For the last three decades, the politics of the neighbouring country Bangladesh has revolved around the two prominent women leaders of the two largest political parties (Bangladesh Awami League and Bangladesh Nationalist Party), Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia, i.e. both Begums. While Sheikh Hasina leads the Awami League, the country’s first woman Prime Minister Khaleda Zia leads the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).
The Awami League is the party founded by Sheikh Hasina’s father and Bangladesh’s first president Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, while the BNP is the party founded by Khaleda Zia’s husband and former president Ziaur Rahman. Since 1991, electoral politics in Bangladesh has been a story of Hasina versus Zia. Both have served as prime ministers at various stages over the past two decades. Sheikh Hasina, the incumbent prime minister since 2009, resigned from her post on Monday following chaos triggered by a student agitation and fled Dhaka to Delhi.
Both the Begums of Bangladesh were once friends but then such enmity arose between them that they became two poles. The stories of their political enmity are famous all over the world. Even a former US President had tried to end their enmity but he was unsuccessful. In fact, former US President Jimmy Carter had taken the initiative to make these two Begums friends in Dhaka in the year 2001 but leave alone friendship, the two Begums did not even see each other.
A report in The Washington Times says that in August 2001 Jimmy Carter had come to Dhaka to attend a meeting of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs in Washington. Jimmy Carter had then called the two Begums. Khaleda Zia was standing on one side of former President Jimmy Carter, while Sheikh Hasina was standing on the other side. Carter was holding the hands of both of them and was pulling their hands to make them friends so that they could be united, but then both the Begums did not move from their place.
When Jimmy Carter tried to shake hands with both of them, both the ladies pushed the former American President’s hand away and pulled their hands away. Due to this, Carter’s efforts to mediate between the two women were in vain and Jimmy Carter felt publicly humiliated because at that time the eyes of the media of the whole world were on him. After Jimmy Carter, representatives of the European Union also tried to make friends between the two but they too failed.
