeal of personalized politics and symbols. Instead, they tried to emphasize the scientific nature of their ideologies. Adolf Hitler thus in a talk with two leading apologists of his personality cult, Alfred Rosenberg and Heinrich Himmler, explicitly warned against transforming national socialism, which he described as “a cool and highly-reasoned approach to reality based on the greatest of scientific knowledge,” into a mystic cult movement.

The history of the Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung is probably the most astounding publishing tale ever. The estimated number of official volumes printed between 1966 and 1969 ranges just over a billion, second only to the Holy Bible in terms of circulation numbers and this figure even excludes local prints, foreign language editions, internal army volumes, and innumerable mimeographed or handwritten collections. Up to Lin Biao’s death in September 1971, the Little Red Book was translated into thirty-six languages, including Braille script, and published around 110 million times abroad. Besides the official versions of the Quotations, up to 440 local editions have been noted. During the decade of the Cultural Revolution, all in all some 10.8 billion Mao texts or posters were printed by the state, making Mao the best-selling author ever, especially if the 783 million Mao items published between 1949 and 1965 are included. The stunning success of the works of Mao Zedong and most importantly the Little Red Book played a crucial role in the unfolding of the Cultural Revolution and the rise of its specific rhetoric. This chapter provides a short history of the compilation and distribution of the Little Red Book against the background of political events up to the Politburo meeting in May 1966.

Bangladesh's economy has changed considerably since Liberation. In terms of production and trade, it has seen the rise of nontraditional industrial exports such as the ready-made garment sector and the growth of intensive irrigation-led agriculture. There has been a significant, albeit gradual, shift in economic governance from 1970s-style centralised state planning towards a partially “liberalised” economy with a greater level of integration with the rest of the world. Although the economy had remained heavily dependent on international aid during the 1970s and 1980s, by the 1990s its centrality had become displaced by export earnings from the ready-made garment sector and the rise of remittances from Bangladeshis living and working overseas, particularly in the Gulf States. The garment industry brought important changes in the gender composition of the formal-sector labour force. Investment in infrastructure has helped to facilitate economic growth, but continuing political instability has periodically limited wider economic progress and change, while volatility in international markets has brought increased risk to the economy.

Since the early 1990s, Bangladesh's economic performance has improved in terms of economic growth and gains in poverty reduction. World Bank figures show a jump in GDP growth from an annual average of 3.7 percent during the 1980s to one of 5.2 percent during the second half of the 1990s. Export earnings have increased steadily, from 7 percent of the GDP in 1991 to 18 percent in 2006 (Murshid et al. 2009). However, the economic transformation that has followed from the liberalisation reforms has come at a cost. Despite positive impacts of income growth on poverty, there is a worsening pattern of income distribution. Although most economic change has generally centred on the urban formal sector and the rural nonfarm sector, there has been little impact on the broader farm or urban informal sectors. There are low levels of tax-revenue collection and local resource mobilisation and extensive money laundering for political purposes. As a result, Bangladesh faces the future with an economy that has increasingly globalised elements but also with a large rural sector that remains in place, an extensive “informal sector” and high levels of corruption.

This chapter analyses the development of Bangladesh's political institutions and considers the tensions and transformations that have taken place in relation to the main political actors and processes. A period of nation building followed the 1971 Liberation victory under the leadership of Mujib, which was based on the secular nationalist principles that had labelled Islamic political parties as collaborators with the Pakistani army. However, disillusionment ensued as it became clear that Mujib's increasingly rigid and repressive regime had failed to capitalise on the momentum of Liberation. After the 1975 coup, the government of General Ziaur Rahman (Zia) ushered in a new period of military politics. This brought a series of efforts at limited administrative decentralisation, partly as a mechanism designed to build political support and legitimacy for unelected government. After Zia was assassinated in 1981, General H. M. Ershad continued military rule until the restoration of democracy in 1991 after a long mass-opposition movement was eventually translated into a peaceful “people power” removal of Ershad from power.

Four elected governments have now served since that time (two led by the BNP and two by the AL), as well as a two-year period of an ex-tended military-backed caretaker government that took power in 2007–8. The main activities and achievements of these governments are discussed in key areas such as the ongoing government decentralisation, the partial peace settlement achieved in the CHT and the progress with regional negotiations over water sharing with India. The chapter also explores the emergence of the confrontational politics that have characterised government-opposition relationships during this period and considers the main roots of these problems. Understanding the limitations of the political system requires an historical perspective on state formation and recognition of the ways social institutions such as patronage still tend to dominate political institutions. Evidence of a revival of Islamist politics is also considered, notably in the election of the 2001–6 BNP government that, for the first time, included JI coalition members in the cabinet. It concludes by considering the dominant perception among citizens and outside observers of an increasing inability of the state to govern within a political system that has been described as an “illiberal democracy.” A lack of confidence in the capacity of the state to provide basic law and order for citizens or a sound investment climate for national and international capital reached a crisis point at this time when a combination of pressure from the international donor community and a faction within the army led to the imposition of an extended military-backed caretaker government on January 11, 2007. Dr. Fakhruddin Ahmed, a former civil servant, World Bank economist and governor of the Bangladesh Bank, was appointed as the chief adviser. This intervention initially met with considerable public support, and the new government attempted a set of wide-ranging reforms that were aimed at tackling corruption, building political leadership and strengthening the independence of the judiciary. When elections eventually followed, almost two years later in December 2008, the AL achieved a massive majority and formed its second elected government, bringing some new expectations but also continuing many of the old discredited characteristics of dysfunctional politics.

Bangladesh's existence as a nation-state only dates from 1971, but the nation cannot be understood without reference to a much-longer historical backdrop. In this chapter we provide a selective historical overview leading up to the moment when Bangladesh emerged as a separate country, aiming to contextualise analysis of state and economy against the longer-term developments in the region. The chapter begins with a brief discussion of precolonial Bengal, a period with important implications for the shaping of the natural environment and of social and religious identities. It then moves to the period of British rule, first describing the role of the East India Company in securing the region as part of the British Empire, and then its gradual incorporation into the formal administrative structures of colonial rule, which brought lasting political and economic consequences, for example, in state formation. The weakness of the Bangladesh state today has important historical roots in the influence of more than three hundred years of economic globalisation during which the country moved from a position of relative economic strength and vitality to a position of structural weakness within the global economy (McGuire 2009).

The third section considers partition in 1947 and the period that followed when Bangladesh existed for more than two decades as East Pakistan. This was a time when the country experienced the disruption of internal economic colonisation, which led to growing resistance and Pakistan's civil war in 1971. Finally, the chapter summarises the years of Bangladesh's independence. Bangladesh's founder and first prime minister, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, experimented with secular nationalist identities (1971–5) and built close ties with neighbouring India and the Soviet Union. The mili-tary regimes of General Ziaur Rahman (1975–81) and General H. M. Ershad (1982–90) gradually moved Bangladesh towards closer links with the United States and other Muslim countries, particularly the Arab states, contributing to the strengthening of a Muslim Bengali cultural identity.

At the turn of the twentieth century, the Confucian reformer Kang Youwei set out to describe an ideal future world order in his Book of Great Equality. Kang envisioned a society in which emotional bonds had been reduced to a minimum. The creation of a global state was to be realized by overcoming the boundaries of nation, class, or gender, even the distinction between man and animal. Marriage was to be replaced by short-term contracts and care for infants and elderly persons was to fall under the duty of specific state institutions. The assignment of work should follow a standard pattern according to age, covering all types of labor within a lifetime. In the age of great equality, there would be no personal property or family structures. The differences between the races would have vanished over time through constant crossbreeding, the white and yellow race having proven their superiority. By eliminating all racial, social, and national segregation, Kang hoped to circumvent the dangers of emotion and irrational behavior, which so far had prevented the rule of peace and harmony in the world.

The image that in public memory is most closely associated with the Cultural Revolutionary Mao cult is probably the image of Mao Zedong standing on top of Tiananmen reviewing millions of enthusiastic Red Guards. Like no other event, these eight “mass receptions” between August and November 1966 have come to symbolize the cult’s charismatic force to mobilize the Chinese youth. Despite the prominence of the mass receptions both in memoirs and scholarly literature, neither the specific circumstances nor the incredible logistical background have been subjected to closer examination. This chapter provides a tentative outline of the characteristics, organization, and impact of the Red Guard Mao worship and the “exchange of experiences” or “great link-up” (chuanlian) that spread the seeds of the Cultural Revolution nationwide. Finally, the chapter examines strategies of employing cult symbols to oppose the policies of the Central Cultural Revolution Group (CCRG) around Jiang Qing. To explore these strategies, the chapter looks at the case of a specific Red Guard organization, called United Action (liandong), which achieved redoubtable fame in the first year of the Cultural Revolution.

By the time Mao returned to Beijing in late September 1967 to announce his seemingly optimistic appraisal of the situation, revolutionary committees had been established in only seven of China’s twenty-nine provinces and municipalities. Despite Mao’s promising rhetoric, the situation was bleak. Physical confrontations between contending factions continued well into 1968 and took on ever more extreme forms. It was to take another year, until 5 September 1968, that the last revolutionary committees assumed power in the autonomous regions of Tibet and Xinjiang and only with the convention of the Ninth Party Congress in April 1969 was a new CCP leadership officially sanctioned. The ritual worship of Mao Zedong culminated during this phase of uncertainty about who was to emerge victorious from the rubble of the factional disputes. Fostering the cult came to assume a crucial role in trying to maximize individual gains in the struggle for power at different levels of society. But for most Chinese, taking part in public worship became a crucial element of surviving within a completely volatile situation dominated by witch hunts against supposed counterrevolutionaries during the campaign to “cleanse the class ranks” (qingli jieji duiwu). The rhetorical and ritual demonstrations of loyalty to Chairman Mao that came to dominate everyday life cannot be understood without taking into account this frenzied atmosphere within which people were sentenced to death because they had unintendedly misspelled a Mao quotation or burned a newspaper carrying his image. This chapter analyzes cult rhetoric in the continuing process of reestablishing political and symbolical power by looking at the cult’s employment in everyday life. After a discussion of the role of the omnipresent Mao Zedong Thought Activist Congresses, the rhetoric of the most exuberant campaign of worshipping Mao Zedong, the “Three Loyalties” (san zhongyu) or “Three Loyalties, Four Boundlesses” (san zhongyu, si wuxian) campaign, shall be examined. Special emphasis will be given to the characteristics and functions of the ensuing loyalty discourse that resulted in extravagant flattery and the propagation of ever-new miracles performed by applying Mao Zedong Thought.

Criticism of the inventions and miracles of the cult had occasionally been voiced prior to the convention of the Ninth Party Congress in April 1969, as seen in the case of criticizing the quotation gymnastics or certain phrases. Yet the task of toning down the cult remained highly sensitive. The official image of the CCP Chairman was not to be tarnished, nor was criticism of the cult to reflect negatively on the previous course of the Cultural Revolution. According to the CCP constitution, national party congresses were to be held every five years. The convention of the CCP’s Ninth Congress in 1969 was thus eight years overdue. The congress took place in utmost secrecy. The delegates were flown in on special air force planes to the military part of Beijing airport in the city’s western suburbs and were secluded from the public in three of the capital’s hotels without permission to contact the outside world. There had been no prior announcement and the public was informed about the congress only after the opening ceremony on 1 April 1969. Although the portraits of the founding fathers of Marxism-Leninism were prominently on display in the hall’s lobby, a monumental picture of Mao Zedong dominated the venue and it was Mao’s physical presence that excited many of the newly chosen delegates. Mao’s short opening speech was interrupted by cheers after every sentence. Lin Biao presented the political report as wished for by Mao but he had not taken part in Zhang Chunqiao’s preparation of the final draft. Jiang Qing was therefore later to criticize Lin for the poor presentation of the report and the stuttering pronunciation, both of which were largely due to the text being completely unfamiliar to him. The congress passed a new party constitution that included Lin Biao’s status as Mao’s successor and chose a new Central Committee.

Three years after Stalin’s death, the Twentieth CPSU Congress convened in Moscow. The secret speech that First Party Secretary Nikita Khrushchev delivered on 25 February 1956 shattered Stalin’s image as omniscient and wise leader of the communist movement and revealed the crimes committed during his rule. The Soviet Central Committee’s attitude toward Stalin and his legacy had by no means been straightforward after his death. Only in late 1955 had it been agreed upon that a commission was to investigate Stalin’s role in the Great Terror of 1936–7, when Stalin had consolidated his monocracy by having millions of potential opponents killed or sent to work camps. The commission’s findings were incorporated into a long report, which the Central Committee, after a controversial dispute, decided to read out on the last day of the Twentieth CPSU Congress to the Soviet delegates only.

On December 13, 2010, the streets of Dhaka were once again convulsed by demonstrations and a strike by the nation's garment workers. Workers blocked the highways and roads with barricades and picketed outside facto-ries, demanding that the government implement a new minimum wage of US$43 per month, which was supposed to have come into effect in November. At least three protesters lost their lives in clashes with police, and dozens more were injured in the violence that followed. Similar protests had taken place earlier in June and July of that year and were the latest in a history of regular garment-worker mobilizations that dated back to the early 1990s. Bangladesh's ready-made garment industry is worth $15 billion annually, accounts for more than three-quarters of its exports and services a wide range of well-known Western clothing companies that include Gap, Marks and Spencer and Walmart. A typical garment worker is a young woman recently arrived from a rural village and who lives in rented slum housing near a factory or an export processing zone (EPZ), where she works as a machinist and earns approximately $1.50 a day. The garment workplace brings her face to face with the contradictions and complexity of a globalised economy: the factory may be Korean-owned, the fabric from Taiwan, the yarn from India and the packaging materials from China, yet the garments that she manufactures will each carry a “made in Bangladesh” label. Located within a remote, weakly regulated outpost of the global capitalist economy, and increasingly dependent on a precarious and exploitative international division of labour, these garment workers are typical of many people in Bangladesh. They try to build a livelihood through working to secure whatever income can be managed from the market, struggling for justice from the state and attempting to organise themselves within a civil society in order to protect their interests.

The aim of this book is to provide a concise, up-to-date overview of the politics, economy and civil society of Bangladesh in a way that makes sense of the achievements and contradictions faced by Bangladesh and its people in a changing world. It is intended as an introductory text for general readers, students and teachers and does not assume prior knowledge of its subject. It aims to move beyond the level of description to dig more deeply under the surface of issues than a traditional textbook might allow. It seeks to engage with current debates and at times challenge received wisdom. The book presents the key background and a wide range of factual information, but the reader should also note that this is also a personal interpretative essay that inevitably reflects my research interests over the past twenty-five years in the broad field of development studies and my own personal positioning as a Western outsider.

Preface

In 1921, the Chinese Republic was shaken by a seemingly obscure scandal, the so-called Eight-Thousand Hemp Sacks Incident (baqian madai shijian). The Historical Museum, an institution entrusted with archival duties after the fall of the Qing dynasty, had upon instruction of the Ministry of Education sold some 75,000 kilograms of archival materials to a wastepaper trader. The revenue of four thousand silver dollars was to help ameliorate the ministry’s dire financial situation and simultaneously relieve the staff of the burden of classifying and arranging the huge amount of material. The documents had in 1909 already been singled out for destruction, but upon intervention of an upright official, Luo Zhenyu, had been retained and stored in thousands of hemp sacks. In 1921, it was again Luo Zhenyu who discovered parts of these materials on markets in Beijing and decided to buy and preserve the documents. The scandal drew wider circles and nationalist sentiments ran high when Luo a few years later had to sell part of the stacks to other collectors, including a former Japanese official in China. The famous writer Lu Xun, who in the early Republican era had worked in the Ministry of Education and was well informed about the extent of private appropriation of archival documents through the ministry’s staff, remarked sarcastically that “archaeological endeavors” among the stacks had become a favorite pastime among officials. The stacks that had finally been sold as wastepaper, in Lu’s opinion, therefore had found an adequate destiny.