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  • 10 - Constitutional Identity in Bangladesh

  • from Part II - Comparative Perspectives
  • Edited by Ran Hirschl, University of Toronto, Yaniv Roznai, Reichman University, Israel
  • Book:
    Deciphering the Genome of Constitutionalism
    Published online:
    14 March 2024
    Print publication:
    21 March 2024, pp 125-137

  • Summary

    Any constitution holds the nation’s past, aspires to live the present, and promises to build a thriving future. Differentiating a nation’s collective identity from its constitutional identity is, thus, often difficult, or even impossible. This chapter shows that, at its founding moment, Bangladesh’s national identity and constitutional identity merged into one another, although the national Bengali identity was flawed and exclusionary. Bangladesh’s four-pronged constitutional identity – based on the principles of nationalism, secularism, democracy, and socialism – evolved through a revolutionary and popular process but has since remained ever contested. These four identity principles have been subject to multiple changes, signifying their contestation and contentiousness. One possible reason for the continuing contestation about constitutional identity is, arguably, the ignorance of the religious sentiment of the Muslim majority citizenry. An analogous argument has been that Bangladesh’s constitutional (or national) identity is fraught with an exclusionary or hegemonic approach to nationality.