Even if he is new to leadership, Tarique Rahman’s arrival at the helm of Bangladesh is a comforting restoration of normalcy. What we could have had instead is a descent into anarchy, a plunge into radicalism or an unholy cocktail of both. Compared to that, the non-virtues here are decidedly milder. In a familiar South Asian pattern, we have a legatee of one part of Bangladesh’s political binary: Tarique, 60, is the son of former prime minister Begum Khaleda Zia and former president Ziaur Rahman, founder of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). So, he inherits the political DNA of a formation that has historically been less friendly to India, as well as more accommodating of Islamism, compared to its arch-rival, the Awami League led by Sheikh Hasina. A natural tilt towards Pakistan was implicit in this. But this misses a duality at the heart of the BNP.
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