Why national unity matters now

by HM Nazmul Alam

WHEN Abraham Lincoln declared, ‘A house divided against itself cannot stand,’ he wasn’t merely offering a metaphor for civil strife; he was forewarning the existential decay that comes when a nation forgets its shared identity. In today’s world, that warning echoes across many fragmented societies — from Somalia to Myanmar, Bosnia to even liberal democracies under strain. But perhaps nowhere does this reverberate more urgently than in Bangladesh, where the increasingly irreconcilable fractures in political and national discourse now threaten the very foundation of the state.

Political rivalry is natural in any democracy. Ideological differences fuel debates, generate policies, and give voters options. But there is a fine line — often invisible until it’s too late — between disagreement and destruction. When politics becomes an arena not of dialogue but of domination, not of compromise but of conquest, we inch toward national suicide.

In many ways, Bangladesh has long suffered from this sickness. The country’s post-independence trajectory has been marred by coups, counter-coups, assassinations, party feuds, and cycles of vengeance. The sad irony is that a nation born through the blood of unity now finds itself poisoned by disunity. We, who once marched together for the liberation of our motherland, are now locked in a ceaseless civil war of ideology, party loyalty, and historical interpretation.

We no longer agree on what constitutes the nation. One party’s hero is another’s traitor. One leader’s achievement is another’s crime. One slogan’s echo is another’s insult. Our political discourse is not about building the state but about burying our enemies under the rubble of propaganda and revisionism. We are rewriting history not to understand it better, but to weaponise it.

There are nations that have managed to rise from ashes because they prioritised the collective dream over the individual ego. South Africa is an example where the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, though not perfect, tried to place unity above retribution. Germany, after World War II, rebuilt its moral and political legitimacy by accepting responsibility and crafting a national consensus on what it meant to be German in a post-Nazi world. We, on the other hand, have failed to agree even on the most foundational of questions: Who were we? Who are we? Who do we want to become?

The lack of unity on the national question is not a theoretical issue — it is an existential one. Look at Somalia, a state that exists on maps but struggles to exist in practice. Since the fall of its central government in 1991, it has been ruled by warlords, divided by clans, and haunted by ghosts of what could have been. Despite billions in international aid, foreign troops, peacekeeping missions, and diplomatic conferences, Somalia remains a cautionary tale of how disunity can destroy a nation without a single foreign invasion.

In Myanmar, the state itself has become the enemy of many of its people. Ethnic minorities, who never truly felt represented in the national project, now openly rebel against it. The military junta and pro-democracy forces are not merely political opponents — they represent two completely different visions of what Myanmar should be. The result is a country at war with itself. The displacement of the Rohingya population — millions of whom now live stateless in neighbouring countries — stands as a brutal symbol of what happens when a state turns its back on its own citizens in the name of ethnic nationalism.

Even Europe, the cradle of modern democracy, is not immune. Bosnia and Herzegovina, though technically sovereign, functions more like a tenuous truce than a cohesive state. Deep ethnic rifts mean that a shared national identity is more imagined than real. The country’s elaborate system of power-sharing, designed to prevent another war, has instead entrenched ethnic politics and paralysed governance. The result is a state perpetually on the brink, always needing international babysitting.

The lesson in all these examples is striking: where national unity is absent, the state becomes an illusion.

Bangladesh is not yet Somalia, Myanmar, or Bosnia. But the signs of danger are there. Our politics is no longer about the people; it is about the parties. The space for neutral discourse has shrunk so dramatically that one must either shout allegiance or risk being branded a traitor. The media has become polarised, civil society co-opted, and the youth — our future — are being trained not in tolerance but in tribalism.

Martin Luther King Jr once warned, ‘We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.’ In Bangladesh, we often forget that the purpose of politics is to serve the people, not punish the opposition. Yet increasingly, the main aim of one party is not to govern better but to erase the other from existence. Elections are not seen as contests of vision but as zero-sum battles for survival. Laws are no longer tools of justice but instruments of vengeance. Institutions — parliament, judiciary, universities — have become either battlegrounds or graveyards of democratic values.

There is a haunting loneliness that comes with watching a state lose its soul. And that is what we are witnessing. What is Bangladesh if not the collective aspiration of its people? And what happens when that aspiration is fragmented, politicised, and finally forgotten?

The British philosopher Edmund Burke wrote, ‘A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.’ Yet change must not mean chaos. Reform must not be revenge. In our desperation to win, we have forgotten what we are supposed to be winning for. Unity is not uniformity — it is the ability to disagree without destroying. It is the capacity to see the country as larger than the party, the constitution as more sacred than the campaign.

There was a time when Bangladesh’s politicians disagreed vehemently but respected each other’s right to exist. That time is now a distant memory. Today, we raise slogans of nationalism while burning down the very house we claim to love. We shout about democracy while silencing those who disagree. We speak of justice while practising selective morality. We are like a man trying to row a boat with one oar: spinning in circles, getting nowhere, and slowly sinking.

And it is not just the leaders. Ordinary citizens, too, are being drawn into this theatre of polarisation. Social media has made it easier than ever to amplify hatred, to mock and malign, and to reduce complex national dilemmas into trending hashtags. Once we retreat into echo chambers, we no longer recognise the nation as a shared project — we see it only through the filter of party loyalty. And what is terrifying is not just that this is happening but that we are beginning to accept it as normal.

A state is not merely a boundary on a map — it is an agreement, a shared idea, a trust among people. When that trust erodes, so does the state. As political philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote, ‘The body politic, like the human body, begins to die from the moment its birth is completed.’ Survival depends on constant care, constant negotiation, and above all, unity of purpose. Without that, we are just strangers trapped under a common flag.

The future of Bangladesh will depend on whether we can rediscover this unity. Not unity of opinion, but unity of commitment — to justice, to truth, to democratic values, and to each other. Can we imagine a politics that does not see dissent as betrayal? Can we build a public space where being Bangladeshi is more important than being Awami League or BNP? Can we, after so many decades, finally agree that the country is more important than the contest?

Because make no mistake — the price of failure is catastrophic. No development project, no mega infrastructure, and no growth statistics can substitute for the absence of national cohesion. In fact, without unity, all these achievements remain vulnerable, reversible, and fragile. History is littered with stories of economically promising states that fell into civil war, sectarianism, or irreversible decline — not because they lacked wealth, but because they lacked will. National will.

Let us not wait for collapse to remind us what we should have done. Let us heed the wisdom of Tagore, who once wrote, ‘Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high... into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.’ That heaven of freedom is not just the absence of colonial rule — it is the presence of unity, dignity, and shared purpose.

Bangladesh has already paid too high a price for disunity. Let us not make it pay with its soul.

HM Nazmul Alam is an academic, journalist, and political analyst based in Dhaka.