Bangladeshi nationalism

Bangladeshi nationalism is an ideology propagated by former Bangladesh President Ziaur Rahman. The ideology emerged during the late 1970s and is the institutional basis of Bangladesh Nationalist Party, one of the leading political parties of Bangladesh.

The history of nationalism in the country dates back to the colonial era, when the region started witnessing anti-colonial movements against the British Empire. Soon, a sense of religious nationalism began to emerge which was later revolutionised into ethnolinguistic nationalism. Following independence of Bangladesh in 1971, leaders like Ziaur Rahman began to promote Bangladeshi nationalism which was based on territorial attachment of Bangladeshis.

The idea of nationalism first emerged in the country especially after the Indian Rebellion of 1857 in the mid 19th century. The base of the nationalism was the anti-colonial sentiment during the British rule. This nationalism transformed into a new version through the partition of Bengal in 1905, which was strongly opposed by the Hindus in West Bengal and was supported by some Muslims of East Bengal. Even though the partition was annulled in 1911, it left a significant and lasting impact on the people, and for the first time sowed the seeds of Hindu-Muslim communal dissonance. It was the beginning of a religious nationalism which eventually led the Muslims to form a separate state.

After the formation of Pakistan, within a short period the idea of religious nationalism began to be replaced by a sense of ethnolinguistic nationalism among the people of then East Pakistan which was primarily caused by the cultural, economic and political discrimination by the West Pakistani elites. The language movement of 1952 was the biggest manifestation of this ethnolinguistic nationalism which later came to be known as Bengali nationalism. This resulted in the demand for regional autonomy for East Pakistan that eventually led to the independence of Bangladesh from Pakistan.

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