The stories nations tell themselves about who they are sometimes obscure their identity and damage their relationship with others. For the sustaining myths which bear people up, particularly in times of crisis and misfortune, come at a high cost. Most countries clearly articulate the heroic nature of their past, which enables them to define themselves, both in their region and in the wider world.

Bangladesh is an exception to this, torn, as it is, by conflicting accounts of its own genesis in 1971. The two principal political formations in the country the Bangladesh National Party, currently in government, and the opposition Awami League believe quite separate versions of their brief but bloody past. As a result, there is a continuing low-intensity cultural civil war, which is a quarrel over the ownership of a particular narrative.

It is scarcely imaginable that anywhere else in the world so much energy, money, passion, and also, blood, should have been spent over the proprietorship of a story, no matter how epic its scope and significance. Perhaps it is a consequence of the literary heritage of Bengal, that its history should arouse such violent feelings; or perhaps it is the tribute of a land with a high level of illiteracy to the oral tradition, to the virtue of stories, that creates such dissension among the people.

It goes without saying that anyone looking dispassionately at Bangladesh will immediately perceive that such disputes are the last thing the people need. Their needs cry out to the world - basic food sufficiency, security, health care, shelter and education. What they get instead are the quarrels of feudal lords (or ladies) over dead heroes.

Landlessness has increased from less one-third of the population at the time of Independence to 67 percent. Unemployment stands at 35 percent, and as many are below an ungenerous poverty line. About two-thirds of the people are engaged in agriculture, one-fifth in services, and 11 percent in industry; even though the garment sector now accounts for three-quarters of foreign exchange. Transparency International placed Bangladesh as the most corrupt of the ninety countries it looked at in 2001. The literacy rate is less than 50 percent for women, about 60 percent for men. About one-third of school-going children study in madrasas. The number of child workers is unknown, but runs into millions; they are heavily concentrated in agriculture, domestic service, small workshops, hotels and eating-houses, as helpers in public transport, in manufacture, brick-breaking and construction. Life expectancy is about 60 years. The population is growing at a rate of 1.59 percent a year.

The fate of Bangladesh was not settled by the devastating war of Independence (the extent of the casualties of which is still disputed. The slaughter of Bengalis makes the event one of the great massacres of the 20th century, on a scale to equal that of European Jewry, the prisoners in Stalin's gulags and the Turkish massacre of the Armenians). Indeed, the contested narrative only begins with the country's bloody birth, although conflict was built into its emergence as East Pakistan after the Partition of India.

The people of East Pakistan soon realised that they were to play a semi-colonial role in their new country, providing raw materials (especially jute) for the dominant West. Their position was made clear in 1952, when it was announced that Urdu was to be the official language of Pakistan. The Bengalis of East Pakistan were not going to abandon their cultural heritage; and protests by students at Dhaka University led to the army killing of five 'language martyrs' as they became known; commemoration of their sacrifice is one of the (many) solemn memorials in the Bangladeshi year. In recognition of this, in 2001, Ekushey February was declared world-wide Mother-Tongue day by UNESCO.

This event, so soon after Partition, presaged the resistance that would lead to the repression of Bengalis and the war 19 years later.

The Pakistani authorities never understood the depth of commitment of the people of East Pakistan, not only to their language, but to their culture, its festivals and traditions. Under martial law in 1970, General Yahya Khan agreed to elections that would return Pakistan to democracy. Sheikh Mujib ur Rahman's Awami League won virtually every seat in the East, and became the largest party in Pakistan; in the West, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's People's Party won 70 seats. It was unthinkable that the East should dominate, even though its population was greater. The crackdown by the Pakistani army began shortly afterwards. In March 1971, many prominent intellectuals, artists and academics were slaughtered. This was followed by the war, in which East Pakistan invaded (or assisted) by an India only too eager to see the dismemberment of Pakistan became independent. The Jama'at-e-Islami fought on the side of the Pakistanis; this party is part of the present ruling coalition. It is unusual, to say the least, that a party which did not believe in the existence of a country, should become a major player in its governance within little more than a generation.

Within four years of independence, Bangladesh was beset by famine, some of the worst flooding in half a century, and by factional quarrels of those to the Left of Sheikh Mujib. The United States, which had sent food supplies to Bangladesh, demanded that Mujib cancel an order for jute from Cuba, then, as now, under a US trade embargo; when Sheikh Mujib refused, the supply ships turned back to the USA. In August 1975, Sheikh Mujib and the majority of his family were assassinated in his home in Dhanmondi in the centre of Dhaka. Interim Awami League replacements were swept aside by the military and Zia ur Rahman, who had also been a major player in the liberation movement, came to power. He formed the Bangladesh National Party. He eliminated from the Constitution references to secularism and socialism. Zia was assassinated in Chittagong in 1982. He was replaced by the military, and General Ershad held power until 1991. When his regime fell, the return to democracy brought the election of Khaleda Zia, widow of Zia ur Rahman. She was (democratically) ousted by Sheikh Hasina, daughter of the murdered Sheikh Mujib; in 2001, Khalada Zia was returned, with the help of Ershad's party and two Islamic parties, including the Jama'at.

How can this bald narrative have become the source of the violent contestation of which it is now the object?

It is, of course, understandable that the widow and the daughter of murdered leaders will never be able to overcome the pain of the violence which killed those they loved. But on such quarrels countries cannot be constructed, development will not be achieved and lifting up the poor can never be accomplished: institutionalised grief and pride, and the politics of revenge are poor foundations for the construction of social hope.

The story of who were the true architects of the freedom of Bangladesh still tears at the heart of the country's identity, even though well over 50 percent of the population were not even born at the time. Was it a popular struggle, a fight of the people reclaiming their Bengali heritage, or was the credit due to the army which led a Muslim land to its independence? This unresolved conundrum has recently been inflected by developments outside of Bangladesh, and not only in the immediate region the new assertiveness of Islamic identity, the events of September 11, the war on terror, and not least, the rise of Hindu nationalism in an India, which encloses the country on three sides in a loveless geographical embrace, and the coming to power there of a government led by the BJP. To neighbouring West Bengal, which sees itself as the custodian of Bengali culture, the existence of an independent Bangladesh remains an irritant; the more so, since Dhaka, with the growth of a vibrant garments industry, shows a dynamism and energy which have deserted the post-imperial (and ossified Leftist) languor of Kolkata.

Whether the disputed aetiological myth over the birth of Bangladesh is the major influence upon its version of democracy, or whether a more potent force is the continuing feudal mentality of those leading ostensibly democratic parties, it is not easy to determine.

Neither of the main political parties accepts the legitimacy of its rival, even when elected. When the BNP has been in power, it has sought to disgrace the Awami League, while the Awami League has always seen itself as the true heir of independence, a party with a mass base, unlike the cantonment-created BNP. For the last decade, whichever party has been out of power has harassed the government, calling it 'killer, corrupt, oppressive, terrorist, anti-poor'; and backing up its accusations with an indiscriminate use of the hartal, the political strike which shuts down of the country. The hartal is modelled on the popular protests in India against the fading powers of the Raj. The symbolism is important, since it represents a total rejection of the other party. The Opposition participates to a constitutional minimum in Parliament, and stages frequent walk-outs. The party in government uses the law against its opponents, charging them with corruption, misappropriation of State resources, implication in criminal activities of all kinds, including treason and murder.

Dynastic politics and disputed proprietorship, not merely of the country's story, but equally of its resources, can scarcely be expected to lead to a form of 'development' that will benefit the poorest. The well-to-do, including many former rural landlords, have diversified, finding lucrative operations in urban real estate, construction, the garments sector and shrimp-farming (shrimps are now the second export of Bangladesh.) It goes without saying that the government of whichever party has an interest in many such enterprises, not always direct. Criminal networks and mafias link politics to business in an intricate construct of corrupt and venal relationships; and this, together with the wider dissolution of secular ideologies, creates convergence between the two main political formations, which all the more vehemently disavow one another. The blurring of ideology particularly the decay of the Left and the waning of secularism has, perhaps paradoxically, entrenched their mutual loathing.

The presence in Bangladesh of millions of unemployed young men, many of them graduates, seduced by the idea that if only they would become educated, they might become prosperous, makes powerful recruiting-ground for the footsoldiery of the political parties; those who enforce the hartals, who pressurise the poor, who extort money from the powerless, as well as ensure that the votes of this or that village or urban slum go towards their own paymasters. One of the least commented but most tragic occurrences in Bangladesh has been the decay of idealism, the rapid disillusionment that came with Independence and the certainty that sonar Bangla was to have been the inheritance of a free people. The struggle which began as a defence of an ancient and rooted Bengali culture, with its Baul heritage, the music of Lalon, the poetry of Nazrul Islam and the work of Rabindranath Tagore, has degenerated into a savage and intractable fight be elites for the fruits of power, most of them highly material. The work of the Bengali anti-imperialists and radicals, the social reformers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, seems to have been cancelled; and if their descendants are working today, they are not lauded as heroes, but are probably working in obscurity, in slums and impoverished villages, as like as not under the surveillance of Intelligence Services as dangerous subversives.

Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina are like the warring mothers of the story in the Old Testament: two women came to King Solomon for his judgment as to who was the true mother of a child which both claimed her own. One said that her own baby had been exchanged under cover of darkness for the dead child of the other. This was denied by her antagonist. They demanded that the king declare who was the rightful mother. Solomon ordered that a sword be brought and that the living child should be divided in two; one half to be given to the first claimant, and the other half to the second. One of the women said 'Yes, let the child be split in two, and we will take half each'; But the second cried 'No, do not kill the child. Let the other take her. I renounce my claim if only the child may live.' The king pronounced the woman who had renounced the child to spare its life to be the true mother. The other, who was prepared to see the child die rather than go to her rival, was declared to be an impostor.

This fable is singularly apposite to Bangladesh. The arbiter, with the power or wisdom to adjudicate between the two women who fight their remorseless battles over the infant nation is an electorate which has, until now, had little choice but to take sides in these dynastic struggles.

Until now, because a new choice has appeared, in Bangladesh, as in other Muslim countries. The Islamic parties offer another way out of the political stalemate; and although the Jama'at has only 18 seats in the present administration, its influence extends far wider and deeper than that of a decaying secularism and the self-serving of existing politics. It is unclear how far Bangladesh will retrieve for Islam what was lost to Pakistan: many intellectuals affirm that the people of Bangladesh are truly secularist, but similar claims have also been made, at one time or another, for many other countries. Yet few of these have remained unmarked by the power of religious fundamentalism, including Iran, India, the United States and Israel.

I was in Dhaka on September 11 2001. At that time, I didn't meet a single person who thought that sending aircraft into buildings full of civilians was a good idea. When I returned less than six months later, I met scarcely anyone who didn't think bin Laden was a hero. The war in Afghanistan undermined the goodwill which the US had gained as victim of terror; a process subsequently completed by the war in Iraq.

Islam, which has co-existed for centuries, complementing the Bengali heritage, is acquiring a higher salience in popular identity. This is not to say that Bangladesh will become an Islamic state. But there has recently been a detectable hardening, a growing intolerance in the country. In the last few years, bombs have killed scores of people, particularly at cultural gatherings (the UDICHI bombing in Khulna in 2000, which was a festival of international Leftist cultural groups), in Christian churches (Gopalganj in 2001) and at the celebration of the Pohile Boishak, the Bengali new year, in Ramna Park in Dhaka in 2002. These represent an attack on the tradition of tolerant, pluralist Bengal; no one has been brought to account for any of them; indeed, news of such happenings scarcely even reaches the Western media.

There is good reason for this. Christina Rocca, Assistant Secretary in the US Bureau of South Asian Affairs, in a recent visit to Bangladesh, gave her blessing to the country as 'a model of moderate Muslim democracy'. The US is bringing pressure upon Bangladesh to export its (modest) reserves of natural gas to India, via the intermediary of Unocal, an energy company of which Hamid Karzai, and the ubiquitous Zalmay Khalilzad (involved at one time in negotiations between the US government and the Taliban for a pipeline through Afghanistan, subsequently representative to the Iraqi Opposition) were former advisors. It is rumoured that Sheikh Hasina was warned before the elections of 2001 that if she did not agree to the deal with Unocal, she would lose. She did. But Khaleda, as the embodiment of Bangladeshi nationalism, can scarcely bring herself to sign away a resource which Bangladesh will need for its own development.

The elections of October 2001 were bitterly fought; not only on the issue of further liberalisation, including the export of gas, but more significantly on the deteriorating law and order situation in the country, the criminalisation of politics and the politicising of crime. Even before the outcome of the elections was known, there were attacks on Hindu minorities in the South of the country. Property was taken, goods looted; there were killings and rapes. Shahriar Kabir, writer and film-maker, went to India to interview some of the people who had fled their homes. On his return, he was arrested and detained for 60 days. The government is desperate that the image of Bangladesh shall not be 'tarnished', no matter how much the reality has been sullied over the years by corruption and violence. In November 2002, the government used the army in a 'crackdown' on crime. In the round-up of alleged wrongdoers, more than 40 people died in custody. These events were the report of a highly critical Amnesty International Report.

The BNP government gave the Jama'at the Welfare Ministry. It is clearly the intention that Islamic charity is to oust the efforts of Western NGOs wherever possible. Indeed, the representatives of certain NGOs have been persecuted, their funds withheld; particularly those associated with the empowerment of women, and dedicated to the promotion of Bengali culture the drama and dance and music groups in which both men and women freely participate. Women have become a significant battleground in the struggle between Bengali and Islamic cultures.

The inconclusive cultural civil war in Bangladesh has been powerfully inflected by a globalisation, which cares little enough either for Islam or for Bengali culture. Globalism is not simply an economic system which brings its benign promise of plenty and prosperity to a whole world. It brings with it a radical re-shaping of human sensibilities, a structural adjustment of the soul and psyche as well as in the economic arena. In response, traditional faiths and belief-systems do not stand still. These also mutate, and in doing so become hardened, caricatures of themselves. Antagonisms that have lain dormant, contradictions that have slumbered in easy co-existence with conflicting value-systems, are suddenly awakened. The shifting sensibility of Bangladesh was certainly not created by the events of September 11 and its aftermath, but these have thrown upon it a new and dangerous clarity.

The politics of religious identity increasingly occupy the spaces evacuated by secular ideologies (the death of socialism) and the ideology of secularism (where religious differences are subordinated to the greater good of an impartial State). This has re-opened the bitter wound, the mutilation of Partition; and enmities thought to have been suspended if not laid to rest have been re-animated by the decay of all forms of social hope in a sub-continent where, together with prodigious wealth-creation, nothing has touched the widening gulf between rich and poor.
Bangladesh has a uniquely anguished relationships with those who have dominated it: liberation from the British Raj left it stranded as the Eastern outpost of another power which displayed a remarkable continuity with the oppressor it had displaced. The break with Pakistan was cultural and not religious. Because India was indispensable to the very existence of Bangladesh the relationship is made up of a complex mixture of resentment, fear and respect. Bangladeshi nationalism has no other focus for defining itself than an omnipresent India. The continuing dependency upon India for so many goods and necessities of daily life remains a perpetual irritant. Internally, nationalism means turning the screw on minorities: and that means, not only Hindus, but Christians and Buddhists. The people of the Chittagong Hill Tracts remain estranged from and hostile to Bengali 'settlers', whose presence is a reminder that even the most beleaguered and dominated of cultures do not disdain to do the same to those even smaller and less powerful than they are.

If India surrounds Bangladesh physically, the United States does so psychologically. Bangladesh has more so since 9/11 found itself cast in the role of model Muslim democracy; and there are not many of those in the world. The US wants to show that, despite the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, despite its belated and tepid recognition of the plight of the Palestinians, despite the arrest and detention of Muslims in the US, it is not anti-Islam. Bangladesh has a crucial role in demonstrating to the world the non-discriminatory policies of the US towards Muslims. This is why the present government is so terrified of anything that suggests Bangladesh might also be a nest of fundamentalism. They are treading a difficult path, between the shifting sensibility of their own people, and their need to distance themselves internationally from anything that suggests leniency towards extremists.

Pakistan's alliance with the US in the war on terror is an aggravated example of the ambiguities in Bangladesh: while a military government must both host fundamentalists and conciliate the US, a rapprochement with Bangladesh might throw into too sharp relief the proximity of the BNP government to the army, and equally, the growing alienation of the Muslims of Bangladesh from the remaining superpower. The Bangladeshi government is at the same time 'liberalising' its economy, opening itself to foreign capital and implementing prescriptions of the IMF and World Bank. Its difficulties are recognised by recent contributions by the World Bank to 'poverty reduction strategies': in this context, that means helping to mitigate the desperate circumstances which are believed to foster fundamentalism.

There is a three-cornered rivalry in the subcontinent for the approval of the US: Pakistan, despite its dangerous involvement in Kashmir, remains the preferred object of US affection, by its public commitment to the war against terror. India is desperate to assimilate itself both to Israel and to the US as a constant victim of terrorism; and has proffered its martyrs as evidence of kinship with them. Yet India remains deeply frustrated to find itself coming a poor second to its rival. Bangladesh, in theory, ought to be the most valuable ally of the US, with its democratic Islamic credentials; yet it is incapable of realising this potential, caught up as it is, in introspection over its origins, with all the consequences that brings - backwardness, corruption and poverty.
If the Partition of India was a disaster (and certainly for millions of people it has been, and remains, a tragedy), the fact that the Muslim population of the sub-continent is dispersed among three countries is of no small advantage to India, particularly in the emergence of the agenda of Hindutva: this could never so readily have been formulated if the 400 million or so Muslims of the subcontinent had not been scattered over three countries, trapped, as it were, in accidental nationalisms. These limiting definitions can, it seems, can be transcended only by an appeal to a common religious identity, with all the instability which that threatens.

The old hatreds that ought to have been interred with the corpses of partition, have merely been biding their time, somnolent in the secret recesses of the heart and the imagination, waiting only for the moment when they may be roused once more to go forth into the world, for the further chastisement and bitter instruction of the people.

In a Dhaka slum, I met Mohammad Saidurahman, fighter in the war of Independence. He was 21 at that time, and lost a leg. After the war, he lived for time in a shelter for freedom fighters, but was evicted when the military came to power. He had a wife, a child and no money. He did what many poor men do in Bangladesh, who lose their land and livelihood: he became a rickshaw-driver. He is the only one-legged driver in Dhaka. Even able-bodied drivers are exhausted by their labour. He earns 70 taka a day. Now he has a heart problem, and is no longer fit for work. Half his daily income is spent on medicine.

Md Saidurahman seemed to me curiously emblematic of the injured freedom of Bangladesh: the country's leaders, locked in sterile and introspective rivalry over possession of its tragic story, offer the people no way out of insecurity and want, and cripple its capacity for fulfilling its role in South Asia and the wider world.

(Jeremy Seabrook is a well-known writer and campaigner and the author of books and plays including Travels in the Skin Trade and A Wolrd Growing Old).