Workers Party of Bangladesh leaders and an academic on Saturday alleged that the government had moved away from four fundamental principles of the country’s founding president Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
They also complained that the state religion and principle of secularism could not go together in the Constitution.
They made the allegation in a discussion on ‘Bangabandhu and four fundamental principles’ at Engineers’ Institution in the capital marking Mujib’s birth centenary.
The 1972 Constitution adopted during the reign of the Mujib government declared nationalism, socialism, democracy and secularism as fundamental principles of the republic.
Workers’ Party is a partner of the Awami League-led ruling alliance.
The government, the AL and AL-led alliance partners have been observing Mujib’s birth centenary through year-long programmes.
Addressing the discussion through videoconferencing as the chair, WP president Rashed Khan Menon said that the constitution now has state religion and at the same time keeps secularism. ‘It is like an illusion.’
‘We have advanced towards development to a large extent but it should be considered how much the development was done by upholding the four fundamental principles of Bangabandhu in heart,’ he said.
He said that severe discrimination had questioned the development while Sheikh Mujib always urged for an end to discrimination among workers, farmers and working class people.
WP general secretary Fazle Hossain Badsha said that the speech of Mujib, played in the special session in the Jatiya Sangsad on the occasion of Mujib’s birth centenary, was an edited one excluding his remarks on secularism and socialism.
‘It is a distortion. None has the right to edit Bangabandhu’s speech,’ he said and wanted to know whether the government had moved away from Mujib’s Bangladesh.
He said that though he placed questioned about the exclusion of the parts of Mujib’s speech, he did not get any answer from the parliament.
Bangladesh University of Professionals’ Bangabandhu Chair Syed Anwar Hossain said that the ruling Awami League had forgot Mujib’s four fundamental principles but it was enjoying and doing business with the principles.
Terming the present Bangladesh as ‘a stage of light and dark’, he said, ‘There is light here now. But darkness had paled it. But Bangladesh, in the beginning, was a lighthouse for many others to follow.’
He said that Mujib, returning home on January 10, 1972, said that Bangladesh would be an ideal state and not a religionbased one and that the base of the state would be democracy, socialism and secularism.
‘The constitution mentions Islam as the state religion and at the same time it mentions secularism as a basic principle. This is conflicting. A state cannot have any religion,’ he said.
WP politburo member Quamrul Ahsan also spoke at the programme.
