Naveeda Khan, Johns Hopkins University , August 14 2024
NB: This is the third in a series of responses following the events of July 2024 in Bangladesh. The rest can be found here.
100,000s defied curfew to descend on Dhaka, Bangladesh on August 5, 2024 in support of the student-called protest march. When I heard Sheikh Hasina had resigned and fled Bangladesh by some helicopter-plane combination just a short while before the crowd stormed her residence, the Gonobhaban or People’s Palace, a line rang out in my head. “Ding dong, the witch is dead.” The line is from the 1939 Hollywood film Wizard of Oz and refers to the melting of the feared Witch of the West. I felt a bit self-conscious making this all too Western association, as though I had introduced a foreign aesthetic of appreciation to a quintessentially home-grown uprising. But I have since heard commentators remark on the fact that this movement is a Gen Z revolution spearheaded by students who are “global citizens.”
The title of my post is pulled from a poster held up by two young girls at one of the many protests preceding the August 5 one. It clearly expresses a felt generational difference between Sheikh Hasina (referred to as nani or granny) and the youth upon whom she tried to reign supreme. It is noteworthy that they still referred to her through a kinship category. We might take this as a wry acknowledgement that she or her mode of politics helped birth theirs, a clear rejection of her. The “oi” in the poster is a familiar, even rude interjection, long associated with postcolonial slang. And the “pls” is an almost universal term within the world of texting. Through this tiny instance of the impressive outpouring of the students involved in the movement, Gen Z expresses itself through kinship terms, postcolonial slang and norms of text communication.
Two young girls holding up a poster which reads "Oi Nani (Granny), Resign Pls"
But there is still much to unpack here, starting with, what makes up a generation? Is a generation in Bangladesh determined by an age-set, say from 15 to 24 years of age, or is it rites of passage that mark one as an adult? What might be those rites of passage in this context? How is one to take into consideration those younger and older who participated from early on? What makes the participants global? Is the internet, or more specifically social media, the single most important globalizing machine? Although we cannot assume that social media produces radical or even progressive politics, after all see its reactionary use in the case of Myanmar, does its consumption produce a shared aesthetics of representation that speak to those within and outside the national and cultural context? What kind of citizenship does such globality endow one with? That is, how can what has happened and is still happening in Bangladesh not just speak to Bangladesh alone, or even the region? How might it be influential in tilting global politics away from implacable leaders? And is Gen Z henceforth the privileged purveyor of this liberatory potential, despite all evidence to the contrary till this point?
The researcher in me also wants to understand how the student movement emerged, the practicalities of almost country-wide organization and coordination, and the coherence in messaging despite all the differences that no doubt existed among them (age, class, ethnicity, religion, place of origin). Given that Bangladesh is sometimes reduced entirely to the capital city of Dhaka, I also want to keep our sight on cities and towns in Rajshahi, Chittagong, Jessore, Rangpur, Jamalpur, Khulna, among other epicenters of protest, including Bangladeshi youth abroad. Are we talking about the sameness of protests across these sites or are there differences, given for instance the different histories of educational institutions, old and new and differential access to economic opportunities in these parts? Even though workers and students have faced Hasina’s “iron claws” several times in the past decade and a half leading them to be seemingly subdued, scholars Arild Engelsen Ruud and Mubashar Hasan have shown how activists in the country have learned to practice a mode of “democratic bricolage” to circumvent state’s surveillance and violence to organize. Given this important scholarship, I would warrant that August 5 was not a spontaneous uprising, albeit a DIY one.
Things are yet uncertain and there are acts of violence directed at representations and representatives of the regime, including minorities, taking place that are alarming. Given how popular or youth-led movements have been suppressed or reversed in recent memory (the Tahrir Square protests in Egypt, the Shaheen Bagh protests in India, the Mahsa Amini protests in Iran, the campus protests over the Gaza War in the U.S.), the possibility of the capture of the moment by the army or reactionary forces cannot be ruled out. But one thing is certain and worthy of note: the student quota movement ushered in a mass movement, which some have called a reform movement while others have gone so far as to deem a revolution.
In this short reflection I want to pause to appreciate the dramaturgical elements of this movement-turned-revolution, starting with the grotesque of those in power and the shifting lexicon in referring to the protests, before turning to the aesthetics of protests (posters, slogans, songs, videos, memes and graffiti) in a follow-up post. There is a vast number of these, and the important work of documenting is happening right now, with hopefully reams of analyses to follow. To indicate that my intervention is partial, from my own perspective, and to avoid fixing any reading of this material, I opt for the list mode, with short annotations appended to each. The question of what is Gen-Z in what we saw remains open to further exploration.
Figurations of the Grotesque of Power
Formed in 2004, the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) is an elite arm of the Bangladesh police. It has rapidly become a feared force charged with many human rights violations, including extrajudicial killings. Benazir Ahmed was the head of this unit before becoming the head of Bangladesh Police. The Aladdin’s lamp in the title of the exposé on him by the national daily Prothom Alo published on March 31, 2024, refers to the fact that he appeared to have discovered a source of unaccounted wealth, given his holdings, including that of a luxury resort.
June 2024 the media was abuzz over a goat costing TK 15 Lac/$13K bought by Matiur Rahman’s son for the festival of Eid. The media was alerted to this because Rahman’s son posted it on his Instagram. This led to the discovery of the incredible amassment of wealth by Rahman, an official in the National Board of Revenue, and immediate suspicions of insider trading.
On July 14, 2024, speaking about the need to fight corruption, Sheikh Hasina, the then Prime Minister of Bangladesh, remarked that a person who once worked as her peon was said to have earned TK 400 crore. Through her comment she likely wanted to raise the alarm of the inordinateness of corruption in Bangladesh (TK 400 crore/$34 million is objectively a lot of money) but it instead raised questions as to how anyone working for her could have amassed this much wealth without her sanction, and by what means?
Obaidul Quader, the General Secretary of the previously leading party, Bangladesh Awami League and the once Minister of Road Transport and Bridges, was the public face of the government that one saw every day of what has been dubbed as Bloody July. His quavery voice was frequently heard floating up above the din around him to threaten the students that their audacity will be dealt with by the student arm of the Awami League, the death-dealing Bangladesh Chatro League, to warn of the “shoot on sight” order given to the police, and to ultimately turn away from the BCL, leading them to call him out as bhua (fake).
The Helmet Bahini (Army)
The Helmet Bahini refers to members of the Bangladesh Chatro League (BCL), specifically to their helmet covered heads, who turned up in droves with hockey sticks in hand to beat students while they gathered in peaceful protest in Shahbag, Dhaka starting in June 2024. The images of them hitting young children date back to the 2018 the Road Safety Movement, and caused great consternation during the 2024 Quota Reform Movement.
Arafat, who began his life as a teacher, was brought on board as the Minister of Information and Broadcasting in January 2024 promising to root out disinformation regarding Bangladesh. In interviews he gave an account of the student protests as replete with opposition party members and zealots, many of whom appeared drugged to him. “Look at their dress-up, approach and attitude.” He defended the government and it actions of cutting off key communication services on grounds that it was necessary to prevent further violence. Given that he was elected from Gulshan, an elite neighborhood in Bangladesh, representing elite factions of the Awami League, some fear that he may rise again.
Harunor Rasheed, Chief of the Dhaka Metropolitan Police, had a long history as a controversial public figure, frequently involved in altercations with politicians, specifically those in the opposition, misusing his power for personal reasons and the planting of evidence. Most recently he was caught in a sexting controversy. But the one action of his that gained him notoriety during the Quota Reform Movement was that of bringing people into his office to feed them lavish meals, taking their pictures and posting them on his social media account, prior to questioning and detaining them, possibly even beating them up. His office acquired the macabre title of Baather Hotel or the Rice Hotel.
Sheikh Hasina is perhaps the ultimate figure of the grotesque of power and worthy of more attention than a short annotation here.
Shifts in Lexicon Referring to the Protests:
Chatro Quota Shongskar Andolon (Student Quota Reform Movement)/Quota Berodhi Andolon (Against Quota Movement)/Gono Andolon (Mass Movement). The first formulation was in circulation June to late July, 2024 when students were concerned that they were not seen to be retrograde in asking for the removal of all quotas. In every instance a student was interviewed on television they were explicit in saying that they did not wish to see quotas removed entirely but that they wanted a reform of it.
At some point in late July, reporters started to refer to the movement as being against quota. At first, I took this to be a sign of the shift in narrative being encouraged of the press by the government that the students were acting naïvely, that they were being instrumentalized by outside forces/terrorists (U.S.? opposition parties? religious zealots?). No one I asked was entirely sure who this external force being referred to was.
Then, I heard students themselves refer to the movement as quota berodhi and understood that this phrase marked a shift in political vision, from reforming an existing system to being against it and possibly calling for its demise. I put this use down to the students’ mode of reappropriation of terms with negative connotations and their conversion into not exactly positive terms but terms which have more dimensionality. Here I refer to the term razakar (collaborator) that acquired an interesting angle through this process of reappropriation, or even that of bhua (fake) that drew attention to the autocracy as not just the wielding of violence and coercion but of spin and spectacle, which had failed to take root.
The term that I heard a member of the interim government use on August 9, 2024 and which may be the one that takes root in referring to the Quota Reform Movement is student led gono andolon or mass movement.
Prodorshon (procession)/Songhorsho (clash)
This appeared to me as a direct conflict in terms of representation, with the students calling their gatherings processions, even protest (bikhob) processions, and the actions on them by BCL members or police as hamla (attacks), whereas most of the newspapers referred to these gatherings as clashes, as in clashes between students or students and the police.
Chatro/Shikhatri /Kishore/Torun/Shahid/Biplobi/Shomunnoyon kari
At the earlier stages of the movement in June, students were referred by the colloquial word chatro but as the movement consolidated, they began to be referred to as shikhatri, a more formal term. In one respect we might see this term as attempting to bind them as a distinct unit within the rapidly changing political playing field in contrast to say, “the police” or “the party,” but I think in the process the term may have nailed an important aspect of this student led movement. Students are not simply and passively students, so determined by their age or their guardians. They are seekers of education and, as such, actors in their own rights. Their parents, guardians, and teachers often referred to them as kishore (teenager) and torun (the young) to remind people that they were not fully constituted subjects, fragile beings, but turned to calling them shahid (martyrs) and biplobi (revolutionary) when they faced down the state, many losing their lives in the process. Now they are being referred to as uplifters as in seeking shomunnoyan (development, equal rights) which stands in a clear contrast to “quota,” now indexed to a mode of bestowing favors by a corrupt and violent government.
Chaar dofa/At dofa/Noye dofa/Ek dofa dabi
There was an interesting alchemy of numbers of points (dofa) of demands (dabi) over the course of the movement. The numbers expanded and contracted in step with the growing sense of what was necessary to demand off the state. While the students started by asking for quota reform, when the Supreme Court appeared to concede to their demand, while at the same time the Awami League-led government unleased the BCL on the protesters, they shot back saying that they had expected dialogue with the government and not reform through fiat, and control through direct attack, followed by blackout. They now gave numerical shape to their demands, saying that the government had first to meet their chaar dofa (four points), before their at dofa dabi (eight point demands) were even discussed.
On July 23, their four-fold demands were 1. the restoration of internet service, 2. withdrawal of curfew, 3. withdrawal of law enforcement agencies from campuses and opening of halls, ensuring a safe atmosphere for students to return and, 4. ensuring the safety of the coordinators of the movement. They gave two days for these demands to be met and after which they would discuss the eight points, which were 1. investigations of the killings of protestors, including 2. arrest and trial of the people responsible, 3. financial assistance to martyrs’ families, 4. as well as ensuring employment for at least one family member, 5. allocation of seats in halls through a transparent process, 6. ending the presence of student parties associated with political parties within halls, 7. creating student unions, and 8. ensuring that no students involved in the quota reform movement faced any repercussions.
As these were met with a redoubling of state power, the eight became nine, and then became one: Sheikh Hasina must resign. In keeping with the strong streak of humor running through this movement, slogans were heard commenting on the play of numbers of demands turning into a count up/down during the last few days of the protest:

Tentative Reflections
While we think further on what is Gen Z about the Bangladesh student movement, I want to point to how the students have already illuminated some aspects of their collective identity. They could not have possibly known that Sheikh Hasina would refer to them as razakars, thereby tarring them, possibly rendering their movement ineffectual. They showed themselves to be willing to take on this label, to flirt with the repulsion associated with it, and to turn it around such that the negativity associated with it could be projected back on Hasina. When faced with India’s troll army seeking to discredit the movement by deeming it communalistic through the insistent portraying of images of burning temples, the Bangladesh based students marshalled their numbers to stand in protection of Hindu neighborhoods and places of worship and took to X to broadcast their efforts. They show not only suppleness in dealing with fast changing media representations, they counter virulence with pragmatism and a beaming positivity.
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The author wants to thank Hasan Ashraf, Kunal Joshi, Naeem Mohaiemen, Shrobona Shafique Dipti and Namira Shameem for sharing invaluable source material and providing comments and edits. I am in your debt.
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The reader may also want to look at the following articles for more insights into the student led movement and the state of Bangladesh at present:
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