BNP Chairperson Begum Khaleda Zia will be laid to rest beside her husband, the late President Ziaur Rahman, at Sher-e-Bangla Nagar in Dhaka, following her namaz-e-janaza at the South Plaza of the Jatiya Sangsad Bhaban on Wednesday afternoon. Millions of people are flocking to the capital to attend the janaza and pay their respects, while foreign dignitaries from India, Pakistan, Bhutan, Nepal, Maldives and other South Asian countries are scheduled to arrive to participate in the BNP chief’s last rites. Speaking to reporters after a BNP Standing Committee meeting at the Chairperson’s Gulshan office on Tuesday, Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir said the Khatib of Baitul Mukarram National Mosque will lead the janaza prayers. “We, the Standing Committee, have decided that her janaza will be held tomorrow (Wednesday) at 2:00 pm on the South Plaza of the Parliament House, extending across Manik Mia Avenue,” Fakhrul said. He added that BNP Standing Committee member Nazrul Islam Khan will oversee the proceedings. Following the janaza, Khaleda Zia will be buried beside Ziaur Rahman, Bangladesh’s proclaimer of independence and pioneer of multi-party democracy, popularly known as ‘Rakhal Raja’. Fakhrul urged attendees to maintain strict discipline during the janaza and burial, requesting that no one disrupt the ceremony for photographs and emphasising the importance of respecting the solemnity of the occasion. He called on all to pray for Khaleda Zia’s soul, seeking Allah’s mercy and a place for her in Jannah, and to offer prayers for her family—especially her eldest son and BNP Acting Chairman Tarique Rahman—to find strength in carrying forward their responsibilities. The government has declared three days of mourning, with Wednesday announced as a public holiday. Fakhrul expressed gratitude for the authorities’ cooperation, noting, “The Prime Adviser has addressed the nation, and we thank the government for their full support.” The BNP has also declared seven days of mourning, during which members will wear black badges, raise black flags, and hold prayers and Quran recitations at party offices nationwide. Earlier, the BNP Standing Committee convened at the Chairperson’s Gulshan office, chaired by Acting Chairman Tarique Rahman. Khaleda Zia passed away at Evercare Hospital at 6:00 am on Tuesday after receiving medical treatment for over a month. Foreign dignitaries attending include Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and Pakistan National Assembly Speaker Sardar Ayaz Sadiq. Jaishankar’s visit, confirmed in a media statement on Tuesday, will mark the first ministerial-level visit from India to Bangladesh since 5 August, the day a student-led mass uprising toppled the previous Awami League government. Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar announced on X that Sadiq will represent Pakistan at the funeral, replacing his earlier plan to attend in person. Nepal’s Foreign Minister Bala Nanda Sharma will represent the government and people of Nepal. Officials at Bangladesh’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed that Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath and Bhutan’s Foreign Minister DN Dhungyel will also attend. Maldives will be represented by the President’s special envoy, Minister of Higher Education, Labour and Skills Development Ali Haidar Ahmed.

Leaders do not endure by the number of years they live, but by the good they leave behind. A leader truly remains alive as long as the people remember their deeds. By that measure, Begum Khaleda Zia will live on in Bangladesh for generations — remembered for a lifetime of sacrifice that carried her from a shy girl known as Putul to the commanding centre of the nation’s democratic struggle. Her long and turbulent journey ended at 6:00am on Tuesday at Evercare Hospital, where she had been undergoing treatment for 37 days. News of her death spread swiftly across the country and beyond, drawing grief from millions at home and tributes from world leaders abroad. Streets fell silent, party offices filled with mourners, and an entire nation paused to reckon with the passing of one of its most consequential figures. Begum Khaleda Zia’s life was never merely the story of a politician. It was the story of a woman thrust into history’s relentless gaze, who remained there for more than four decades — often isolated, constantly challenged, repeatedly targeted, yet never fully broken. Few figures in Bangladesh’s post-independence history have so completely embodied the country’s turbulence, resilience and contradictions. She began life far from power. Born Khaleda Khanam in Dinajpur and nicknamed Putul — meaning “doll” — she grew up without political ambition or public aspiration. Politics seemed a distant world. Even after the 1975 upheaval that eventually brought her husband, Ziaur Rahman, to power, she stayed largely out of sight, a soft-spoken homemaker who preferred the quiet company of her two sons, Tarique Rahman and Arafat Rahman Coco, to the spotlight of public life. That reluctance ended abruptly with tragedy. When President Ziaur Rahman was assassinated in 1981, Khaleda Zia was left widowed at 36, suddenly exposed to the brutal realities of power and intrigue. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), founded by her husband, splintered into factions. Senior leaders, anxious to preserve unity, turned to the grieving widow — not initially as a mass leader, but as a moral anchor capable of holding the party together. What followed was one of the most remarkable political transformations in South Asian history. From a reluctant figurehead, Khaleda Zia evolved into a formidable political force. As Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain later recalled, her ascent from housewife to “Madam” at the helm of the BNP fundamentally altered the party’s trajectory, transforming it into a genuinely mass-based organisation. Born in August 1946, the third of five children of Iskandar Majumdar and Tayeba Majumdar, Khaleda’s family history spanned Feni, Jalpaiguri and Dinajpur — a geography shaped by Partition and displacement. She was educated at a missionary school and later Dinajpur Government Girls’ High School before marrying Captain Ziaur Rahman in 1960. Zia would later command the Z Force during the Liberation War and rise to the presidency. After his assassination, the BNP initially faltered under Vice President Justice Abdus Sattar, widely viewed as lacking political resolve. Khaleda Zia entered politics cautiously in 1982, beginning symbolically by paying homage at her husband’s grave. Within two years, amid military rule under General Hussain Muhammad Ershad, she emerged as acting chairperson of the BNP, and in 1984 was formally elected party leader — a post she would hold for the next 40 years. Her defining political identity was forged in opposition. Throughout the 1980s, she led relentless movements against Ershad’s military regime, refusing compromise even when others sought accommodation. Arrested repeatedly, restricted in movement, and subjected to emergency laws, she persisted. It was during this period that BNP activists bestowed upon her the title that would endure: the uncompromising leader. That defiance culminated in the mass uprising of 1990, when sustained street protests finally toppled military rule. In the 1991 election — the first time she herself ever cast a vote — Khaleda Zia won all five constituencies she contested. She became Bangladesh’s first female prime minister, and only the second woman to lead a Muslim-majority country. Her first term marked a decisive shift in Bangladesh’s political economy. At a time when the country was transitioning away from state-dominated control, Khaleda Zia accelerated liberalisation, promoted private-sector-led growth, reduced state monopolies and opened space for entrepreneurship and foreign investment. Her governments initiated the first systematic reforms of the banking sector, strengthened Bangladesh Bank’s supervisory role, expanded private banking, and brought the capital market into national economic planning. Equally important was her emphasis on inclusion. Social safety-net programmes were expanded, women’s education and employment were promoted, and microcredit initiatives widened financial access. Disaster response during floods and cyclones was coordinated at the highest political level. Her leadership helped embed the idea that economic growth and social protection could advance together. Yet her legacy is inseparable from controversy. Her second term, beginning in 2001, was marked by political polarisation, governance failures, allegations of widespread corruption, the rise of militancy, and damaging episodes such as Operation Clean Heart and the August 21, 2004 grenade attack on an Awami League rally. The influence of Hawa Bhaban and her alliance with Jamaat-e-Islami remain among the most contentious chapters of her rule. After Sheikh Hasina returned to power in 2009, Khaleda Zia’s political space narrowed dramatically. The abolition of the caretaker government system effectively removed the BNP from competitive electoral politics. Parliamentary activity stalled, street movements were curtailed, and the opposition leader found herself increasingly isolated. Her conviction in corruption cases in 2018 — dating back more than a decade — marked a decisive turning point. BNP and independent observers described the cases as selective justice designed to neutralise the most prominent opposition figure ahead of elections. Her health deteriorated in prison, medical treatment was repeatedly delayed, and even after her conditional release she remained confined, barred from politics and under state control. To supporters, the public humiliation of a former prime minister served as a warning to dissenters. To critics of the government, her removal from active politics symbolised the collapse of meaningful multi-party competition. By the time of the July mass uprising years later, Khaleda Zia had become a powerful symbol — not the cause of revolt, but one of its most visible precedents. By the end, she was physically weakened and politically silenced, yet symbolically potent. Her final public appearance came in November at the Armed Forces Day ceremony. Illness prevented any return to frontline politics. “She was the mother of our democracy,” BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir said. “She endured repression and imprisonment but never abandoned the democratic path.” Begum Khaleda Zia’s life closed a chapter defined by power and persecution alike. To some, she will always be a fearless champion of democracy. To others, a flawed leader whose misjudgements carried heavy costs. But history will remember her as the woman who rose from a quiet household in Dinajpur to the summit of power — and stayed there far longer than anyone ever expected. Her deeds will outlive her life. In her absence, Bangladesh is left with a haunting question that continues to echo: what becomes of democracy when its opposition is broken, not defeated?

Sharifa Khatun, a 65-year-old widow, wept openly on Wednesday morning when the news reached her slum by the roadside in Dhaka’s Khilgaon area. Begum Khaleda Zia, she was told, had died in the ICU of Evercare Hospital shortly before the Fajr prayer. “In 2001, when Begum Khaleda Zia was in power, our lives were better than today,” Sharifa said, wiping her eyes. “She brought programmes for poor villagers that helped us survive, at least hand to mouth.” Sharifa’s grief is intensely personal, but it echoes a wider national moment. Khaleda Zia’s death has reopened a long, unresolved debate about her political life. Yet among the poor—especially women—her memory is often framed less by high politics than by livelihoods, opportunity and dignity. For many like Sharifa, Khaleda Zia’s name is tied to a period when economic policy appeared to work its way downwards. A shift away from state control When Khaleda Zia first assumed office in 1991, Bangladesh was still emerging from the ideological legacy of post-independence nationalisation. State dominance, weak financial institutions and chronic inefficiency had earned the country the derisive label of a “bottomless basket”. Global winds were changing, and Khaleda Zia seized the moment. Her governments accelerated Bangladesh’s transition towards a market-oriented economy, reducing state monopolies, liberalising trade and placing the private sector at the centre of growth. Import restrictions were eased, tariffs rationalised and space created for domestic entrepreneurs and foreign investment. This was not a dramatic overnight transformation, but it proved decisive. Market economics, once politically contested, became institutionalised as a cross-party consensus—one of her most enduring legacies. Banking reform and financial access Bangladesh’s banking sector in the early 1990s was riddled with political lending, poor supervision and ballooning defaults. Under Khaleda Zia, the government launched the Financial Sector Reform Programme with support from the World Bank and IMF. Bangladesh Bank’s supervisory authority was strengthened, prudential regulations introduced and loan classification standards enforced for the first time. State-owned banks were only partially restructured, but private commercial banks expanded rapidly, increasing competition and widening access to credit. For small entrepreneurs and rural borrowers—especially women—this shift mattered. Low-interest loans and microcredit schemes, largely channelled through NGOs with state backing, allowed millions of women to step into income-generating activities. “That was the first time we stood on our own feet,” Sharifa recalled. Markets, mobiles and momentum Khaleda Zia’s economic vision also extended to capital markets and connectivity. Her governments backed the expansion of the Dhaka Stock Exchange, strengthened the Securities and Exchange Commission and encouraged private companies to list. While later volatility exposed regulatory weaknesses, the capital market was pulled from the margins into the mainstream. Perhaps more transformative was her early embrace of mobile connectivity. The introduction of mobile telephony—initially through Citycell and later competitors—laid foundations for financial inclusion long before “digital Bangladesh” became a slogan. Access to phones connected farmers to markets, families to remittances and women to informal financial networks that would later underpin mobile financial services. Growth with stability During Khaleda Zia’s two terms, Bangladesh recorded moderate but steady GDP growth. Inflation remained controlled, foreign exchange reserves stable and exports—particularly garments—expanded. Rural roads, bridges and basic infrastructure improved, knitting villages more closely into the national economy. By today’s standards the growth rates appear modest, but they were achieved without major macroeconomic shocks. Fiscal discipline, even amid fierce political confrontation, became a defining feature of her economic stewardship. Welfare alongside liberalisation Crucially, Khaleda Zia did not pursue liberalisation in isolation. She believed democracy was hollow if it failed to serve the people. Her governments expanded social safety-net programmes such as food-for-work and vulnerable group feeding, and led large-scale relief and rehabilitation efforts during floods and cyclones in the 1990s and early 2000s. As Bangladesh’s first woman prime minister, she also became a powerful symbol of women’s participation in public life. Female education, women’s employment and microcredit access received political backing, helping align growth with social inclusion. This blend of market economics and targeted welfare contributed to gradual poverty reduction while keeping growth priorities intact. A contested but lasting legacy Khaleda Zia’s economic record remains debated. Critics argue reforms were incomplete and institutions left fragile. Supporters counter that her achievement lay not in radical transformation, but in consolidation—embedding open markets, financial reform and private-sector-led growth into Bangladesh’s development DNA. What is beyond dispute is that she helped move the country decisively away from the paralysis of the past. As news of her death spread, it was not policy papers that moved Sharifa Khatun to tears, but memory. “Those days,” she said softly, “we felt the state had not forgotten us.” In the end, that may be the quietest measure of Khaleda Zia’s economic legacy: not where Bangladesh stands today, but how many of its poorest citizens once felt they had a place in its journey forward.