Khaleda Zia, the senior of the two battling Begums of Bangladesh and the first female prime minister of the Muslim-majority country in India's eastern neighbourhood, lost her battle to prolonged illness, breathing her last at a hospital in Dhaka on Tuesday.
The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) announced the death of Khaleda -- who brought the party, floated by her military ruler husband Ziaur Rahman, from the confines of army barracks to the bustling streets of Bangladesh -- in a statement on its official social media page. She was 80.
Sheikh Hasina, 78, the other Begum with whom Khaleda's bitter rivalry generated reams of news items in Bangladesh and beyond, expressed condolences over the death of the BNP chairperson.
"I extend my deepest condolences on the passing of BNP Chairperson and former Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia,” read her statement that was posted on the Awami League’s X account.
“As the first woman Prime Minister of Bangladesh, and for her role in the struggle to establish democracy, her contributions to the nation were significant and will be remembered. Her passing represents a profound loss for Bangladesh’s political life and for the leadership of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party,” added the statement of Hasina, a five-time prime minister, exiled in India since 5 August, 2024 after a wave of protests overthrew her government.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and several world leaders, including Pakistan’s Shehbaz Sharif, also offered their condolences.
In a post in X, Modi expressed deep sadness and recalled Khaleda’s "important contributions towards the development of Bangladesh, as well as India-Bangladesh relations."
Khaleda served two full terms as Bangladesh's prime minister -- from 1991 to 1996 and 2001 to 2006 -- after playing a key role, often in coordination with arch-rival Hasina, in restoring parliamentary democracy in the country.
Her death closes a chapter in Bangladeshi politics that was dominated by the two women, both victims of personal tragedies.
Hasina's father, Mujibur Rahman, who led the country's freedom struggle against Pakistan, was assassinated along with 16 family members and associates in a brutal military coup on 15 August, 1975. On 30 May, 1981, Khaleda's husband, Rahman, was killed in the port city of Chattogram in an attempted coup by a group of army officers.
While the triggers behind their entry into politics were similar in nature, their trajectories were different, resulting in different tags for them.
Hasina, who returned to Bangladesh after spending six years in exile in India following her father's assassination, was always perceived as a close friend of New Delhi.
Khaleda entered public life -- following requests from BNP leaders -- with gusto in 1981 and remained one of the most influential leaders in the country despite allegations that she turned a blind eye to the rise of divisive politics that went against the idea of a secular Bangladesh. Her detractors questioned her style of governance that allowed her elder son Tarique Rahman -- who was accused in a case of grenade attack on Hasina in 2004 -- to run a parallel structure that bred corruption in the system.
As she was soft on Pakistan, pursued defence deals with China and often spewed venom against India in her public speeches, she earned herself an "anti-India" tag.
Though this tag, which got reinforced due to her proximity with the Jamaat-e-Islami, became political capital for her, several observers felt that the tagging was "unfair and unfortunate" as the Indian establishment never masked its preference for the Hasina-led Awami League.
Khaleda often confided in her close aides that she did not deserve the tag as she wanted a "warm but equitable" relationship with the country's biggest neighbour. Senior BNP leaders would fondly recall how she got Bengali delicacies like patishapta and pithe from Bikrampur to treat Pranab Mukherjee during his 2007 visit to Dhaka as the Indian external affairs minister.
"She had a special relationship with Pranab babu... When she visited India as the leader of the Opposition in November 2012, their scheduled half-an-hour meeting was stretched beyond an hour. As she was getting late, Pranab babu even made special arrangements for her to reach the airport," recalled Emran Saleh Prince, joint general secretary of BNP.
"The anti-India tag was unfair and unfortunate for someone like her as she shared cordial relationships with top Indian leaders," he added, before recounting how Modi was pleasantly surprised after she inquired about his mother's health and presented a white Zamdani during his 2015 visit to Dhaka.
These anecdotes, however, cannot wish away some of her actions like refusing India transit rights across Bangladeshi territory and opposing renewal of the 1972 Indo-Bangladesh Friendship Treaty. The fact that several northeast-based Indian insurgent groups got a free run in Bangladesh during her second term in office had dealt a blow to the New Delhi-BNP relationship.
There was, however, a hint of thaw in November 2012 when she visited the capital as the leader of the Opposition and India rolled out the red-carpet treatment as part of a larger strategy to engage with all the stakeholders in Bangladesh.
The BNP chairperson, who had meetings with top Indian leadership, was "very pleased" with the treatment as she was treated with the honour of a visiting head of a state, her political advisor Shamsher Mobin Chowdhury had told this correspondent after the trip.
In less than four months, the situation, however, took a 180-degree turn after Khaleda dealt a diplomatic snub on India by refusing to meet Mukherjee during his state visit to Dhaka in March 2013. Though the BNP spin doctors had floated different theories to justify Khaleda's no show at Mukherjee's hotel -- on a day the party was enforcing a strike -- it was a watershed moment for New Delhi's strategic choices in Bangladesh. As New Delhi's distance with the BNP grew, the Awami League was the biggest beneficiary.
The years thereafter may have seen some positive moments in the chequered relationship with Khaleda's party, but the mistrust stayed on as neither side made serious attempts to bridge the gulf of differences.
Some observers think that had India handled Bangladesh like its deft dealing with today's Afghanistan and steered clear of "meddling in the country's internal affairs by siding with Hasina", New Delhi's equations with Khaleda or the BNP would not have gone awry.
Khalda -- who was the party's main policymaker till she fell seriously ill about three years ago -- should also take the blame as she ratcheted up the anti-India rhetoric every now and then instead of planning political moves to take on Hasina, whose regime piled on a plethora of cases against her. In 2018, she was sent to jail for five years on charges of embezzling from the state’s orphanage funds. She was also accused of misrepresenting her birthday.
Though she was freed from house arrest and the cases against her were dropped after the fall of Hasina in August 2024, Khaleda -- who had several health issues like cirrhosis of liver -- remained bedridden and away from public life.
Earlier this month, India tried to extend an olive branch to the BNP and Khaleda -- following reports of deterioration in her health -- with Modi expressing concerns over her health and conveying India’s readiness to extend all possible support for her recovery. Unlike in the past, she did not recover.
Most political observers in Bangladesh think that the country's polity will take a new turn after Khaleda's death. The question, however, is whether the BNP-New Delhi equations will remain a prisoner of the past or see a new beginning.
A lot will depend on her son Tarique Rahman, who returned to the country after a 17-year exile in London to take part in the general elections, scheduled in February.
It would be also interesting to see whether Tarique can fill in the void of Khaleda -- who was nominated to contest three seats in the next election -- and cement his position in the party and the country's politics.