Bangladesh has always been a laboratory of paradox. It must, however, turn away from the retributive politics of the past and build a future in which its industrious, talented, and skilled people receive the governance they deserve.
A pale mist hung over Dhaka, which glowed in winter light. I did not need a sweater or heavy jacket, but a waistcoat did fine. The traffic was worse when I was here in 2017, and the rickshaws were colourful as ever. The air smelt of diesel, smoke, sweet tea, and fish cooked in mustard oil. The streets had large banners and posters in black, mourning the passing of Khaleda Zia, prime minister of Bangladesh for two terms between 1991 and 2006. Her son Tarique had returned to Dhaka after 17 years in exile, and there seemed to be an air of inevitability that he would formally rejoin the family profession, and many I spoke to wanted him to win, even if they were Awami League supporters, because they feared the alternative—Jamaat-e-Islami—more.
The Awami League was not part of the election equation. The party had been banned, and its leader, former prime minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed, had been overthrown. She had fled for India in a helicopter in August 2024. Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel Laureate, the darling of the international development community, but whom Hasina had called ‘bloodsucker’ of the poor, was the de facto head of the government, overseeing the transfer of power to elected politicians.
The anxiety was understandable: days after firebrand student activist Sharif Osman Hadi was murdered, public anger erupted. In the lawlessness that followed, the offices of two secular and liberal newspapers, Prothom Alo and the Daily Star, were ransacked and torched, and two cultural institutions where syncretic Bangla culture was celebrated and taught were attacked. I went to see the charred remains of the two newspaper offices. The air still smelt of residual smoke, and you had to be careful as you walked, as there were shards of glass all over the ground. The blackened edges of window frames looked like eyelids singed shut. The ruin was total, but it was remarkable that, except for the day after the attack, the newspapers resumed printing, and its intrepid reporters were busy reporting stories as Bangladeshis prepared to vote.
Trust in administrations will rise and fall. Parties will rebrand, fracture, and realign. Women will negotiate their public roles against unjust demands and shifting expectations. Rural and urban voters will continue their quiet tug-of-war over the nation’s direction. Fundamentalism will try to assert itself; secularism will push back; and somewhere in between, millions will simply try to live, keeping the country afloat.
In the stairwell, ash made a soft carpet. I imagined the frantic scramble: hard drives pulled from sockets, phones buzzing with warnings, someone shouting that the mob was close. One journalist posted a moving account on social media, wondering if they would be able to leave the building alive. Newspapers in Bangladesh have always been embattled—between state pressure, partisan loyalties, and the long shadows of 1971—but this was different.
As I stepped out and took photographs, pedestrians looked at me curiously. When I asked my cab driver what had happened, politics, he said.
The election season had set in its own rhythm. Parties took time to announce candidates, and it took time for posters to be pasted on the walls. Most carried photographs of men – the Jamaat had fielded no women as candidates, and the BNP too had fielded a pitifully low number. Bangladesh is a society that has made impressive gains in female employment and empowerment, and many women work outside the home—in garment factories, banks, offices, and other service sectors. That continues. But I saw more women in hijab, and many in niqab, than the last time I was here.
I saw domestic staff in some homes in their churidar-kurta, putting on the gown and the niqab as they left the home and headed out onto the streets to board buses or cycle rickshaws to return home. Was it out of tradition, or was it out of safety, so as not to get harassed by conservative men who’d ask them to cover up? They wouldn’t tell. The anxiety in the ‘tri-state’ area of Gulshan-Banani-Baridhara was genuine: What if the arithmetic of alliances opened the door to those who speak in the grammar of faith before the language of rights?
Some saw the rise of Jamaat as inevitable: the party had been banned by the Awami League; its leaders, who were accused of being collaborators in the 1971 war of independence, had either died or been executed; and it listened to its constituents and undertook welfare activities, even sweeping elections for students’ unions. Its younger leaders tried reassuring voters that they would act with restraint, even as its leaders insisted that God did not want women to govern.
Jamaat’s rise was seen as an antidote to what the secular elite had done to Bangladesh, so ran the reasoning, although Bangladesh had never become secular in its European sense: rather, as in South Asia, where all religions are everywhere, but the dominant views prevail. The fear was pragmatic. Would school curricula change? Would women find themselves policed in more brazen ways? Would dissent migrate further underground?
And yet, the day of voting arrived with an almost stubborn calm. Queues formed early. Many young voters were excited: since Bangladesh hadn’t had competitive elections in a meaningful way since 2008, for many in their mid-30s, this was their first opportunity to vote. The ink on index fingers bloomed purple. The election was remarkably peaceful, and the counting was disciplined. For a country that has often known elections as preludes to confrontation, including boycotts, the peace felt like a small miracle.
Peace, though, is not the same as trust.
The conversation often turned to Muhammad Yunus. Had he calmed the nation, or allowed the young too much authority? Why was he accommodating the Jamaat? While he had picked advisers from the civil society and NGO sectors, why did people get portfolios that were not in line with their skill sets? He was indeed the necessary steward in a fraught transition, the only one who had credibility, a figure whose global stature might steady domestic turbulence. But why try to remake the country with a charter hastily put together and put to a complicated referendum? Trust, that fragile currency, seemed to be depreciating—not collapsing, but eroding in increments.
Bangladesh has always been a laboratory of paradox. Born in 1971, in a war that fused linguistic nationalism with secular aspirations of fine ideals and principles. The first constitution spoke the language of equality and pluralism. Yet over decades, amendments and counter-amendments braided religion more tightly into the state’s fabric. Secularism was declared, diluted, restored, and reinterpreted. And yet, democracy showed its resilience. People voted. They argued. Newspapers, even when burned, returned to print. In Bangladesh, students organise, garment workers strike, and bloggers write with a stubborn insistence on being heard, even at great personal risk.
And yet, brittle, because violence is never far from the surface. And alliances are temporary, transactional, and memories are selective. The line between faith as solace and faith as instrument blurs with alarming speed.
Conversations at tea stalls were not about grand ideas but practical matters. The talk was about roads, remittances, madrasa funding, and who would secure a government job for a cousin. Urban commentators often speak of ideology; in the smaller bylanes, voters speak of proximity and patronage.
In the days after the attacks on newspapers and cultural institutions, concerns over continued violence were immediate. There were some attacks on Hindu property and temples, and a few murders, including the case of one lynching, which heightened fears among Hindus. Eventually, violence subsided; it seems the country collectively wanted to turn the page on divisiveness and give a known party yet another chance. Even though it continued the cycle of power rotating between two families.
The lynching incident had repercussions in India, since the young man who was murdered was Hindu. Kolkata Knight Riders, one of the teams of the Indian Premier League, had chosen Bangladeshi star Mustafizur Rahman for its squad. There was a huge outcry against it in India. Kolkata is the capital of West Bengal, which will go to the polls this year, and Mamata Banerjee has been ruling the state since 2011. The Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, which rules at the centre and in many states, has painted her as someone appeasing Muslims.
The government advised the IPL and the Indian cricket board that Mustafizur’s presence in the competition may create law-and-order issues, implying that he might be unsafe. Bangladesh, therefore, asked that all its games be shifted from India to Sri Lanka during the ongoing T20 World Cup, jointly hosted by India and Sri Lanka. Bangladesh reasonably said if one player’s security can’t be guaranteed, how can the security of an entire team, officials, press, and fans be guaranteed? But oddly, India insisted they would be safe. Bangladesh, therefore, pulled out of the competition; Pakistan voted with Bangladesh in solidarity, but the other cricket boards accepted Indian guarantees.
While Indian media furiously debated the issue, there was a strange silence in Bangladesh: far more was at stake than a cricket competition. A film festival went on; the celebrated international photography exhibition, Chhobi Mela, with its searing images from around the world (but most notably, Gaza) drew crowds. Boi Mela,the festival of books, was around the corner. It seemed as if Bangladesh wanted to return to some sense of normalcy after a tumultuous two years.
Its democracy is hardly perfect. As long as the Awami League cannot field candidates, the election’s representative legitimacy will always be in question. It is quite likely the BNP would have won these elections hands down if they had been held in a free and fair manner, even if the Awami League had fielded candidates. It is impossible to tell if the AL would have participated, particularly after Hasina’s trial in absentia (and the death sentence), and her continued stay in exile. But Bangladesh needs to turn away from the retributive politics of the past and build a future in which its industrious, talented, and skilled people receive the governance they deserve.
On my last evening, as dusk fell, the call to prayer threaded through the city, overlapping from mosque to mosque, a polyphonic reminder of faith’s deep roots here. Weeks earlier, Hindu families in old Dhaka were busy flying kites. (A Jamaat leader said Hindus can fly kites, Muslims mustn’t, without explaining why). On the streets, people had begun to joke and argue openly about politics. That coexistence is so quintessentially Bengali.
Trust in administrations will rise and fall. Parties will rebrand, fracture, and realign. Women will negotiate their public roles against unjust demands and shifting expectations. Rural and urban voters will continue their quiet tug-of-war over the nation’s direction. Fundamentalism will try to assert itself; secularism will push back; and somewhere in between, millions will simply try to live, keeping the country afloat.
As I left Dhaka, the winter light had deepened into a smoky gold. The city did not look like a place on the brink. It looked like a place accustomed to walking precariously, to edging forward without tumbling over. The burned offices were real, but so was the determination to print again. The hijabs were real, but so were the women who questioned power. The silence about cricket was real, but so was the undercurrent of pride that would resurface with the next boundary struck.
