Bangladesh and the Left

The great activist, academic, and Purdue University historian (and a co-founder of the Marxist publication, Spectre) Tithi Bhattacharya, recently wrote about Bangladesh for Time Magazine. She stated that, “it is Time, so I didn’t get to say ‘working class revolution, now’ as Cleveland [her deceased cat, RIP] undoubtedly would have said. But I do try to connect some of those past strains to the present. Thank [you] to Dr. Katie Brownell for asking me.” Bhattacharya did make the connections marvelously, but this exemplified a pattern emerging that the social movement was more appropriate for Time. She asserted that, “In 2023, garment factory workers, most of whom are women, started a campaign to raise their poverty-level wages. The government retaliated against them, with the tacit support of the international clothing brands, with arrests, terminations, and killings. According to the international labor rights group Worker Rights Consortium, more than 40 popular brands supported the baseless criminal charges local suppliers brought against these workers.” It was a solid piece and a great sign that this perspective from an author of this caliber could break through to the mainstream press. To date, Time’s coverage of the protests surpasses that of The Nation.

Why is the Bangladesh July Revolution a challenge to cover from a leftist perspective? One of the main and influential news magazines of the social democratic American left, Jacobin, (an outstanding publication) to my knowledge barely featured three pieces since July. Moreover, The Nation, a paragon of peak establishment liberal respectability cranked out zero pieces on the social movement since the quota reform movement was initiated.

A notable Bangladeshi political scientist and scholar emphasized that the quota reform movement and uprising was not rooted in leftist opposition to the government. In fact, the movement, he indicated, could not be explained within the binary of left and right. This academic was very kind to me and showed great interest agreeing to a question and answer about the country’s recent social, political, and economic turbulence during the July Revolution. At the last minute, he retracted without informing me. It was odd that someone would agree to the conversation and then only tell me the opportunity would have to pass after a series of emails. Disappointedly, I had to follow up to get the rejection — journalists don’t usually accept the fadeaway. Assuredly, my tone and approach were kind and professional and my questions were neither amateurish nor trivial. I wanted to know about the interplay or interactions between Muslims and Hindus during the period of resistance and how this helped to shape the movement.

Another cordial response came from a notable thinker of Bangladesh from perhaps the leading civil society institution that deals with the study of Economics. He was not responding to requests for interviews but indicated that he may revisit his position of silence sometime later. He was forthright, but inaccessible. My third interaction was with a gifted and incredibly interesting Anthropologist based in the United States. For this discussion, I was interested in the main historical factors that are relevant in this most recent example of mass resistance and student protest. I was interested in an anthropological perspective and how activists and institutions coalesced around the human rights issues at stake when it came to the political repression demonstrated by the Bangladeshi government. This academic stated that she was happy to talk with me and respond to my questions, but after a follow up a few days later stated that she needed to fly across the country in an emergency. I expressed concern and wished this person well and never heard back again.

I asked myself, how bad am I at this? I mean, I am an unpaid (for the most part) freelancer that initiates, records, transcribes, edits, and produces my own work from scratch. I’m not part of a robust outlet or a professional to the level of some of the many great experienced journalists, but I’ve successfully covered many insightful topics and crucial matters around the world for several publications. I’m no rookie and I was sincere and earnest to get the Bangladesh story correct. For one publication, I had a story printed and then received an email requesting it removed until further commentary and qualification could be added.

The frustrating part was that while the story was ongoing and fast moving with many developments and new angles, it also had a shelf life after the street demonstrations deescalated. I wanted to know what experts saw happening on the horizon in Bangladesh in terms of its own electoral politics, interdependence, and positioning within global governance. Crickets.

A fourth expert on the matter was another fine person and excellent academic and researcher on the political economy of Bangladesh. He represented an important NGO and was a leader in his field for a noted nonprofit research group. Hee agreed to a Q/A but on the condition that his contributions were anonymous, and I happily accepted the conditions. We spoke on Zoom for over an hour and I developed a transcript of our conversation in the form of a document that contained well over 5,000 words. After seeking edits and asking for a review of the piece he responded after three weeks, without many corrections or advice on where to place it, at a late stage of the game. After great time and energy, this was discouraging and disheartening. Not published.

To me, there was plenty being written about Bangladesh but in the progressive news landscape it was very underrepresented. More people, in my estimation, needed the background for the political tensions in Bangladesh. There was also a need to link the economic problems in Bangladesh to the human rights abuses taking place. I found it uniquely odd that I happened to find three of four individuals very interested in responding to my questions while using the fluidity of the fast-changing situation to more or less bail out of the respective projects.

I’ll be generous here and spare the reader the nature and language of these email exchanges. I was wondering if I wasn’t a serious or competent enough journalist or interlocutor. Admittedly, there are people in the field with much greater acumen than mine, but something was at play. Afterall, another person that agreed to be interviewed was a not as established young professional and student from Bangladesh located in New York City. He also declined to finalize our conversation, a person with seemingly little to lose from the talk and dialogue.

What follows summarizes the culmination of social, political, and economic challenges that have caused (the 6 causes of recent) turmoil in Bangladesh. Ultimately, I managed to locate and retrieve some insights and commentary gathered from Bangladeshi scholars, researchers, journalists, and activists. They helped to provide an outline of several important issues currently impacting Bangladeshi society.

They explained the causes for the movement, such as extreme political tensions concerning the legitimacy of elections and movements; including the BNP or the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and its opposition to the Awami League. Further – protests, resistance, direct action, and demonstrations, have been met with harsh forms of political repression.

Additionally, other economic issues as well as higher costs of living, have harmed everyday people in Bangladesh along with the impacts of increased prices, economic inequalities and the optics provided by corrupt and autocratic politicians – all have intensified mistrust and widespread unhappiness and precarity. Further contributing to the incredible levels of social unrest are the infringements on the freedom of speech, severe police violence, and restrictions on education and the media. As a result, students have organized but have consistently encountered harsh levels of government response.

July Revolution Cause #1: Default Loans, Economic Woes, Enforced Disappearances

 Academics, researchers, lawyers, and journalists have been difficult to reach in Bangladesh; some have had to appear in front of OHCHR teams regarding the crisis to investigate the killings and disappearances of students. In terms of political economy, Bangladesh was a success story from 2008 to 2020 in terms of growth per capita income but when you went into the details of this growth, you could see big, gaping holes. Most of the money was being siphoned off from national banks by businessmen. They took it as forms of loans, and they became defaulters: The Daily Star reported that, default loans in the banking sector of Bangladesh hit an all-time high of Tk 182,295 crore, but no reform programme to reduce it has been announced in the budget for the upcoming fiscal year.”

Defaulting was one of the ways in which the growth was foiled and there were many complaints in the civil society, even by banks like the IMF. The Bangladeshi government should have been taking care of loan defaulting. It wasn’t.

Very recently, just before the movement started, there was a phase where the media suddenly became very involved. Coverage resulted after most of the money laundering entered North America. Some people, over time, have also incidentally settled down and are doing well for themselves in Canada, becoming police officers. In any event, Bangladesh was given a ban and sanction on money laundering in Canada. Crucially, more visas would be given for administration, police, and army personnel to go to America and Canada. This policy was in the backdrop of the complaints or accusations after the enforced disappearances of businessmen, army personnel, or anyone who knew more than they should, according to the government. Many such disappearance cases spanned 2009-2017. Some say they were funded by the United States.

Lately, this has been a strategy of the Bangladesh government to silence protests or suppress information from coming out. Disappearances became a standard security measure and part of the political agenda: The United Nations reports that the Working Group was informed that enforced disappearances were often occurring in the framework of the government’s anti-terrorism policy, and that it was suspected to be used as a political tool by the government to silence criticism and dissent.

July Revolution Cause #2: Problems with the Quota System

Within Bangladesh, the quota system was supposed to allocate and maintain a specific percentage of jobs in different agencies and categories, especially for young people that relied on the public sector. Instead, this system culminated into arbitrary and capricious practices that left the students out of the economy. This fueled student anger and protest, who called for a merit-based process. The official and harsh government reaction to these demonstrations formed the basis of the 2024 quota movement.

After some successful court resolutions regarding quotas, life after the movement went back to somewhat normal. Some students, parents, and private citizens, however, did not go on with their lives or studies because their fellow country persons were either dead or missing. This prompted a subsequent cry for justice. It was fought both in person and equally on an electronic basis in the form of social media. In other words, while quota matters were relatively resolved in court, the #stepdownhasina movement came about and the demand for justice that sprang from the quota problem became even stronger.

July Revolution Cause #3: Election Ballot Box Hijinks

The other agenda that brought on resistance was the gradual absence of free and fair elections and political freedom, something ongoing for two consecutive elections. One was totally rigged, and people stuffed ballot boxes throughout the night. Bangladesh used to get about 80 percent-plus turnout during election day because elections were like festivals – but no longer. Everyone used to wear their best new dress to vote, but for this latest election, few turned out – less than 50 percent, a very discouraging number fueled by a warranted resentment.

Most recently, this was also an election where the new generation, Generation Z, didn’t get to vote. They oversaw the front line of the movement, you could say, and this generation was supposed to be voting for the first time, and they didn’t get to vote. There is a lot of anger regarding this, and the generation cited government corruption as the root cause for a lack of political participation and missed opportunities associated with electoral politics.

July Revolution Cause #4: Curtailing Freedom of Speech

At the same time, it wasn’t just quota and election issues that started 2024’s July Revolution.  There was also a clamp down on the freedom of speech everywhere – draconian laws such as the Cybersecurity Act of 2023 was intensified. People were taken to prison just for enjoying a cartoon of the Prime Minister in an e-mail or on Facebook as per the Digital Act of 2018.  Currently, this is quite extreme and the clamp downs on the freedom of speech have resulted in the cancelation of expression venues such as talk shows in the past. Previously, when a lot of talk shows were around, they were often used by the government as evidence for toleration of speech when in fact they were coerced and steered to present the government in a favorable light. If they challenged the government, hosts would get a telephone call that their job was gone.

July Revolution Cause #5: Price Hikes and Debt Problems Provided the Breaking Point

A couple of years back, in the last few months before the price hikes of 2022, which was world over, Bangladesh fell into a really large financial hole and had serious debt problems.  At the same time, a lot of development was happening — infrastructure development, like the Metro rail, and the tunnel underneath the Brahmaputra River.  These kinds of infrastructure development projects were the flagships of the government, but the debt that incurred impacted the government’s ability to repay its loans. Suddenly, the foreign reserve in the Bangladesh Bank was low and as a result, austerity policies were introduced that hurt the urban middle class, as well as the middle class in general.

All of this created a breaking point as students were already arguing for more public services (the largest employer of students) – and job cuts created even more clashes and protests. Privatization only provided jobs for a particular class of people, and since students rely mostly on public service jobs – the losses invited chaos. Fifty years ago, Bangladesh had Freedom Fighters, which led in the independence movement of Bangladesh. Their sons, daughters and grandchildren have carried out their legacies, and they represent a demographic hopeful to participate in the politics and economics of the country – they felt abandoned by their government. In the face of student resistance, Bangladeshi leadership weaponized the offensive term Razakar, (students then later reappropriated it) a term used for the enemy in 1971’s revolution, to undermine dissent:

The Diplomat reported: It is a true tragedy when a weapon, sharpened diligently to eliminate opponents, returns as a fatal boomerang. The fluctuating significance of the terms “Razakar” and “Muktijoddha” in Bangladeshi politics over the past five decades mirrors such a tragedy. This saga has culminated in a definitive closure through the recent student movement, which has left hundreds of dead, and thousands wounded, arrested, or missing – often bearing the marks of pathological violence.

Overall, conditions intertwined, socially, politically, and economically, led to the movement.

July Revolution Cause #6: The Police

Police brutality had already been a serious issue in Bangladesh, but recent unrest has produced both brutality against civilians and violent action against the police. One does not know if right-wing extremists were behind it or not, or whether they came from outside the movement, in taking advantage of the strife. In all, the OHCHR brought out a report which said 600-plus have been killed during the movement; students, general citizens, ordinary citizens, and police alike. As of August 29th, the number had increased to 1,000.  Since the absence of police, subsequent attacks on minorities have increased in the far-flung areas as well as in Dhaka. Recently, students joined together in taking turns to protect installations and Hindu temples. Disappearances also increased and many police stations were burned down (perhaps 47 of 50 according to some reports) as well as several infrastructure facilities, metro rails, a Bangladesh television station, and several houses of iconic value (including the Sheikh Mujibur Rahman). Bangladesh was torched.

The Role of the Bangladesh’s Six Point Demands

In essence, after students re-issued and commemorated the historic six-point demands, it snowballed into a wider movement. After the army moved in, students at both public and private universities joined in unison. The impact of the newer students slowly proliferated outside into the countryside as well, meaning small towns and district towns all throughout Bangladesh.

July 4, 2024, and August 5, 2024, saw the marches through Dhaka, where the extraordinary numbers brought worldwide attention. The huge numbers, both past and present from the quota movement buildup combined with an infiltration of the right wing, which is at the center of the opposition (the Bangladesh National Party has since linked with the Jamaat-e-Islami). Street art has been a key visual theme during the movement just like in the Arab Spring – Bangladesh calls theirs the Bangla Spring.  The mass demonstrator’s calls for liberation is referred to as the Second Independence, after the first one in 1971.

Key Achievements of the July Revolution

One main achievement of the students was the driving away of an autocratic rule in quick time. Previous occupation movements, like Shahbag in 2013 took much longer. In July 2024, people felt like they could go out and take the street, talk, write, and create their own graffiti and street art. Additionally, several successive movements came after. At first, the Chief of the Military was in power. Then came Dr. Yunus of the interim government, who was initially abroad in Paris but finally came back. On August 8th the Nobel Laureate and his other members of the smaller cabinet and advisory council presided. The army, ideally, has taken power without exerting power, so policy decisions are now under Professor Yunus who placed youth in the decision making process.

Schools and universities have since reopened although classes have not started yet. Money laundering is now being investigated, but at the same time, people that need security in their day-to-day lives are unfortunately not getting it.

Remarks on Press Coverage, Labor Organizations, and Indigenous Peoples

Coverage in the press has varied as some are focused and concentrated on the interim government: who forms it, how it’s done, who gets into it, and what policy is being evolved.  Some others are covering this as a bigger movement that includes ethnic minorities. Hindus, which are basically the largest minority, 8 – 10% of the population, are the vote bank of the  Awami League.

Civic groups and labor organizations have also been instrumental in the movement. Activists informed me that in their meeting with the OHCHR, a factory worker in the ready-made garments industries helped gather data on missing women and numbers killed. People haven’t been found yet, both students and laborers, but devoted researchers and humanitarians are working around the clock to save lives.

Further, involved in the resistance, was the indigenous people’s movement in the Chittagong Hill Tracts – a people constantly under the threat of increased militarization. These were very peaceful and non-violent portions of the social movement. Some were in support of graffiti, that usually stayed away from engaging in street art.

The indigenous people shouted strong slogans found in their agenda. They were not against the interim government per se, or against anyone, but they said, “these are our demands [for peace].” They started painting graffiti, which was not possible in the Hill Tracts before, and they also started painting graffiti that was critical of the Army. At one point, the Army tried to stop them, but then sat back, and allowed them to paint. Students who could not paint on the walls in the Hill Tracts went down into Chittagong and started painting the same graffiti in the plainlands. These were very creative types of young students that gathered and politically evolved, as teachers were helping them directly to form new activist groups. One is called the University Teachers Network, and subsequently other collectives and individuals emerged. Civil society groups were not brought in, since in some cases they couldn’t participate in the political process under harsh repression. Individuals, however, from civil society groups were very much behind support for the students, teachers, and NGO workers.

What’s Next for the Country Politically in the Short Term?

From a left realism perspective politically, it is possible but improbable that Yunus is equipped to be a nation-builder in the rough-and-tumble world of Bangladeshi politics. Citizens of the world need some breathing space before replacing him. Both supporters and critics of Yunus say that elevating him as the next president would be very difficult, “as the color revolution is hastily staged in Bangladesh,” which undermines his credibility. Color revolutions, many note, have not been effective in Bangladesh, as they have been in other nations, and only invite dissent and disorder.

Perhaps in reality, the Bangladesh story is difficult because it does not facilitate any substantive left or politicized discourse. It can be approached in a scholarly way through establishment outlets, as Bhattacharya demonstrated, but most of the voices false starting any coverage represent the interests of bourgeois democracy and the interests of the middle class in my view. Little wonder why so few interpretations of the movement have been analyzed through the Marxist lens in support of the workers and come mainly from non-vernacular formations of institutionalized think tanks advocating for recognition of western human rights. In any event, the world continues to watch. Peace be to the land: “One point one demand, Quota not come back.”

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