{"id":8399,"date":"2024-12-08T21:35:22","date_gmt":"2024-12-08T12:35:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/?p=8399"},"modified":"2024-12-10T17:45:11","modified_gmt":"2024-12-10T08:45:11","slug":"will-bangladeshs-revolution-go-the-way-of-arab-spring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/news\/will-bangladeshs-revolution-go-the-way-of-arab-spring\/","title":{"rendered":"Will Bangladesh’s Revolution Go the Way of Arab Spring?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This article was first published by The UnPopulist<\/a> on 27 August 2024 and is reproduced with permission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is a real danger that the country will go the way of many Arab Spring countries and swap a secular dictatorship with another one.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As soldiers exchanged greetings with students protesting the now-deposed Bangladesh prime minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed this month, the scenes at Dhaka\u2019s Shahbag Square evoked memories of Cairo\u2019s Tahrir Square one February night 13 years ago. The Tahrir uprising spelled the end of Hosni Mubarak\u2019s 30-year rule in Egypt. Likewise, Shahbag\u2019s led Bangladesh\u2019s powerful army to withdraw support for Hasina, tilting the balance of power in favor of the protesters after a two-month stand-off.\u3000JAPANESE<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The popular protests that brought the curtain down on Hasina and forced her to flee to India have drawn obvious parallels with the Arab Spring. But it\u2019s an unhappy comparison since that movie did not end well. Indeed, most countries that constituted that moment transitioned not into rights-protecting democracies but just a different kind of despotism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ignominious fall of a secular despot<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hasina, like Hosni, was a seemingly secular ruler. However, she had perfected the art of modern despotism. She captured governing institutions, jailed opponents, and rigged elections, turning the world\u2019s third-largest Muslim-majority nation into a one-party state even while maintaining the trappings of a democracy by holding elections. The dramatic end to her 15 years of iron rule has now spurred hopes of a new Bangladesh. A Nobel Peace laureate is head of the interim government and a full-scale purge in governing institutions is under way at the insistence of the students who led the \u201cGen Z revolution.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hope is palpable. But so is fear\u2014because who will ultimately fill the political space vacated by Hasina\u2019s secular despotism is an open question right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fall of the government has triggered violence and arson, especially against the workers and supporters of Hasina\u2019s Awami League party, the country\u2019s oldest political party that has the proud history of leading Bangladesh to secede from the draconian rule of Pakistan in 1971. As Islamist elements reassert themselves after years of being suppressed by Hasina, an alarming<\/a> level of violence has also been directed at the country\u2019s religious minorities, especially its Hindus<\/a>, who account for about 8% of the 170 million population. The specter of the re-emergence of hardline Islamism as a powerful political force now looms large in Bangladesh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bangladesh\u2019s secession from Islamist Pakistan<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As part of Pakistan, Bangladesh used to be called East Pakistan. It was born out of a bloodbath as Pakistan\u2019s power elite refused to share power with Bengali nationalists of East Pakistan. Pakistani generals\u2014backed by the U.S.<\/a>\u2014unleashed a genocide on the Bengalis, a multi-religious group spanning both Bangladesh and India that has distinct cultural traditions based on a shared language, Bengali. That triggered an exodus of refugees to India, followed by a war between Pakistan and India. Pakistan\u2019s humiliating defeat led East Pakistan to break away from it and form Bangladesh under the stewardship of Hasina\u2019s father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who led the Bengali resistance. An inclusive Bengali cultural nationalism has since dominated Bangladeshi politics, but has had to contend with competing political forces of exclusionary Islamic nationalism that consider Islam\u2014rather than Bengali-ness\u2014as the prime identity of the state and the people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These two conflicting strains of progressive secularism and religious fundamentalism have coexisted in Bangladesh\u2019s politics since the British colonial rulers left the Indian subcontinent in 1947 and carved out India and Pakistan into two separate countries. They handed most of the Muslim-populated areas to Pakistan, including what is now Bangladesh, even though the two regions were separated by India in the middle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other words, although East Pakistan\u2019s Muslim identity led to its separation from India in 1947, Bangladesh\u2019s Bengali identity led to its separation from Pakistan in 1971. The country\u2019s political contests have since been a struggle between these two identities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Competing national ideologies: Secularism vs. Islamism<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a flag-bearer of Bengali nationalism, Hasina had projected herself as a radical secularist since her second stint as prime minister in 2009. Her hard line can be traced back to a Harvard International Review essay<\/a> authored by her son Sajeeb Wazed Joy and former American army of\ufb01cer Carl J. Ciovacco in November 2008. In it they highlighted the risks of Islamization in Bangladesh and offered secularization as a prescription for deradicalization. Hasina used secularism strategically to consolidate her rule, not only cracking down on Islamist organizations but on rival political parties as well, branding all political opposition as Islamist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As in much of the Middle East, the West (along with local powers like India) looked away from Hasina’s despotism because it feared that the alternative was Islamism. Now, as the revolution ends, and life returns to normal, there\u2019s little clarity on who will actually control state power; a secular Bangladesh\u2014with all its imperfections and pretenses\u2014might very well be on the wane given the forces that will most likely benefit from Hasina\u2019s downfall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The students leading the movement have a progressive vision for Bangladesh, and the interim government led by celebrated microfinance pioneer Muhammad Yunus<\/a> has laid out a liberal roadmap. But neither has an organized political structure to retain power. Yunus is powerful only as long as he enjoys the trust of the students and Bangladesh needs a liberal face to calm domestic and international jitters till the dust settles. The student protesters are powerful only as long as they occupy the streets. What then? Moreover, they are not a homogenous entity given that many subscribe to a hardline Islamism. A Dhaka University dean was forced to resign<\/a> a few days ago for not allowing students to recite the Quran on campus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wither Bangladesh?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The interim government running the country includes two leaders from the progressive \u201cAnti-Discrimination Students Movement\u201d that helmed the agitation against Hasina. The students are also reportedly considering floating their own party<\/a> to end the duopoly of the Awami League and the main opposition party, the Bangladesh National Party (BNP). Power in Bangladesh has traditionally rotated between these two parties and the military. But the Awami League is in disarray and the success of a new party\u2014if one is formed at all\u2014is uncertain. That leaves the military, the BNP and its past Islamist ally, Jamaat-e-Islami, as the potential beneficiaries in a post-Hasina Bangladesh. One could be forgiven for wondering if Bangladesh is trading one kind of despotism for another.     <\/p>\n\n\n\n

India\u2019s dimming liberal lodestar<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bangladesh\u2019s own proclivity toward Islamism apart, what now complicates its internal politics further is the regional environment. The rise of Hindu supremacist politics in India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the marked decline of this giant neighbor\u2019s secular ethos only strengthens Islamist voices within Bangladesh and weakens Bangladeshi liberals who could earlier point to India as a liberal lodestar in South Asia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

India\u2019s Hindu supremacist leaders use \u201cBangladeshi\u201d as a slur word to otherize Indian Muslims, directly implicating the neighboring country in their own politics of Islamophobia and making it even harder for Bangladesh to insulate itself from the majoritarian identity politics in India. In their stump speeches, the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party\u2019s (BJP) top leaders often refer to Bangladeshi \u201cimmigrants\u201d as \u201ctermites<\/a>\u201d eating away India\u2019s resources\u2014a dog whistle meant to include Indian Muslims. New Delhi\u2019s unquestioned backing of Hasina\u2019s despotic reign has only added to resentments against India, strengthening the Islamists. A scenario of Islamists gaining the upper hand in the power vacuum so that the military has an excuse to jump in to restrain them, with full international backing, is not far-fetched, \u00e0 la Egypt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

None of this bodes well for a glorious liberal dawn for Bangladesh. Successful uprisings, after all, rarely lead to genuine democratic transitions. Apart from Tunisia, where the Arab Spring began in 2010 and had some limited success, in none of the other countries facing popular protests against authoritarianism then did democracy actually take hold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some countries descended into civil war while others ended up with equally autocratic regimes. Egypt dislodged Hosni Mubarak only to end up with Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, a general with zero respect for democracy or rights, to keep the Muslim Brotherhood at bay. Qaddafi’s ouster led to the proliferation of armed groups and a resurgence of Islamist politics in Libya as its economy imploded and the prolonged civil war turned it into a failed state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bangladesh itself has a dismal track record of popular uprisings succeeding in unseating despots but failing to establish lasting democracy. Pro-democracy protest in 1990<\/a> by students along with, ironically, Hasina as one of the opposition leaders, forced a military dictator to hand over power to a civilian government. Six years later, that government led by BNP was brought down<\/a> by Hasina.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bangladesh\u2019s challenge: Creating the material conditions for Liberalism<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The recurrence of public anger points to the persistence of the underlying frustration at exclusionary governance systems, elite control of politics, chronic political and economic disempowerment, unmitigated kleptocracy, and rampant income inequality. Bringing about lasting change would entail addressing these deeper malaises.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hasina\u2019s government achieved admirable improvements<\/a> in most components of the human development index, such as life expectancy<\/a> and school enrollment<\/a>, but inequality levels remain high, with 22 million people\u2014about 13% of the population\u2014still living below the poverty line<\/a>. Two-thirds of the people above retirement age receive no pension<\/a> and there are no unemployment benefits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bangladesh has more than a hundred social safety net programs but they are still inadequate, especially considering the vulnerabilities the country faces. Ground zero of climate change, it ranks seventh on the 2021 Global Climate Risk Index. In another 25 years, climate change will have likely displaced one in every seven Bangladeshis. Extreme weather events, salinity increases, and land erosion due to rising sea levels are already forcing migrations. Parts of the country are currently reeling from devastating floods<\/a> that have marooned nearly three million people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even more pressing is labor precarity. Among all the countries swept up in the Arab Spring protests, only Tunisia achieved some degree of democratic transition arguably because of its pre-existing empowered working class<\/a> and a powerful trade union confederation that had the structural leverage to force real change. In Bangladesh, union organizing has been constantly delegitimized<\/a> and even violently suppressed. Only 5.1%<\/a> of the workers are unionized and Bangladesh maintains its export competitiveness on the back of a cheap and unorganized labor force that often works in exploitative conditions. After ignoring the issue, the Biden administration last November was forced to condemn<\/a> the police shootings of labor leaders and the crackdown on trade unionists who were demanding a review of the country\u2019s minimum wage laws.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Altering basic inequities like these would be key to rebuilding democracy in Bangladesh. In sum, for \u201cBangla Spring\u201d to achieve transformative change, Bangladesh would need a new social contract. With freedom in the air after years of severely curbed civil liberties, the country is brimming with new possibilities. As it happens after every mass uprising everywhere, there have been calls for structural reforms in Bangladesh as well. The students have vowed to fix the systemic rot to make good on what Yunus calls the \u201csecond liberation<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Student activism in the past has definitively shaped Bangladesh, from the language movement in the 1950s demanding official status for Bengali that culminated in Bangladesh\u2019s secession from Pakistan, to the many revolts against military and civil despotisms thereafter. This time, apart from standing up to an apparently invincible authoritarian, the students showed the way in steadying a rudderless country in the aftermath of Hasina\u2019s fall. They managed public order, provided security, and cleaned and repaired damaged public places amid the chaos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But effecting widespread systemic changes is something else. Toppling a despot might seem easier in comparison.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Related articles:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the election, what next in India?<\/a> (3-minute read) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Narendra Modi’s war on civil society on the cusp<\/a> (10-minute read)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Capturing and decapturing democracies: Notes from India<\/a> (10-minute read)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Debasish Roy Chowdhury<\/a><\/strong> is a journalist, researcher and author based in Hong Kong. He is co-author of \u2018To Kill A Democracy: India\u2019s Passage to Despotism\u2019 (OUP\/Pan Macmillan). He is a member of Toda Peace Institute\u2019s International Working Group on Global Challenges to Democracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

INPS Japan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article was first published by The UnPopulist on 27 August 2024 and is reproduced with permission. There is a real danger that the country will go the way of many Arab Spring countries and swap a secular dictatorship with another one. As soldiers exchanged greetings with students protesting the now-deposed Bangladesh prime minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8400,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,93],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-8399","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"category-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8399"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8399\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8403,"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8399\/revisions\/8403"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}