In the immediate aftermath of the regime change in Bangladesh that brought an end to what many perceived as the fascist Awami League's 15-year uninterrupted rule under Sheikh Hasina on 5 August 2024, visuals on news networks and social media have emerged of Bangladeshis across the country, including both civilians and military personnel, demolishing statues and tearing down pictures of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (17 March 1920 - 15 August 1975) and his daughter, Sheikh Hasina. It is understandable why people would want to remove imagery of Sheikh Hasina since she was overthrown by a revolution. However, many foreign observers fail to understand why people are destroying statues of the first President of Bangladesh, who had been given titles such as "Bangabandhu" (Friend of Bengal) and "Father of the Nation."

The demographics of Bangladesh indicate that the vast majority of the population was born after the assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. According to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS), a quarter of the Bangladeshi population is between the ages of 15 and 29. This means that many have no first-hand memory of seeing any regime in Bangladesh besides the dictatorship of Sheikh Hasina, which began on 6 January 2009. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that they are well aware of the country's bloodied political history. To understand why statues of Mujib are being demolished across the country like those of a fallen dictator, one must consider the overdose of propaganda that was force-fed to the Bangladeshi people during Sheikh Hasina's prime minister ship.

In 2020, the centennial birth anniversary of Sheikh Mujib was declared by the Government of Bangladesh as "Mujib Borsho" (Mujib Year). Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the commemorations could not take place as planned, so Mujib Year was extended until 31 March 2022, allowing it to coincide with the golden jubilee of Bangladesh's liberation. The Cabinet Division was given a total budgetary allocation of 4 billion Bangladeshi Taka to undertake various initiatives to celebrate the 100th birth anniversary of Mujibur Rahman. Between 2020 and 2022, the Bangladeshi government and Awami League supporters installed numerous statues and pictures of Sheikh Mujib in almost every corner of Bangladesh, making him omnipresent in the country.

I personally visited Bangladesh between December 2021 and February 2022 and was taken aback by the excessive public expenditure and propaganda campaign to promote Mujibur Rahman's legacy. I vividly recall alighting from the aircraft at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport and seeing a sign on the aerobridge that said, "Welcome to the Land of Mujib." During my entire stay in Bangladesh, I also recall seeing Mujib's picture almost everywhere and almost all the time. Many Bangladeshis I spoke to told me they felt it was intrusive in the public space to see Mujib's presence everywhere. However, there was nothing they could do to voice their objection for fear of being labelled a "Razakar" (volunteer)-a term used to refer to anti-liberation Bengali collaborators of the Pakistan Army. In more recent times, anti-Awami League protesters demanding Sheikh Hasina's resignation were labelled "Razakar" for opposing government job quotas for the descendants of freedom fighters known as "Mukti Jodhaa." This placed Bangladeshi society into a binary division: Razakar vs. Muktijoddha. The anti-regime student revolutionaries responded in youthful rebellion by taking ownership of the label, chanting the slogan, "Tumi kē?, āmi kē? Rājākāra! Rājākāra!" (Who are you?, who am I? Razakar! Razakar!).

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman has long been a contentious figure in Bangladesh's political history and was never accepted by all segments of Bangladeshi society, unlike Mohammad Ali Jinnah of Pakistan, who is unanimously embraced by most political parties in Pakistan, including the Islamist right-wing, which was once against the creation of Pakistan as a separate homeland for the Muslims of the erstwhile British India. Sheikh Mujib can also be held accountable for committing the original sin that caused a legacy of authoritarianism and regime oscillations in Bangladesh. On 25 January 1975, Bangladesh under Mujibur Rahman passed the controversial Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of Bangladesh, which formally made the country a de jure one-party state where the Bangladesh Krishak Sramik Awami League (BAKSAL) coalition became the only legal political party in the country. This meant that Bangladesh had become a republic like Vietnam, China, Cuba, the Soviet Union, North Korea, or East Germany. One reason Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was assassinated by the Bangladesh military on 15 August 1975 was that there was no other way to vote him out of power since he had deprived the people of the ballot box, just as his daughter stole the electoral mandate from the people. Following the rigged general elections of 2014, 2018, and 2024, many Bangladeshis perceived that Sheikh Hasina had turned the country into a de facto single-party closed authoritarian regime similar to the days of BAKSAL. There are credible eyewitness accounts of people rejoicing on the streets of Dhaka after learning about Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's assassination on 15 August 1975.

The combination of the authoritarian regime under Sheikh Hasina and the historical legacy of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman made his imagery a symbol of fascism and dictatorship under the Awami League. On many occasions, Sheikh Hasina exploited her father's tragic assassination to legitimise her long tenure, which was achieved through harsh Machiavellian methods, including rigging general elections, human rights abuses, enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, and stifling political opponents and critics by imposing restrictions on freedom of speech and assembly. The Awami League often referred to her as "the daughter of Bangabandhu" instead of simply "Sheikh Hasina". If one understands the contentious historical legacy of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and the high dosage of propaganda injected into Bangladesh during Mujib Year, it becomes easier to understand why his statues are being demolished across the country.

The writer is an expert analyst on South and Southeast Asian domestic politics and foreign policy. He is a PhD candidate at the Institut für Politische Wissenschaft, Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences of Heidelberg University, Germany. He is also the author of the book 'Regime Oscillations and Disruptions in Pakistan's­­ Democratic Transition: The Causal Mechanism of Civilian Elite Disunity'. He can be contacted at anishmisrasg@hotmail.com