Incredible march of Royal Bengals
THEY faced the fear! They moved the mountains! They made the highest sacrifice! They ventured and accomplished a voyage so fast that none could dare set out. The entire architecture of a mafia state had been exposed by our children, the fabulous Gen Z. The whole world hears the Royal Bengals roaring, including the 7.4 million expatriate Bangladeshis around the world who stopped remittance flow to Bangladesh, supporting their cause. Their roars sound like the most beautiful music to our ears. Have we ever imagined that this authoritarian and fascist regime could have been ousted in less than a month? Witnessing this transformative moment with tears of unspeakable grief for hundreds of students killed, thousands injured, tortured, amputated, detained, arrested, and disappeared, with an ecstasy of the collective effervescence of recreation from a ruin of corruption and a decade of dictatorial rule, it is difficult to process such a historical experience of our lifetime. We had normalised enduring a textbook autocratic dictatorial regime that hijacked our muktijuddha, but not them.
‘Why did the youth get furious? Quota is only a signifier; they are outraged because they cannot envision any future in this country. Their dreams were snatched away. They had been stifled. They are not willing to accept the status quo, as we have readily done. That is the difference between the generations. They want to rebuild the country in such a way that it is possible to have a dream instead of leaving it. This is not right to see it merely as a demand for abolishing job quota; rather, this is an enterprise to recreate and reclaim the country.’, as Rehnuma Ahmed, an anthropologist and public intellectual, brilliantly put it. She added, ‘A liberated country, not only having a mere flag, where we can live with dignity and honour, not as insects, the way has been normalised, they shook and shattered the normalcy down at the cost of their lives.’
Just four days before the fall of the Awami League regime, quota activist Minhaj Abedin (using a pseudo name) wrote on his Facebook wall on August 1 that shook me to the core: ‘When I saw nine armed forces deployed to kill us, my fear disappeared; I was in a state of shock, but not fear. I know that just a regular pistol is more than enough to kill me. As they deployed forces excessively against us, that indicates they were trembling. They are scared of us. With this realisation, I have decided to keep my backbone straight. As they could not buy this backbone with 11,00,750 crore taka, that indicates they would never be able to buy us. Liberation must come, and we will outlive this dictator.’
This was an example of the first-hand accounts of the youngsters fighting on the ground and how they finally conquered their fear of the entire state apparatus playing out against the entire generation. I talked with Minhaj and got permission to use his words in my writing with anonymity. As an expatriate anthropologist, I have recorded numerous such accounts of their public narratives and talked with numerous comrades, friends, and families who have been fighting on the ground to feel the energy, understanding their vision and aspiration for the last two weeks as my full-time job. The more I knew, the more I became astonished by their courage, honesty, smartness, visionary foresight, and love for the country. It was an act of utter ignorance not to take their dreams and aspirations into account and underestimate the emotionally intelligent ‘rakta garam, matha thanda’ guardians and lovers of the land. Their vision and action made the traditional ‘politics’ totally obsolete. They did not play the game of so-called ‘politics’; rather, they changed the game to take control of their destiny and ownership of the country.
Unfortunately, the Hasina government chose to betray this generation. The court order was used to bluff the public into thinking that the quota had been lifted, which could have been restored by the government at any time. The Chief Justice appeared on national television to request that the guardians take the students back home and the students go back to class (Moshahida Sultana, Soropojonkotha, July 2024). Even disgracefully, they chose to crush the students’ rational demand by the helmeted goons and unleashed the armed forces with a shoot-on-sight order with coverage of the 5-day internet blockade, which seems like an insane suicidal move devoid of the reality of the ground. The unfolding of the bloody footage of the brutal killing, the humiliation of the dead bodies, armed forces with heavy arms, arbitrary arrest, and the disappearance of our most precious children shattered us as a nation. The July massacre shook the nation to the core.
Over two weeks, we could not sleep and eat well; our bodies and souls had been numbed in utter shock, fear, disgust, and anger at what we had been watching since July 15, begun with the attack of the Chhatra League on the unarmed quota reform and anti-discrimination student activists.
Their politics of ‘no politics’ turned out to be the smartest version to beat the cycle of cliches with effective strategies and tactics. Never forget, these kids are the ones who led the outstanding road safety movement in 2018. Refusing to be infantilised, they have already demonstrated how capable they are of taking their destiny into their own hands when they were just in high school. Why should they live a life of fear, despair, and blocked growth in their own country? Why can’t they thrive and reach their highest potential when they have the whole world to win? They are the invincible alternative before the nation, and there is no going back.
Originally Published in The New Age