In Bangladesh, there are few figures whose presence can stir the public conscience the way Khaleda Zia’s can. The scene that has unfolded for several days outside the hospital in Dhaka where the former prime minister lies in critical condition tells you of the fervor for this octogenarian stateswoman.
People from literally all walks of life have congregated on sidewalks and in courtyards, offering prayers and speaking quietly of a woman who had, for decades, stood at the center of their country’s turbulent history.
Whatever one’s political alignment, the emotional response reveals something deeper: Khaleda Zia remains, for many, a living emblem of Bangladesh’s democratic longing, and the affection being directed toward her is rooted in memory.
It is easy to forget that, before she became one of the most consequential political figures in South Asia, Khaleda Zia was a private citizen thrust into history by tragedy. The assassination of her husband, President Ziaur Rahman, would set her on a path that she had neither sought nor expected.
And yet, in the years that followed, she emerged as the head of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), weathering arrest, surveillance, intimidation and public skepticism. Under the dictatorship of Hussain Muhammad Ershad, she became an unlikely symbol of democratic resistance.
She led protests and endured detention and isolation, refusing to capitulate to authoritarian power. When the military regime finally collapsed in 1990, it was in no small part because she had helped galvanize a mass movement demanding representative governance.
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Her election as prime minister in 1991 marked the restoration of parliamentary democracy after years of military dominance. She governed with a focus on bread-and-butter issues: food-for-education programs, rural welfare, job-creation measures and structural reforms that would draw Bangladesh into a more liberalized global economy.
Critics sometimes called her cautious. Admirers called her steady-handed. Through it all, she reshaped the possibilities of leadership in a deeply patriarchal society.
Her place in South Asian political history is unique. She stands among the earliest democratically elected female leaders in the Muslim world. She governed without the cult of personality that often accompanies political matriarchies. She was never a dynastic queen nor an imperious monarch.
If her arch-rival Sheikh Hasina’s leadership style has often been associated with consolidation of control and imposing dominance over political space, Khaleda embodied a different style – quiet and restrained. This is precisely why many Bangladeshis refer to her, without irony, as a “gentle lady.” They mean it as an assertion not of softness but of civility.
Her legacy is unique because it exists as both political memory and emotional artifact. For those who remember the late 1980s and early 1990s, Khaleda Zia’s leadership evokes a moment when Bangladesh seemed to breathe again – when democracy did not feel like an abstract aspiration.
She is remembered for presiding over a period that, to many, felt freer and more pluralistic, even if imperfect. That memory has become especially vivid in an era in which political power feels more centralized and civic space more constricted.
The hospital vigil has therefore come to represent something far larger than concern for an ailing political elder. It signals a yearning for a politics that is less vengeful, less punitive, less totalizing.
In the public reaction to Khaleda’s illness, one sees a cross-section of the nation quietly acknowledging her contributions, perhaps even yearning for the civility that defined her persona.
Many who never voted for her still speak of her with respect. Many who once opposed her now pray for her recovery. Such moments reveal a truth that political contests often obscure: Leaders can become vessels for national memory, even for those who once resisted them.
What is striking is the absence of venom in these expressions of support. Bangladesh’s political culture has long been characterized by intense polarization, extended periods in which Hasina and Khaleda, the two dominant figures of modern Bangladeshi politics, came to embody irreconcilable camps.
Yet Khaleda’s illness has momentarily softened that tribalism. It reminds people that, long before she was demonized by prosecutors or dismissed by rivals, she was a woman who endured personal loss, political storms and public scrutiny while remaining remarkably composed.
When people call her graceful, they do not mean fragile. They usually mean principled.
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Her humanity, ironically, is what makes her political imprint distinctive. She was never the iron-willed autocrat. She was rarely the firebrand. She did not turn the podium into theater. Instead, she governed with a kind of maternal solemnity that resonated with ordinary citizens.
Those who waite outside the hospital do not speak of ideology. They speak of dignity. They speak of decency. They speak of her as someone who has seemed, at core, human – in a political world that increasingly feels devoid of humanity.
Whether she survives this health crisis or not, it is clear that Khaleda’s influence will not fade with her physical absence. Bangladesh does not merely remember her as a political operator. It remembers her as a bearer of civic aspiration, a leader whose authority felt tempered by humility.
For many, her presence has represented an alternative model of leadership – less punitive, less calculating. That is why, even in infirmity, she commands reverence.
Perhaps that is the final measure of a political life: not the number of offices held, nor the longevity of party dominance, but the emotional imprint on a nation’s collective memory.
Faisal Mahmud is Minister (Press) of the Bangladesh High Commission in New Delhi.
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