Bangladesh: unfinished revolution

In 2024, the July uprising overthrew Sheikh Hasina’s authoritarian regime and triggered the most radical political transformation in Bangladesh in decades. What has become of that revolutionary spirit today, and how should the February 12 elections be interpreted within the broader political trajectory of the country?

For some, the elections conclude a long, bu- mpy transition phase, stifling that spirit at the ballot box, in the votes cast for the old guard parties, exhausting, if not betraying, the revolutionary drive within the institutional framework. For others, the elections are merely one stage in a much broader parabola, which is not yet complete. A stage that refers to the relationship between power and citizenship, now irreversibly changed thanks to a new awareness of the transformative power of those who protest claiming the public spaces.

To find traces of this, we need to look not only inside the Parliament designed by the architect Louis Kahn, where the new Prime Minister Tarique Rahman, leader of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party at the head of a coalition that won the majority of seats, was sworn in; not only in the courtroom of the International Crimes Tribunal of Dhaka, where – with procedures that some claim are rushed – those responsible for the repression of the uprising are being punished, starting with Hasina herself, who was sentenced to death, in the very place where she had the leaders of Jamaat-e-Islami convicted; not only in Ganabhaban, the former residence of ousted Hasina, which now houses the museum of the uprising, which sanctifies and monumentalizes martyrdom. But also in the streets of Dhaka.

And once again within the universities and in the meeting places for students and young people for whom the gap between expectations and reality is still a driver of change.

Text by Giuliano Battiston