A STUDENT-LED procession against violence and discrimination was making its way through the bazaar when it was suddenly ambushed by a violent mob. Chaos erupted as the crowd scattered in all directions. Anik Chakma, a 17-year-old higher secondary student, ran for his life, but there was nowhere to escape — they were surrounded. He tried to hide in a nearby tea stall, but the attackers dragged him out into the middle of the road. There, along with three others, he was brutally beaten to death. Witnesses say Anik cried out loud for help in his final moments. But perhaps his voice was swallowed by the blow of sticks striking flesh — a relentless rhythm that continued even after his final breath had slipped away.
This is not a scrap of the brutal crackdowns of the Hasina regime in July 2024. Anik Chakma was an Adibasi student, and his killing occurred on September 20, 2024, in Rangamati Sadar during what was meant to be a historic turning point, marking the end of 16 years of fascist rule and the beginning of a new vision for an inclusive, anti-discriminatory Bangladesh. In post-July Bangladesh, we witness that while the cry of martyr Abu Sayeed’s mother echoed the sorrow of millions just months ago, Anik’s mother’s grief lingers in silence, unheard by most of the nation. Amid the euphoria of ‘victory’, we awaken to a sobering truth that even in a ‘Hasina-free’ dawn, freedom does not fall evenly with the light. Many of us continue to live a ‘bare life’ — a life stripped of the very right to have rights.
On March 26, ‘Bangladesh 2.0’ is observing its first Independence Day. And yet, freedom still feels far away. History repeats itself — only in new ways. With tear-blurred eyes and hearts heavy with insult, the families of the July martyrs still wait for Subichar—true justice—as they watch AL loyalists justify the killing of their kolijar tukra, the very pieces of their soul. Standing amidst the charred ruins of their sacred shrines, where smoke rises like unanswered prayers, the believers’ voices, still trembling — ‘Allah will ensure justice for this.’ Garment workers continue to fall, shot down for the courage to demand, while rapists and predators are crowned with garlands. Employers steal workers’ wages — earned through sweat and toil — abandoning them to die in desperation, while students at the nation’s most prestigious educational institution beat a ‘mentally unstable man’ to death, suspecting him of theft. In the scorching midday heat, the poor keep rushing toward the TCB truck, desperate to save a few takas on a kilo of rice and potatoes — while banks continue to reschedule defaulted loans without hesitation. Textbooks remain shredded on the battlefield of filthy politics, and the word Adivasi still lingers, waiting for a name that offers recognition — and a place to belong.
The anti-discriminatory spirit that once ignited the July uprising now seems to be losing its grip, its urgency fading from the hearts it once stirred. The promise of inclusivity lies in ruins — ripped apart by the brazen divide of ‘us’ versus ‘them’, a rupture that replaces unity with suspicion, belonging with exclusion, and shared struggle with dirty politics.
How do we bring hope into this present when everything we have been doing seems to fail? Exhausted from fighting and dreaming of a just Bangladesh, we find ourselves asking: How do we battle our hopelessness? And yet, perhaps hope is the last thing we need now. Because, as Hannah Arendt once warned, in the moments of calamity hope is not our ally — rather, it erodes our humanity.
Far from being a guiding light in dark times, hope often casts a comforting shadow — one that tempts us to look away from the harsh realities before us. It is not despair but hope that often dulls the edge of courage, urging stillness when the moment demands bold, unflinching action. Hope has never been stronger than us, but perhaps it has never caused more harm than in our deepest moments of anguish.
During the Awami League regime, hope and fear built the architecture of our inaction. Some of us clung to the hope that Sudin — the just day — would come. Others foolishly hoped that the tyranny of the Hasina regime would never touch them. Many, with good reason, feared that resistance would bring them harm, while the others were gripped by a false sense of impending doom: ‘Things would be far worse without Hasina in power.’ Manipulated by a fascist regime, we convinced ourselves to bind our fate to AL as our only hope — our one and only choice. This hope chained us to AL’s power structure, turning us into its slaves. Unable to let go of hope, we allowed ourselves to wither under Hasina’s regime.
Only when we gave up hope and let go of fear did we realise that resistance was the only moral and political way out. The new history of Bangladesh began the moment 16-year-old Anas wrote a letter to his mother before joining the July Uprising: ‘One day we all have to die. So rather than sitting at home in fear, it’s better to die on the battlefield.’ The AL regime began to crack when a middle-aged woman stood up and declared, ‘I have no hope, nothing to gain. And yet, I am here — so the witch, the Rakkhosi, can see me, can hear my voice.’ Hasina’s fall became inevitable when a passerby, knowing he might be gunned down, seized the lifeless body of a stranger from the hands of the police, saying, ‘In that moment, it was my only duty.’ Like them, millions rose — not out of hope that Hasina would flee the throne, but because they knew in their bones this was the only thing they could do. Therefore, the miracle that ‘saved’ Bangladesh from the fascist regime wasn’t hope — it was the stubborn will of a million people to act against the tyranny.
But fascism never vanishes without leaving a trace — it lingers, takes on new faces, and quietly etches itself into the very fabric of everyday life. Therefore, freedom becomes a constant struggle. And we are always suspended between the ‘no longer’ and the ‘not yet’ — between what has been and what is still to come. To navigate this in-between space of time and being, we must never stop resisting nor surrender to the hope that one day ‘freedom’ will work its magic. ​Because the true magic lives within us. Hope is only worth holding when it reminds us that each of us has the power to create, to act, and to spark a chain of events whose end no one can predict, but whose beginning is ours to choose.
But this beginning should not be driven by revenge, nor should it mirror the very violence it seeks to challenge. The promise of action does not lie in burning a house on Road 32, nor in drawing up long lists of so-called ‘enemies’. Resistance has never been about humiliating, trolling, or attacking former comrades who have taken a different path, nor about pursuing our own interests at the expense of others’ rights, even those of a brutal dictator.
The spirit of resistance resides in the strength that allows us to step away from the centre — willingly dethroning ourselves to uphold and protect the rights of the Other. Because the Other is not a threat to be defended against, nor someone who can be reduced to an imagined nation. The Other is the one through whom, in carrying out our ethical responsibility, we come to constitute who we are. It is essential that our responsibilities to one another are grounded in a bond shaped by what philosopher Emmanuel Levinas calls an ‘unrelating relation’ — one that transcends all totalising categories, mutual resemblance, common causes, and shared identities. Only then, despite all differences, would a settler Bengali in the CHT raise the question, ‘Where is Kalpana Chakma?’; a Muazzin would stand guard to protect his Hindu neighbour’s home from a rampaging mob; and a ‘secular’ voice would demand justice for the extrajudicial killing of the members of Hefazat-e-Islam.
Change, therefore, must begin with us. We have a choice to make. We can be indolent optimists, passively clinging to the hope that ‘someone else will bring us freedom.’ We can be opportunistic cynics, smugly saying, ‘Told you, nothing will change,’ as we retreat into the comforts of a so-called ‘normal’ life where nothing is truly normal. Or, we can rise as our own emancipators, breaking every chain that binds us, knowing that ‘freedom is a verb’ — never ’finished, never complete — but an ongoing action, a relentless drive.
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Aanmona Priyadarshini is a writer and a visiting lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at Southern Methodist University, TX, USA.
