AS THE euphoria surrounding Sheikh Hasina’s ouster to India slowly died down, we have slowly begun to excavate the wreckages of her authoritarian rule in our surroundings as well as our collective memories. If we look critically, the immediate past — the period immediately preceding her departure — appeared to be unique in the country’s history. From mid-July to mid-August, the country experienced something that cannot be explained by a simple term like political violence.
In those tempestuous times, we saw protesters being shot down by snipers sitting on top of tall buildings and sharpshooters from helicopters. We saw mass graves. We saw piles of corpses being set on fire. We saw people being hounded down in construction sites and underpasses and shot from point blank range. We saw people being shot and bodies being dragged out of their homes. We saw helmeted militiamen of the Chhatra League and Juba League, the student and youth wings of the Awami League, shooting indiscriminately at protesters and attacking them with machetes. We saw internet and media blackouts. In many ways, it was a state’s full-on assault against its own people.
The disturbing images that appeared in our social media feeds and, in rare cases, mainstream media were out of the ordinary even by Sheikh Hasina’s authoritarian standards. From the mutilated, disfigured bodies of fallen military officers in Pilkhana, crushed human remains under Rana Plaza, bloated and macerated bodies on the Shitalakhya to seemingly lifeless bodies lying down in pools of blood at Shapla Chattar, we already had our own initiation and education in processing the macabre imagery. Still, nothing prepared us for what we saw and experienced in the long July.
The bloody violence took us back to our own past and forced us to confront disturbing scenes that we never expected to see again. Although the violence of 2024 was reminiscent of our sufferings in 1947 and 1971 to some degree, unlike the events of the past, it was a unique experience too. The violence was exclusively perpetrated by our own people. Unlike 1947 and 1971, we can’t blame people of different religions or ethnicities and go on vilifying our religious and ethnic minorities for crimes that most of them didn’t even participate in. As the descendants of the Hindus and the Biharis will attest, they have become our prisoners of history ever since then and probably will have to carry the burden of guilt as long as they live.
At this point in our history, we cannot single out a particular community and blame them for what happened to us. We also cannot wish away the killers and the thugs, who are essentially part of our own community, neighbourhoods, workplaces, and public spaces. Now we have to establish peace and reconcile with them while prosecuting those who have been directly involved in killing and seriously injuring people.
For us, it is no longer an investigation of police brutality and application of excessive force but a twofold task of far more important nature. We have to investigate, prosecute, and punish the massive human rights abuses inflicted by Sheikh Hasina’s law enforcement agencies and her armed militiamen, and, equally importantly, we have to build a community and forge a nation from the remnants of her rule.
Besides, during the regime’s reign of terror, it devised its own system to suppress dissent and eliminate political opponents. The strategy involved judicial and extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances, which had its own specialised infrastructure in the much documented Aynaghor. Merely punishing those who are responsible isn’t enough. We need to put appropriate checks and balances in place so that these crimes do not happen once again.
Our experience from the long July also differs significantly from the years past, as our victory was solely earned by our own people. The creation of Pakistan necessitated an alliance with other Muslims in the subcontinent, while in 1971, we sought help from neighbouring India. In 2024, no one from outside was looking out for interests as students, workers, and common people fought Sheikh Hasina’s men on the streets.
With no one to blame for our predicaments but our own and no one to share the credits of our success with, it’s time for a new nation to emerge from the ashes of its own ancien régime. Its citizens should take duties and responsibilities of nation-building upon themselves while ensuring rights and liberties.Ìý
In the dying days of fascism and the turbulent period that followed, we have lost hundreds of lives. Many of the wounded have lost their limbs and will never go back to their old lives. The mental scars will take years or decades to heal. Sheikh Hasina, her family members, and her cronies have hollowed out the economy and put the country in billions of dollars in debt. They have outsourced our foreign policy and sacrificed our national interest for their own political and financial gains. Their mismanagement of state affairs and efforts to capture it badly damaged and compromised our internal and external security. The bloated, corrupted, largely ineffective state machinery resembles more like a white elephant than public institutions whose efficiency and expertise can be used to drive reforms. Bangladesh of today is more fragile and susceptible to external shocks than ever before.
Away from politics, our sociocultural lives have been affected by the tension surrounding our identity. The corrosive culture wars that came along only intensified over the years and made us our own worst enemies. We are extremely fearful of the people who appear to have different ideologies and whom we think threaten our way of life. The demons that still haunt us are almost forcing people to take retributive actions and promote vigilantism.
However, among all the chaos and disorder, there is room for optimism. As the law enforcement officials deserted their stations and the army personnel struggled to deal with the ensuing bedlam around the country, Bangladeshis were asked to fend for themselves. We came through the ordeal with our heads held high.
Some of us in combat fatigue foiled suspected military coup attempts in the barracks. Students and the general public warded off a judicial coup attempt at the High Court. People banded and bonded together to form neighbourhood watches to protect minority communities and their places of worship and protect themselves from thugs and looters. Younger generations volunteered to control traffic.
There are hundreds of scenes from the period following Hasina’s flight that showed Bangladeshi people have rediscovered something that was lost as we collectively dealt with modernity, urbanisation, fractious politics, and the identity crisis. Nowadays, we talk more about building the state, the economy and society. In those darkest moments, it was community that pulled us through.
The personal connection that we lost over many decades was already starting to rebuild when Sheikh Hasina’s government tried to go from door-to-door to quell the uprising. In a few cases, people of apartment buildings or neighbourhoods came to the rescue of the protesters who were hiding or about to be detained. The period following Sheikh Hasina’s departure merely solidified people’s resolve, and they organised themselves to protect not only themselves but the people who live around them and help military personnel.
Most of us wondered what kept people going through that critical time when even a countercoup might have thrown us into a prolonged period of instability. It’s hard to pinpoint a specific reason, but regaining ownership of the country might have been one. Suddenly, people began to realise that the country doesn’t belong to a dictator, her family, the oligarchs, and their coalition partners. The moments of togetherness that we saw were not cursory shows of solidarity.Ìý
Just because our former rulers didn’t do their job and merely used their power and privilege to extract maximum benefit from people they were sworn to protect, we can’t afford to leave the county to them or future successors with similar motives. For the powerful, it was an opportunity to climb up the ladder and leave everything behind when the time comes. For the ordinary people, it’s still their home, and no matter where they end up in life, they will always belong here.
Along with their sense of ownership and belongingness, people are going through a period of heightened political awareness. From roadside tea stalls, university campuses, cafes to living rooms of people’s homes, politics have become a constant theme of conversations.
The country’s artists and musicians have already drawn inspiration from the long July. Rap and Hip Hop have become the younger generations’ genre of choice for protest. Street art and graffiti have become the main mode of artistic expression. Almost every noticeable landmark now has artwork, graffiti, or calligraphy commemorating the movement. Among old classics, DL Roy’s ‘Dhono Dhanyo Pushpe Bhora’ had such a resurgence that it has become the people’s anthem.
The country’s intellectuals have broken the shackles put on them by the Digital Security Act. The intellectual stupor has gone away. So far, intellectuals and academics like Farhad Mazhar, Ali Riaz, and Rifat Hasan have become vocal about rewriting the constitution. Zia Haider Rahman, the renowned novelist, has come up with ideas to increase public engagement in the constitutional process. From social media to op-ed pages, people are coming up with ideas to change the old ways of governance.
In almost every way, the post-fascist era has become a potentially epoch-making time for Bangladesh. It is rare to see a moment in history where almost all the political, social, cultural, and intellectual forces are converging on something new. The people have come through a struggle where they have broken out of the captivity by themselves. Their experience of the Hasina regime told them they needed to take a clear break from the past and build the country anew. Let us not waste this precious moment with our pessimism, timidity, lack of political imagination, and apprehension about changes.  
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Nayel Rahman is a political analyst.
