The relief that ensued from the authoritarian government’s collapse in Bangladesh proved fleeting as a pall of uncertainty clouds the horizon.
The Reign of the Chhatra League
My first encounter with the Chhatra League (the student wing of the Awami League) was during my entrance exams at university, when one such leader, enraged that my mother and I were getting on a rickshaw that he had “hailed” at first from a distance, forced us both to get down from the vehicle so he could get on it. Such was my initial taste of ruling party goons, for whom even a slight respect for an elderly woman cannot put to pause their formula for total dominance.
My experience is merely an anecdote, but I am confident that many share that fear, that familiarity with cruelty. Many have had to suffer it on a daily basis in and around campus. The Awami League, in their fifteen years of power, effectively used their goons to come to their rescue whenever things went way south. And the Chhatra League, true to their reputation, had squashed the momentum of major protests in the past years, from the initial shift of the Quota movement to the Road Safety Protests in 2018, helping the party buy time, shift the narrative, and continue the machinery after a hiccup or two. This time around, however, the Chhatra League had finally failed.
When I say failed, I do not mean to say they were unable to beat up innocent protestors or operate on their usual violent tendencies, but that the student protesters, depressingly perhaps through their sheer size, had been able to stave off the brutality of “helmet-wearing” men brandishing weapons and continued on.
When international observers and seemingly “puzzled”, Op-ed writers in Bangladesh talked about their shock and surprise as to why this escalation occurred, why a curfew had been imposed, why a shoot-on-sight order was issued against the people, and why there was a complete shutdown of internet in the entirety of the country for over five days, they failed to realize it was because the protesters, indeed the general public, had had enough of Chhatra League’s spell of terror and decided enough was enough. This is what made Sheikh Hasina’s downfall inevitable.
When international observers and seemingly “puzzled”, Op-ed writers in Bangladesh talked about their shock and surprise as to why this escalation occurred, why a curfew had been imposed, why a shoot-on-sight order was issued against the people, and why there was a complete shutdown of internet in the entirety of the country for over five days, they failed to realize it was because the protesters, indeed the general public, had had enough of Chhatra League’s spell of terror and decided enough was enough. This is what made Sheikh Hasina’s downfall inevitable.
It is at this very moment that the tide really turned. The ruling party’s goons were no longer in a position to hijack a movement, and this had struck fear in the hearts of the powers that be. Their stranglehold on the general public had loosened free. When before, even opposition leaders treaded carefully lest they overstep any holy ground, now the general public openly mocked, insulted, and demanded the fall of the Prime Minister herself. Discussions surrounding “Bangabandhu’s legacy” turned into “Mujib’s legacy” — a decade and a half’s worth of political cult branding was disintegrating within seconds.
A Familiar Playbook Gone Awry and the Queen’s Panic
One noticed how this panic flourished in a peculiar fashion. Ready-made finger-pointing at the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and its allies, such as Jaamat-e-Islami, were put in overdrive. It is them, Hasina and their ilk tirelessly campaigned, who had infiltrated the movement and created chaos. The “enemies” had burned down the internet lines, which was why they had to turn it off so that “misinformation” could not spread. The panic was such that logic had to disappear.
he flavour of a fifteen-year-old power is so refined that words become gospel, words must be uttered in lip service, even by respected journalists. Here was Zafar Sobhan, the editor-in-chief of the Awami League-affiliated Gemcon Group’s Dhaka Tribune, having to add these lines in an otherwise anodyne article on the state of the country while the Sheikh Hasina regime still looked invincible on the outside: “The government tells us that the quota reform movement has been infiltrated by political trouble-makers and armed thugs looking for confrontation, and a quick review of many of the crowds that have taken control of key points in the city seems to bear this out, but that does not obscure the reality of how we got here in the first place.”
A quick review by whom? By Mr. Sobhan? Perhaps such placements are what the author truly believes and not appeasements that buttress a critical outlook on the government. But if you, the reader, did a “quick review” of the editorial pages of Bangladeshi newspapers, you would surely see similar sad dances of this sort: needed criticism often loaded with sentences that undermine the worth of those very writers’ words.
On the 24th of July, the Editors’ Guild sat with the Prime Minister at her office at a “views exchange” program, where the media heads intoned in unison that “they are with Sheikh Hasina and they can do whatever is required to accomplish her activities.” Is this how journalists are supposed to behave? What was this, if not a frenetic display of kissing the ring to show rabid loyalty?
When the Queen panicked, so did her underlings. A state minister suggested that “miscreants wearing police uniforms and other security forces attacked the students protesting for quota reform to tarnish the image of law enforcement agencies.” It would be funny if there weren’t countless disappearances, deaths, and destruction heavy on the minds of everyone in the country.
One understood clearly the gravity of the Awami League’s frustrations when they saw the constant condemnations of supposed “conspiracies”. The Prime Minister visited the wreckage of the Metro Rail before she realized she must’ve visited the gravely injured at the hospital — the public, as they should, piled on her for shedding tears over some broken machinery when so many youths of the country lay writhing in pain. Why did it look, all of a sudden, that she had lost the script?
The Power of Student Politics
It was only a matter of time after the Chhatra League’s failure that the armed forces would withdraw support as things were in no shape or form looking good for Sheikh Hasina. The law enforcement agencies were only going to do her bidding for so long until they, too, would refuse. It is typical of Bangladesh’s rich history of student politics, where once the students’ support is gone, so is the throne of the politician.
It is often put forward that the grift of so-called public intellectuals and “entrepreneurs” is the solid block of support that the ruling party cannot do without, but no matter how much they stump for the governments’ gross excesses through a roleplay of sentiment, they are ultimately useless. It is the Chhatra League that makes or breaks the Awami League. The students are the difference makers. Sheikh Hasina’s downfall began the moment the protesting students and the general public learned to fight back against her army of goons. They learned to fight through a curfew, as students had valiantly done in the past, weathering internet blackouts and armed assaults. The fearlessness of the students brought about Sheikh Hasina’s dishonourable exit from power.
A Fragile Future: Uncertainty After Hasina’s Fall
Presently, the situation is ripe for the BNP to take over. Within three days of Sheikh Hasina’s downfall, with little to no sight of law enforcement on the streets as mostly students of varied ages took over traffic duties, the BNP held a rally, almost drooling for an immediate election. It is as if they expect a coronation to be carried onto the seats of power. Widespread looting, attacks on minorities, and a general feeling of disarray have, at the time of writing this, taken hold, and this insensitive timing to voice one’s political return reeks of being tone-deaf. It is completely at odds with what the student protestors had sacrificed so much for.
The failure of Awami League’s goons of “students” had destroyed Awami League’s complacency. With them gone, there had been a momentary relief. But now, as we face an uncertain new order, one wonders whether it is we who can no longer be at ease.
