New Age | Incredible March of Royal Bengals

THEY defied fear! They moved mountains! They made the ultimate sacrifice! They dared and accomplished a journey so fast that no one dared to leave. The entire architecture of a mafia state was laid bare by our children, the wonderful Generation Z. The whole world hears the roar of the Royal Bengals, including the 7.4 million Bangladeshis worldwide who stopped the flow of money to Bangladesh to support their cause. Their roar is the most beautiful music to our ears. Did we ever imagine that this authoritarian and fascist regime could have been overthrown in less than a month? As we witness this transformative moment with tears of unspeakable grief for hundreds of murdered students, thousands injured, tortured, amputated, detained, arrested and disappeared, with an ecstasy of the collective effervescence of relaxation from a ruin of corruption and a decade of dictatorial rule, it is difficult to process such a historical experience in our lives. We had taken it for granted that we would tolerate a textbook example of an autocratic dictatorial regime that ruled our muktijuddhabut they don’t.

‘Why did the youth get angry? Quota is just a sign; they are angry because they cannot imagine a future in this country. Their dreams were snatched away. They were suppressed. They are not ready to accept the status quo, as we have done. That is the difference between generations. They want to rebuild the country in such a way that it is possible to have a dream instead of abandoning it. It is not right to see it as just a demand to abolish the job quota; it is rather an undertaking to recreate and reclaim the country,’ as Rehnuma Ahmed, an anthropologist and public intellectual, brilliantly put it. She added: ‘A liberated country, not just with a flag, where we can live with dignity and honour, not like insects, the way is normalised, they shook and shattered normality at the cost of their lives.’

Just four days before the fall of the Awami League regime, quota activist Minhaj Abedin (using a pseudonym) wrote on his Facebook page on August 1 that shook me to my core: ‘When I saw nine forces deployed to kill us, my fear disappeared; I was shocked but not scared. I know that an ordinary pistol is more than enough to kill me. Because they deployed excessive forces against us, it shows that they were shaking. They are scared of us. With this realization, I have decided to keep my spine straight. Because they could not buy this spine with 11,00,750 crore taka, it shows that they could never buy us. Liberation has to come and we will survive this dictator.’

This was an example of the first-hand accounts of the youth fighting on the ground and how they eventually overcame their fear that the entire state apparatus would turn against the entire generation. I spoke to Minhaj and was given permission to use his words anonymously in my writings. As an expatriate anthropologist, I have recorded countless such accounts of their public stories and spoken to countless comrades, friends and families who fought on the ground over the past two weeks to feel the energy and understand their vision and aspirations as my full-time job. The more I knew, the more I was amazed by their courage, honesty, cleverness, visionary foresight and love for the country. It was an act of utter ignorance not to consider their dreams and aspirations and the emotionally intelligent ‘raka garam, matha thanda‘ guardians and lovers of the land. Their vision and action made traditional ‘politics’ completely redundant. They did not play the game of so-called ‘politics’; instead, they changed the game to take control of their destiny and ownership of the land.

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 reinstated 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 return to class (Moshahida Sultana, SoropojonkothaJuly 2024). Even shamefully, they chose to suppress the rational demand of the students by the helmeted gangsters and unleash the armed forces with a shoot-on-sight order with the cover of the 5-day internet blockade, which looks like a mad suicide action without the reality on the ground. The unfolding of the bloody images of the brutal murder, the humiliation of the corpses, armed forces with heavy weapons, arbitrary arrests and the disappearance of our most precious children shattered us as a nation. The July massacre shook the nation to its core.

For two weeks we could not sleep or eat properly. Our bodies and souls were numbed with utter shock, fear, disgust and anger at what we had witnessed since July 15, beginning with the Chhatra League attack on the unarmed student activists who were campaigning for quota reform and against discrimination.

Their ‘no politics’ policy proved to be the smartest version to break the cycle of clichés with effective strategies and tactics. Never forget that these children are the ones who led the excellent road safety movement in 2018. They refused to be infantilized and showed how capable they are of taking control of their own destiny when they were still in high school. Why should they live a life of fear, despair and stunted growth in their own country? Why can’t they flourish and reach their highest potential when they have the whole world to win? They are the invincible alternative for the nation and there is no turning back.

Sayema ​​​​Khatun is an American independent anthropologist and organizer of the Bangladeshi Women Solidarity Network.