Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, Secretary-General of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and Local Government Minister, has captured the essence of contemporary Bangladesh's place in historical time. "I always say one thing: those who want people to forget 1971, or make them forget it, actually never believe in Bangladesh. Because if we are to believe in Bangladesh, we must keep 1971 at the forefront. We will move forward with that," he told a gathering of leaders of the Hindu community recently.

He added in the same breath that keeping the make-or-break year of 1971 at the forefront did not mean pushing the July mass uprising of 2024 into the background. "We cannot deny July either. Countless of our sons sacrificed their lives to establish democracy in Bangladesh. They forced a fascist government to leave the country," he said, according to a newspaper report.

Hence, the BNP does not regard either 1971 or 2024 as being the less important date. That political equivalence is historically interesting. Mirza Fakhrul is a cerebral, urbane, sophisticated and versatile scholar-politician whom I much admire, not least because of his association with academia, the arts and activism - the 3As of Bangladeshi intellectualism. There is speculation that he might become the next President of Bangladesh. It would be a richly-deserved honour, but that is not the point of this article. I am interested in Mirza Fakhrul's Idea of Bangladesh. It is inclusive and quintessentially democratic.

In the context of what he said, it could be added of course that the ultimate provenance of today's Bangladesh lies in 1947, when Pakistan broke away from India to form an independent state. There would been no 20024 without 1971, but there would have been no 1971 itself without 1947. This is historically undeniable.

However, in saying this, I am not privileging those who would draw a direct arc of causation from 1947 to 2004 while treating 1971 as an aberration along the way. Those people subsume the Bengali reality of Bangladesh to the Muslim reality of Pakistan. Well, Pakistan broke up in 1971. Bangladesh continues. Bangladesh is a Bengali-Muslim-majority nation where Constitutional provision is made for the religious and cultural protection of both non-Muslim and indeed non-Bengalis. Of course, things are not perfect on the ground. But which country is perfect? What matters is not perfection, because it is never achieved, but the quest for perfection, which is never over. The quest for a Bangladesh-for-all is not over. It cannot be.

Consequently, the danger posed by the deniers of 1971 came to the fore when Mirza Fakhrul alleged that a certain group was deliberately trying to push the country towards division in the name of religion. "We cannot allow extremism here. We cannot allow fundamentalism. We want to build a liberal, democratic Bangladesh," he said. He did not identify the group in the newspaper report. Neither shall I. But whichever group that is, what matters is its ideology. That ideology is scary.

As for Hindus of Bangladesh, large numbers of whom supported the BNP in the last parliamentary election, they have affirmed their place in the political mainstream. They have proved that their Bangladeshi nationalism, rooted in their Sanatani faith, is strong enough for them to support a nationalist, Muslim-majority party without losing their religious or political credentials.

This is how it should be.

The gravest political danger for a country appears when the majority supports the ruling party and the minorities support the Opposition. Then, the very process of democracy is reduced to its irreconcilable demographic parts. Then, the ruling majority always wins. Often, the democratic process breaks down in the process.

That scenario is not applicable to Mirza Fakhrul's Bangladesh. With leaders like him, who are helmed by Prime Minister Tarique Rahman, the communal situation should be under control so that the majority does not threaten others and impressionable members among the others do not raise religious slogans that are not only political in nature but are imported from elsewhere.

Bangladesh belongs to those who believe in it. And only to them. The inflection point between 1947 and 2004 was 1971: To deny that is to try and deny the reality of Bangladesh.

Do not anyone dare do so.

The writer is Principal Research Fellow of the Cosmos Foundation. He may be reached at epaaropaar@gmail.com