General Ershad was not unlike Rajiv Gandhi

General Ershad, who died the other day, is unforgettable for me for a reason he would never have guessed. For all the vilification, he was an innocent, not unlike Rajiv Gandhi. That was confirmed when some time in 1988 or 1989 the Bangladesh deputy high commissioner in Calcutta called on me to say he had been transferred to Sydney. Chatting over coffee, he let slip his President had wanted him to invite me to Dhaka but he had ignored the instruction. Hosting the editor of a national Indian daily might have meant additional publicity for Ershad. 

I guessed his sympathies lay with the Awami League. I also realised he could afford to flout his President and still prosper in his career: Being consul-general in Australia’s busiest city was preferable to an Indian posting. In fact, it was precisely this aspect of Ershad’s persona — call it his weakness if you will — that was endearing in so far as anything about a head of state can be endearing. I couldn’t imagine the tragically murdered Ziaur Rahman with whom I had had one disastrously explosive meeting ever being so indulgent to a subordinate.

Bangladeshis didn’t appreciate the allowance I was prepared to make for Ershad on account of his humaneness. A rich Dhaka businessman whom I had first met at the home of Ershad’s high commissioner in New Delhi with whom he was on the friendliest terms was holding forth once at a dinner party in London on the military dictatorship at home. He flew into a rage when I interjected that while it was true Ershad was a military man, if his mild rule was a dictatorship it was a vegetarian dictatorship. The Bangladeshi at once exploded that jealous Indians resented the progress Bangladesh had made despite being denied democracy.

Apart from press conferences, I met Ershad only once. My wife and I were visiting Dhaka at the end of 1985 — making an excuse of the launch of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation — when he invited us home to tea after the captains and kings had departed. He lived in a modest bungalow in the cantonment area and the simplicity of his lifestyle matched the unimpressive architecture. Yet, everything about Ershad seemed to provoke criticism. Bangladeshis said he lived in the cantonment for reasons of security. They said the little boy toddling about the living room wasn’t really his son but adopted. Some suspected him on account of the time he had spent in India. It was widely claimed that the homely Mrs Ershad had been formally declared First Lady so that she could have her own office to receive businessmen without having to share her cut with middlemen. She was compared with Indonesia’s Tien Suharto who was popularly called “Madame Ten Per Cent”. 

Ironically, Suharto was someone Ershad admired. He told us that evening he was discussing with the Indonesian strongman some constitutional means of permanently involving the army, his country’s most efficient institution, in Bangladesh’s governance. He needed a prime minister, he said, to receive and see off visiting VIPs: Being busier than the US president he didn’t have time for airport duties. He spoke of Islam not as a believer but as someone who acknowledged the most important unifying and driving force for his people. Apologising to my wife for sounding anti-feminist, he argued that Hasina Wazed could never become president because only a man could lead a Muslim nation at prayer. 

Perhaps this was wishful thinking. Kamal Hossain put it down to ignorance. “He’s never heard of Razia Sultan!” was the latter’s dry comment when I told him afterwards. Whatever the reason, it was a gross miscalculation. Ershad also believed he had scored hugely over Bangladesh’s “India lobby” (meaning Hasina) by extracting Rajiv Gandhi’s promise to involve Nepal in tripartite talks on sharing the Ganga-Padma waters. It was another miscalculation. When it didn’t happen, a senior Bangladeshi diplomat explained that India couldn’t afford to face Bangladesh and Nepal at the same time because it claimed upper riparian rights with the former, and lower riparian rights with the latter. Ershad could never have anticipated that an Indian high commissioner who translated his poems would oppose tripartite river talks tooth and nail and work relentlessly on Rajiv to renege on his commitment. 

Both men were political innocents. In a sense, they were softies. But despite tales of violence, human rights abuses, corruption and womanising, Ershad was luckier than Gandhi. He died peacefully in his bed in the fullness of years.