How students are driving the change in Bangladesh

It was 5 August when the ‘monsoon revolution’ they led forced Bangladesh’s autocratic former prime minister Sheikh Hasina to step down and flee the country. More than a week later, the students are still out on the streets, cleaning up, managing traffic, guarding Hindu temples and households from attacks, helping run police stations abandoned by policemen who went into hiding. They have retrieved abandoned arms and ammunition, grenades and walkie-talkies from police stations that were set on fire. They have made appeals to people to return looted valuables to the authorities. They turned in firearms snatched from parliament security staff. They have painted walls afresh, replacing graffiti with poems and art. More than anything else, they are in the thick of discussions about the kind of country they want to rebuild and the kind of reforms it will take to get there. The zeitgeist of this hour seems to be: ‘this is our country, and we will not allow it to descend into chaos again’.

When students began directing traffic in Dhaka on 6 August (in the absence of traffic police) they revived memories of the ‘Road Safety Movement’ of 2018. They ensured that separate lanes for different types of vehicles were identified, stopped bikers who were not wearing helmets, intercepted rickshaws for sneaking in from the wrong direction and urged pedestrians to use footbridges. The penalty for not putting on seat belts was to stand in the sun for half an hour. At some intersections, teenagers stopped fancy cars and searched them for ‘black money’.

The euphoria of the heady developments of 5 August lingers. Memories of that momentous day when an estimated half-a-million people responded to the students’ call to defy curfew and prohibitory orders. Parents with children hoisted on their shoulders, workers and rickshaw-pullers, daily wage labourers and office-goers joined the youth, waving the national flag and marching towards the prime minister’s residence. The sight of that sea of people unnerved the police. The army refused to intervene and advised the prime minister to flee.

The previous day (4 August) more two hundred protesters, many of them students, had been gunned down in Dhaka alone. Students who grew up reading in textbooks that ‘freedom is easier to secure than sustain’ are now experiencing it first-hand. There are huge expectations and student leaders are candid in saying that they are not prepared. However, having grown up under a largely autocratic regime and having tasted freedom from fear, Gen Z is loath to give up. There is a renewed sense of purpose as they vow to protect freedom and change the country for the better. Sensing the mood, political parties like the BNP and the Jamaat have been doing the rounds of Hindu temples, reassuring the minority community that they would be safe. Not satisfied, students are pushing for speedy identification of culprits who attacked Hindus and bringing them swiftly to justice.

There is general consensus that most victims from minority communities were targeted by political rivals for their association with the ruling Awami League and its student front, Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL). An Awami League MP’s house was set on fire and some temples were vandalised. The prevailing opinion is that had it not been for the students, things could have been worse. On the night of 5 August, even as they were celebrating, they formed groups to guard the more prominent temples. A group of 25 students and Imams guarded the Dhakeshwari temple through the night. In Mirpur, they went from door to door, sharing contact numbers and offering assistance. The Ramna Kali temple and the ISKCON temple at Swamibag were also protected by student patrols that night. Similar mobilisation was reported from Comilla and Chattogram.

Barely a month ago, on the night of 16 July, Asif Mahmud and Nahid Islam were picked up by the police. The two students became the face of the revolution as news about the ‘missing’ duo spread through Telegram chat groups and demands to reveal their whereabouts grew. Mahmud and Islam are now advisors with ministerial rank in the interim government. It is the students who wanted political parties kept out. They insisted that Prof. Muhammad Yunus, the persecuted Nobel Laureate, be asked to head the interim government as ‘chief advisor’. They proposed the names of most of the advisors. They demanded that the parliament—constituted in the wake of a questionable election in January that was boycotted by the opposition—be dissolved. They asked the chief justice of the high court to resign. Many of the political appointees including the governor of the central bank and vice-chancellors have quit. There are unconfirmed reports that student advisors will be placed in every ministry.

The long-hibernating political parties are salivating at the prospect of grabbing power. They want an early election but students seem to have different ideas. Some would prefer the interim arrangement to continue till structural reforms are put in place. There are talks of a new political party being formed with students and civil society members. Under pressure from students, political parties like the BNP and Jamaat have pledged their support for a ‘secular’ Bangladesh. Jamaat leaders have been busy visiting Hindu temples and Christian churches to express solidarity. The BNP has expelled members suspected of involvement in attacks on Hindus. Students are driving the change.

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For Bangladesh, July seems to be the cruellest month. On 29 July 2018, a speeding bus driven by an unlicensed driver killed two schoolchildren. Within hours, students spilled out into the streets of Dhaka demanding safer roads and stricter enforcement of traffic rules. I was in college then and became part of the ‘Road Safety Movement’. Already the movement to reduce quotas in government jobs from 56 per cent to 10 per cent was on. The government responded by unleashing the BCL on us protesters. I remember how they used hockey sticks, sickles and axes to ‘handle’ the situation. Mainstream media and TV behaved like ostriches and reported none of it. We took to social media but soon enough the internet was shut down. The prime minister finally defused the situation by announcing that all quotas would be abolished.

Six years later, the quota agitation took the form of an ‘anti-discrimination’ movement with students protesting the high court’s decision in June to revoke the abolition of quotas. The turning point was the killing of Abu Sayed on 16 July 2024. A student of English at Begum Rokeya University in Rangpur, 400 km from Dhaka, Sayed stood alone and unarmed in front of a phalanx of armed policemen. Arms outstretched, he dared the police to shoot. His face betrayed no fear or emotion. It was a dramatic sight and many onlookers recorded it on their phones. Soon a shot rang out and Sayed fell. The video went viral and the rest is history.

(With inputs from A.J. Prabal)