Female students, and women in general, played a prominent role in the July Revolution that brought down Bangladesh’s authoritarian regime. Yet their contributions are now being brushed over, and their voices and demands are overlooked.
Exposition: I am initiated into the Revolution by Nafsin Mehanaz Azireen
Spring 2024 was my first time teaching at North South University (NSU) as a full-time faculty. I taught close to 200 students that semester. As an over-enthusiastic newcomer faculty member, I vowed to learn all 200 names. By mid-term examination week, however, I knew I had set an unrealistic goal given my 36-year-old post-COVID mush of a brain. I gave up. Yet, there was one name that I was, for some unknown reason, able to memorize before the end of the semester: Nafsin Mehanaz Azireen.
It’s not as if Nafsin was the most interactive student in class, or the student who had the best writing skills, or the student who had the best grades. She wasn’t loud, hyper-social, or attention-loving in any way. No, Nafsin was one of my quieter students. She wasn’t shy; she was just quietly self-assured. She came to class, did her work, and left discreetly. In fact, in the four months that I taught her, I can’t recall a single instance when I heard her voice in the classroom. Yet, it is with her very voice that Nafsin commanded crowds of thousands strong in the Bashundhara Residential Area during the Bangladesh Student Protests in July, earning her the nickname “NSU’s Slogan Konya.”
The first time I saw Nafsin in action was on August 3rd. That was the first day I was able to attend a protest organized by the private university wing of the Anti-Discrimination Student Movement. I had been wanting to join the protests since the end of July but was having difficulty connecting with other teachers who were active during the protests. As a new faculty member at NSU, I didn’t yet have the networks in place that would have allowed me to be looped in, and I was too afraid to go on my own.
Disappointingly, the few teachers I reached out to were either not involved with the protests on the ground and those on the ground were too overwhelmed to have the time to pass on the information about the next demonstrations to me. I felt disheartened, helpless, even a little childishly excluded. That was when Nafsin reached out to me via email; “We kindly request that when we organize and announce future protests, you stand by us, support us, and join us in the protest. Please come out for us and for yourselves. This country belongs to all of us — please help us,” she had written to me. “It would be my greatest honor to stand next to the brave youngsters of this country,” I had replied. I was finally in, and it was meaningful to me that I was being initiated into the revolution by a student herself.
On the morning of August 3, Nafsin flawlessly coordinated my arrival at the scene of the protest, making sure that I remained safe and inside the NSU campus until, upon the signal of the student coordinators, all protestors stepped out from different places together at the same time and a sizable crowd gathered in front of NSU front gates within minutes.
As a woman, it is easy to feel we are only valued and accepted by our male comrades when the revolution is in full swing, when putting us on the frontlines helps the cause. Soon after, though, we are back to being treated as second-class citizens whose very existence is a revolting thorn in the cause of men. I wonder how many times this will happen before the women of Bangladesh realize the pattern and refuse to enter the fray altogether.
On Nafsin’s signal, I stepped out of the campus and joined the crowd where slogans were already being chanted. I scanned the crowd for Nafsin and was taken aback when I saw that she was the one daringly leading the slogans. I was captivated watching a transformed Nafsin…or was she always this fiery, and I just hadn’t noticed before? My quiet, unassuming student was now roaring with the ferocity of a wounded but determined lioness. “Jegechhe re jegecchhe, chhatro shomaj jegechhe. Legechhe re legechhe, rokte agun legechhe[1]”; “Rokter bonnay, bheshe jabe onnay[2]”; “Sheikh Hasinar kalo haat, bhenge dao, guriye dao. Chhatro League er kalo haat, bhenge dao guriye dao. Police er kalo haat, bhenge dao, guriye dao[3]” and so the vital rhythm of the revolution echoed throughout Bashundhara, led by my very own student. It was, hands down, the proudest moment of my 10 year long teaching career.
When Nafsin finally took a break, she elbowed past other protestors to greet me. We embraced. My face was contorted with pain and pride, and Nafsin’s was red with emotion. Both our eyes were filled with tears, and our hearts were very, very full.
During those long dark days of the internet blackout, I had wondered which of my students were risking their lives and which names I would later read as having been lost. Would it be Meraz? Sami? Safwan? Afraz? I had secretly mourned for nameless students who cried helpless tears looking at my class attendance sheets. Which names would be missing when classes resume? Would it be Mashrafe? Fahim? Talha? Jihad?
In my patriarchy-steeped mind, the name “Nafsin Mehanaz Azireen” had not come up. Yet, here she was, like countless other young female revolutionaries across the country, risking her life, fearlessly and tirelessly chanting slogans against a bloodthirsty dictator in broad, intimidating daylight.
Rising Action: I Experience a Police Attack and Learn the Meaning of Sacrifice
In the next couple of days, Nafsin made a point to keep in touch with me and ensure that I was in the loop. She didn’t have to do so, given my involvement with the protests was minimal, but she did. The younger generation, I found, not only knows the meaning of inclusivity but also practices it every day. When she called me during the early morning hours of August 5th and told me with a shaking voice that she was unable to find transport to go to Bashundhara and afraid to join the protests next to her home in Mirpur-10 by herself, I knew I had a difficult decision to make. Every cell in my body was advocating for self-preservation. I thought of my poor sweet husband, an American man living thousands of miles away, who did not understand the politics of my country, and whose heart and spirit would break if something happened to me. I thought of my two closest friends who I knew would be proud of me but also burn with lifelong grief and regret if I was lost to them. I thought of the animals at my home whose health and well-being depended on me. “Live to tell the tale,” I tried to convince myself. But I knew that if I didn’t stand by Nafsin and if she died that day, any life that I would live would not be worth living. So, against all good sense, I called Nafsin and told her I was coming to get her.
I got a CNG from Uttara, picked Nafsin up from her home in Mirpur, and we headed to Bashundhara together. Miraculously, despite the curfew, Nafsin and I succeeded in reaching NSU around 10 a.m. without getting arrested. A crowd of a couple of hundred gathered in front of NSU. Nafsin led the slogans again, “Ek dui tin char, Sheikh Hasina godi chhar[4]” There was a palpable tension in the atmosphere. The students, and the handful of teachers and parents also present, all felt it. It was the calm before the storm.
Suddenly, there was a noise to the south side, and we looked to find tightly packed lines of about 40 tall policemen marching fast towards the protestors. Some students started retreating, but the west side of the road was blocked. We were trapped. I started walking towards the line of the policemen, thinking that if I, as a teacher, negotiated with them and soothed them, maybe they would let the students retreat peacefully back into the campus. Another colleague from NSU, Saiful sir, had the same idea and was already trying to talk to an officer at the front of the line. Suddenly, the police officer grabbed Safiul sir’s collar and slapped him hard. At the same time, an order was issued, and I saw the line of police officers at the front load and ready their guns. My eyes traveled across the line of policemen, and I realized they were not human faces. They were venomous faces of monsters. I did not dare to go and save Saiful sir. I knew we were all about to die. I started running.
The blast of sound grenades pierced our eardrums. Tearshells fogged the street, and bullets were flying through the air. I looked back to see that the police officers were beating the students with such force that their batons were breaking into half. Only a small pocket gate was open into NSU campus, and students not agile enough to climb over the walls were going through this small passage. This created a bottleneck and gave police officers the chance to beat and injure more students. I pushed through the throng of students getting in and missed a police baton by inches. Once inside the campus gate, I started running the length of the driveway to get inside the building. All that time, I was horribly aware of my unprotected back and what one single bullet could do to me in a second.
It was mayhem inside the campus building. I saw students bleeding from their eyes and ears and an NSU security officer whose chest was perforated with rubber bullets. We kept looking towards the entrances to see if the police were coming inside the campus. We began moving the
injured to the medical center on the 4th floor, and I saw Nafsin there. She was shaking and howling as I hugged her, “Miss, there is no internet. They are going to come in, and they will destroy our phones, and they are going to commit genocide inside NSU campus. No one will ever know.” I tried to console her and tried to believe that that was unlikely. But now, knowing what happened to Hefazat-e-Islam in 2013, I know that Nafsin understood the modus operandi of the fascist government better than I did.
The following 30-45 minutes were a blur. I was shell-shocked and of no use to the students. I wandered the campus like a ghost, watching as the students took charge and started providing rudimentary first-aid to their comrades, watching the students use fire-extinguishers to fog up the windows, watching the students paint their faces white with toothpaste to reduce the burn from teargas. I watched as students carried those who were grievously injured to ambulances. Watched as the security in-charge instructed students to climb the stairs if the police attacked inside the campus and to keep going up, up, up. Watched as the remaining students started to regroup. Watched, unbelieving, Nafsin climb a marble countertop in the reception lobby, take the mic in her shaking hand, and begin chanting slogans again, “Police er kaalo haat, bhenge dao, guriye dao[5]”
I had only heard of the courage and determination of the freedom fighters in 1971. This was my first time experiencing it. In a few minutes, the remaining students were ready to go out into the fray, ready to face those demon police again. Nafsin was among them. I called after her. I asked her, “Will you go outside again?” Nafsin took one look at me and knew that I was not capable of going out with them this time. She did not judge me or sound condescending when she said, “Yes, miss. But you please stay here. You look after the ones injured.” Even while standing at the threshold of meeting death, Nafsin had the emotional intelligence to assign me a role, to not make me feel less than. She hugged me and asked me to pray for her. A few other students, some known, some unknown, followed suit. I hugged them all and stood and watched them leave, knowing this might be the last time that I saw them. I stood and watched and broke my heart on the altar of sacrifice.
Resolution: I Find the Resolution to Keep Fighting
Although the sweet, incomparable relief of Sheikh Hasina’s resignation and her departure swept NSU campus during the early afternoon hours of August 5th, and although Nafsin and the other students who I saw fight that day remained luckily safe, the trauma of having to helplessly watch my students willingly become collateral damage in order to ensure human rights of our people has taken many weeks to heal. To this day, it is difficult for me to meet Nafsin and the others without breaking into messy sobs.
Courage is not something that can be measured or compared. Each and every individual, male, female, or non-binary, who stepped out during the protests did so with the full knowledge that they might never return home. I have been and still am in awe of each and every one of these young revolutionaries. Still, I do hold an extra special spot in my heart for the female revolutionaries. When cis-gendered men go out to protest, they mentally prepare themselves to face injury, detention, and death. It is an unbelievable sacrifice. Similarly, when women, whether cis-gendered or queer, step out to protest, they also mentally prepare themselves to face injury, detention, and death. But they also prepare for things that are much, much worse.
Horrific incidents, such as the one at R.G. Kar, remind us that women in South Asia are not safe anywhere, not on the roads, not inside public transport, and not even at their places of work. In this part of the world, all women who decide to step outside of their homes are already feminists and revolutionaries, whether they know it or not.
Amongst these women, those who stepped outside to raise their voices and lead a revolution, those who decided to discard the fear of barbed violence against their bodies and their very existence, have inspirationally transcended the limitations of patriarchy and misogyny and expanded into a power that is lethal and dazzling.
It is no surprise, then, that some of the most viral clips during the movement were those of female protestors — from the student who announced that they have come to die, and they WILL die unless their demands are met, to the female professor who played a heart-breaking tug of war with male police officers in order to save a student, to the school girl who reminded us that if the students took up arms, the state would be paralyzed, but the students choose not to take up arms because they “think twice before holding a weapon with the same hand that they hold a pen,” to the young woman who mightily tried to push back a police van on her own, demanding that either the police release her brother or run the van over her.
The faces and words of the brave young female revolutionaries were one-half of the life force of the movement. Students like Nafsin not only chanted slogans but coordinated students, teachers, and community members, initiated others into the movement, assigned roles to those too weak to join the protests, and, most importantly, strategized and led with sharp acumen and unbelievable courage. If the male students were the heart and the sinew of the movement, the female students were its nervous system and voice box. This movement, or any movement, could not and cannot succeed without the extraordinary commitment and power of female revolutionaries.
It is, therefore, with a heavy heart that I am witnessing patriarchy and misogyny already cunningly at work, trying to erase the contributions of the female students and intimidate them back to their homes with the familiar promise of sexual violence. Many Facebook posts hailing students as “True Heroes” exclusively show pictures of male students. Similarly, although Nusrat Tabassum was one of the six coordinators of the Anti-Discriminatory Student Movement who were illegally detained by DB Police and who had to go on a hunger strike in order to earn her freedom, same as others, many social media posts exclusively highlighted the five male coordinators and cropped out Tabassum’s picture. Female students working tirelessly to maintain traffic and market prices are also being cyber-bullied and slut-shamed, while men showing “patience” while “dealing” with such women are being awarded medals. The steep fall from “Queen” to “Beyadob[6]” has been bitter and shocking.
In the almost 30 years that I have lived in Bangladesh, there have been only two instances when I felt like a free and equal citizen of Bangladesh. The first time was during the nascent beginnings of the Shahbagh Movement in 2013, and the second was the Anti-Discriminatory and Anti-Government Protests of this year. As a woman, it is easy to feel we are only valued and accepted by our male comrades when the revolution is in full swing, when putting us on the frontlines helps the cause. Soon after, though, we are back to being treated as second-class citizens whose very existence is a revolting thorn in the cause of men. I wonder how many times this will happen before the women of Bangladesh realize the pattern and refuse to enter the fray altogether.
On August 5th and for a week or so after, I walked the streets of Dhaka as a free and equal citizen in spite of being a woman. There were no catcalls, disgusted looks, rapey smirks, or harassing misogynistic comments. I felt happy walking the streets of Dhaka for the first time in many years. I naively thought patriarchy was crumbling at last. But now, things are slowly rolling back to the old status quo. Only yesterday, a security guard on my street with whom I had never spoken before felt the need to comment on my clothes and my body.
I had come to expect, even accept, such behavior and worse in the last few years I have been living in Bangladesh. However, this time, it shook me. I realized that only the first layer of freedom has been achieved on August 5th. The revolution must continue. I wondered if I could continue this fight. I am, after all, a broken millennial feminist living an injured, maggoted existence. But then I thought of the likes of Nafsin, her strength and courage, and breathed fresh Gen Z feminist air into my spirit, and I felt ready to fight again.
[1] The student community has risen and our blood is boiling.
[2] Injustices will be swept away by the flood of our blood
[3] Break to smithereens the blackened hands of Sheikh Hasina, the blackened hands of Chhatra League, the blackened hands of the police
[4] Sheikh Hasina, give up your seat of power
[5] Break to smithereens the blackened hands of the police
[6] Rude/insolent
Photo credit: Sabina Binte Siddiqe
