On the morning of 15 August 1975, Bangladesh ceased to be merely a young post-liberation state struggling with governance and scarcity. It became something far more fragile: a republic where the gun could overwrite the ballot, and where legality could be manufactured after the act. The assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and most of his family was not only a regicide; it was the first rupture in Bangladesh’s civil-military compact.
At the operational level, figures like Major Syed Faruque Rahman Dalim were only mid-ranking officers. Yet strategically, they became architects of a precedent that still defines Bangladesh’s political behaviour: power seized through coercion, legitimised through law, and normalised through time.
Nearly five decades later, Bangladesh is again passing through a decisive transition, marked by mass unrest, regime change, an interim government, and a looming election. The personalities are different, the slogans updated, and the global context transformed. Yet the structural anxieties of the Bangladeshi state remain strikingly familiar. To understand today’s politics, one must return to 1975, not as nostalgia, but as strategic diagnosis.
The 1975 Coup: More Than an Assassination
The killing of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was not an impulsive mutiny. It was a carefully sequenced political-military intervention, executed by mid-ranking officers who believed that the revolutionary legitimacy of 1971 had exhausted itself.
Maj Dalim and his associates represented a specific category: officers who had fought in the liberation war, yet felt marginalised in the post-war political order. Their grievance was not merely personal, it was ideological and institutional. They believed the state had drifted away from the promises of 1971, and that the army retained a corrective role. Ideological allegiance to Pakistan based on the Muslim Umma, being the bedrock.
This belief was crucial. It introduced into Bangladesh’s political bloodstream the idea that the military is not subordinate to civilian authority, but a parallel guardian of the state’s “true direction.” Once this idea took root, civilian supremacy ceased to be absolute.
The subsequent Indemnity Ordinance, granting legal immunity to the assassins, transformed an act of violence into an act of statecraft. Law followed the bullet. This inversion, where legality is retrofitted to power, would haunt Bangladesh repeatedly.
Impunity as Strategy, Not Accident
The Indemnity Ordinance was not merely a political compromise; it was a strategic signal. It told future actors that Political murder could be rationalised, Accountability was contingent on who controlled the state and, History itself could be re-written by decree.
This logic institutionalised high-stakes politics. Once the boundary between crime and policy blurred, politics ceased to be competitive and became existential. Losing power no longer meant opposition; it risked imprisonment, exile, or erasure.
Present-day Bangladesh still operates under this shadow. Political actors behave not as rivals in a shared system, but as survivors in a zero-sum contest. This mindset is a direct inheritance of 1975.
Civil – Military Relations: The Unresolved Question
The most enduring legacy of Maj Dalim’s era is not ideological – it is institutional. The 1975 coup established that the army could act as a political arbiter, even if intermittently.
Bangladesh did not become a permanent military dictatorship. Instead, it evolved into a hybrid order: civilian governments operating under the implicit awareness that the military remains the final stabiliser, or destabiliser.
Even when the army withdrew from overt rule, its shadow lingered. Governments invested heavily in managing the military rather than subordinating it. Promotions, postings, budgets, and doctrines all became politically sensitive.
In the present transition, this pattern is visible again. The army projects itself as a stabilising force, not a ruler, but its posture is decisive. This is not an aberration. It is a continuation of the 1975 template, where the army is neither fully political nor fully apolitical.
The Fractured Founding Narrative
Another deep consequence of 15 August 1975 was the fracture of Bangladesh’s founding story. Before 1975, the state’s legitimacy rested overwhelmingly on the liberation struggle and Sheikh Mujib’s leadership. After his assassination, that narrative became contested. Competing regimes sought to reinterpret 1971, some diluting its secular-nationalist core, others reframing it as merely one phase in a longer struggle.
This contest over history became a contest over legitimacy. Political parties were no longer just policy platforms; they were custodians of rival versions of the republic.
Today’s Bangladesh still fights this battle. Statues, anniversaries, textbooks, and trials are politically charged because they define who “owns” the state. The persistence of this narrative war explains why reconciliation remains elusive.
Islamism and the Post-1975 Political Marketplace
The post-1975 order also altered the ideological balance. As the original secular-nationalist consensus fractured, space opened for religious political actors to re-enter public life.
This was not initially about theology. It was about coalition mathematics. Regimes seeking legitimacy outside the Mujib legacy found utility in redefining national identity more broadly. Over time, this reshaped Bangladesh’s political marketplace.
The strategic lesson here is important: when foundational legitimacy weakens, ideological flanks gain leverage. This dynamic is visible today as well, with Islamist parties and new youth-led movements positioning themselves as alternatives to the old binary.
Justice, Trials, and the Politics of Memory
When the Indemnity Ordinance was repealed decades later and trials were finally conducted, justice was undoubtedly served. Yet these trials also functioned as statecraft.
They reaffirmed civilian supremacy, restored a broken moral order, and sent a deterrent signal to future coup-plotters. At the same time, they hardened political divides, because justice arrived through a partisan lens in a deeply polarised society.
This duality persists. Legal processes in Bangladesh are rarely seen as neutral; they are interpreted as instruments of political dominance. This perception, fair or unfair, is another inheritance of the 1975 rupture.
The 2024 – 26 Transition: A Familiar Crossroads
Bangladesh’s current political transition bears uncomfortable similarities to earlier turning points. A long-dominant leadership has been removed amid mass unrest. An interim arrangement promises reform. Elections loom, but trust is fragile.
Once again, the central question is not simply who governs, but how legitimacy is constructed.
Will the new order broaden participation or deepen exclusion? Will institutions be strengthened or re-engineered for short-term advantage? Will civil authority consolidate, or will coercive actors gain renewed leverage?
These questions echo 1975 precisely because the foundational settlement of civil-military relations was never conclusively resolved.
Maj Dalim as Symbol, Not Just Actor
Strategically, Maj Dalim matters less as an individual and more as a symbolic archetype:
The mid-level officer who believes history has authorised intervention.
The use of violence framed as corrective action.
The expectation that law will follow power.
Every time Bangladeshi politics drifts toward extra-constitutional solutions, the Dalim archetype re-emerges – not in uniform, but in mindset.
Implications for India and the Region
For India and South Asia, this continuity carries implications. Bangladesh’s internal legitimacy struggles inevitably spill into foreign policy signalling. Regime transitions affect alignments, narratives, and domestic pressures to externalise blame.
India’s challenge is structural: how to remain a stable partner without becoming a political symbol inside Bangladesh’s contested narrative space. This requires strategic restraint, institutional engagement, and patience, lessons India itself learned through its own civil-military evolution.
Conclusion: The Unfinished Business of 1975
The story of Maj Dalim and 15 August 1975 is not a closed chapter. It is an unfinished argument about power, legitimacy, and the role of force in politics.
Bangladesh’s future stability depends on resolving three questions that 1975 left open:
1. Is civilian authority supreme, or conditional?
2. Is legitimacy derived from ballots alone, or from perceived historical “corrections”?
3. Can political competition exist without existential fear?
Until these questions are settled, Bangladesh will continue to oscillate between reform and rupture.
Maj Dalim may remain a fugitive of history, but the logic he embodied still roams freely. The challenge before Bangladesh today is not merely to change governments, but to finally close the strategic loop opened on that August morning in 1975.
