Constitution of Bangladesh

The Constitution of Bangladesh (Bengali: বাংলাদেশের সংবিধান — Bangladesher Sambidhāna), officially the Constitution of the People's Republic of Bangladesh is the supreme law of Bangladesh. The document provides the framework that demarcates the Bangladeshi republic with a unitary, parliamentary democracy, that enshrines fundamental human rights and freedoms, an independent judiciary, democratic local government and a national bureaucracy.

Quotes

• The most dramatic changes made by the two military rulers were the changes in the Constitution of Bangladesh. These religiously oriented alterations in the Constitution are there to stay. Once Islam has been declared the law of the land, even undemocratically, by military fiat, it can never be repealed, on threat of apostasy.
  • Y Rosser, Indoctrinating Minds: Politics of Education in Bangladesh. 2004 page 68

• Bangladesh had emerged as a secular state on the grave of Pakistani religious ideals [but] pro-Pakistanis captured power after the 1975 assassination of Bangladesh's founding father Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman [and inserted] discriminatory clause(s) between Muslim and non-Muslim [that were not included] in the original constitution of Bangladesh. ...After the assassination of Bangabandhu, two military rulers. General Ziaur Rahman and General H.M. Ershad removed the roots of the country's secular, non-communal and humane ideals. They changed the constitution to serve a vested quarter and thus eliminated the clause of equal rights for the Hindus, Christians and Buddhists along with Indigenous ethnic communities like Chakma, Marma, Tripura, Maug, Hajong, etc. In the original constitution, which was written in 1972, Article 12 in Part II enshrined 'secularism and freedom of Religion' in the section called Fundamental Principle of State Policy. General Ziaur Rahman's military government totally erased this part of the constitution and that was how the religious and ethnic minority groups became second- class citizens to suffer state discrimination.’
  • Shahriar Kabir quoted in Y Rosser, Indoctrinating Minds: Politics of Education in Bangladesh. 2004 page 69ff
  • Kabir, Shahriar. “Human Rights in Bangladesh : Focus on Communal Persecution”, Conference on Human Rights in Bangladesh, held on 17 August 2002, at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada

• After Bangladesh's birth, the first few years the new nation was not recognized as a separate sovereign entity by many of the Arab nations, notably Saudi Arabia which insisted that Bangladesh should adopt an Islamic constitution first
  • Tariq Ahmed Karim quoted in Y Rosser, Indoctrinating Minds: Politics of Education in Bangladesh. 2004 page 72

• The process of using Islam for leadership legitimation purposes gathered momentum during the military regimes of General Ziaur Rahman (1975-1981) and General H.M. Ershad (1982-1990). Zia doctored the Constitution, "scraped secularism from the four state principles [and inserted] Bismillahir Rahmanir Rahim (in the name of Allah, the beneficent, the merciful)". The principle of secularism was overturned and replaced by the words, 'Absolute trust and faith in the Almighty Allah shall be the basis of all action' ".
  • Saleem Samad, State of Minorities in Bangladesh, quoted in Y Rosser, Indoctrinating Minds: Politics of Education in Bangladesh. 2004 page 74
  • State of Minorities in Bangladesh: From Secular to Islamic Hegemony by Saleem Samad Country Paper presented at "Regional Consultation on Minority Rights in South Asia", 20-22 August 1998, Kathmandu, Nepal. Organised by South Asian Forum for Human Rights (SAFHR), Kathmandu.