There is something uniquely revealing about how a state allocates its dead—and its ministers. Graveyards, after all, are meant to be the great equalizer. Ministers’ residences, by contrast, are supposed to be functional symbols of public service, not monuments to privilege. When both are bent to flatter power, the result is not governance but quiet moral decay.

Consider the Banani Graveyard policy in Dhaka. Officially, it was framed as a response to land scarcity, a very real problem in Dhaka. Grave space is finite, the city is overcrowded, and burial management requires rules. Yet politics has a way of distorting necessity into deference. When Atiqul Islam, the then mayor of Dhaka North City Corporation, tightened burial rules at Banani, the intent was less urban planning than political choreography. Members of Sheikh Hasina’s family are buried there. The policy made permanent burials nearly impossible for ordinary citizens, effectively turning a public graveyard into a semi-sacred enclave for the powerful. It was governance as flattery—over-enthusiastic, unnecessary, and quietly cruel.

When a citizen purchases a burial plot in Banani graveyard, it is traditionally understood (both in Islamic practice and in local custom) to be a permanent resting place. Yet the Banani graveyard policy introduced an anomalous provision: a time-bound ownership clause that runs directly against Islamic principles, entrenched social norms, and the egalitarian ethos of Bangladeshi society. Even more unsettling is a rule so arbitrary that it prohibits a grandson from being buried in his grandfather’s grave—an edict that is not only religiously indefensible but socially jarring.

The numbers tell the story. Leasing fees soared to staggering levels—Tk 1 crore for 15 years, Tk 1.5 crore for 25. Reburial became mandatory........

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