The myth of David and Goliath tells of a warrior of immense height and strength, slain by the hand of a shepherd. Surrounded by a crowd of exhausted soldiers, silent and dumbfounded, David must have heard his own heart pumping louder than ever as the giant’s body hit the ground with a deafening thud.
Bangladeshi youth have recently slayed a Goliath of their own. In July, protests began on college campuses in response to the reinstatement of legislation that reserved 30 percent of civil service jobs for descendants of those who fought in the Liberation War against Pakistan, a move that many criticized as granting preference to the children of regime cadres. The protesters immediately faced harsh political persecution, including violence and murder, at the hands of police. What started as local student protests escalated into a nationwide movement and eventually culminated in a revolution, forcing Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to resign and flee to India on August 5. After 15 years of censorship and corruption under Asia’s very own Iron Lady, a new Bangladesh appears ready to emerge from the rubble.
Based on five interviews with international students from Bangladesh, this article examines the protest’s origins, success, and replicability. Ultimately, Bangladesh’s freedom protest can serve as a blueprint for a new age of revolutions that oppose democratic backsliding and empower the youth of authoritarian states.
For those whom I spoke with, the protest’s momentum was spurred by an unprecedented level of police brutality. While it is not immediately clear why the government chose to suppress what was initially a minor threat to the status quo, Mashrafi Monon, a senior at New York University (NYU) Abu Dhabi, gave a possible explanation: “One of the reasons why the government used too much force was the fact that this job quota gave them a legal loophole to recruit pro-government people in the executive judiciary, public services, and all the top positions.”
Students were humiliated, arrested, and shot in broad daylight. Sheikh Hasina went as far as to call the protesters razakars—a deeply offensive term coined during the Liberation War to denote traitors to Bangladesh. The students, in turn, simply adopted the word for their own ends, chanting the slogan: “We are razakars!”
Hasina’s regime sealed its fate the moment live ammunition was fired. When the public witnessed the murder of Abu Sayed—an unarmed victim of police brutality—and other innocent students, its frustration with the viciousness of the government crescendoed. Even after the government caved and tried to negotiate with students, it was too late—the momentum of the protest had transformed it into a nationwide movement. “At that point, we wanted accountability for the lives lost, the missing people, and the media outage,” Areea Fairuz, a junior at Brown University and the President of Brown’s Bengali Students’ Association, explained. “When you start killing your citizens, you have to take accountability for that. And I think that’s what the protests became about.” Atquizzaman Bhuiyan, a junior at NYU Abu Dhabi, echoed this sentiment: “We tingled with the fury of being betrayed, of the damage they have done through corruption and massacre. It started with the quota system, but at a certain point, they started killing our brothers and our sisters there… When my peers, my brothers are dying, I can’t sit at home. I can’t just keep silent.”
The death of innocents like Abu Sayed did more than just rouse immense nationwide dissatisfaction that had been suppressed for the last 15 years—it also united the people of Bangladesh across sectarian lines. Rupkatha Rahman, a junior at NYU Abu Dhabi, noted, “We saw most of the general uprisings caught in between cultural, ethnic, and linguistic identity. These differences were not prominent in the protest. People just wanted equality for students and the demise of the government. I think this just shows how this new generation has so much power.”
For many, participation in the protest movement provided a glimpse of true national unity, as well as the chance to realize their rights to voice political opinions. Through struggle and solidarity, the will to defend basic rights, and an overwhelming sense of national pride, the protest movement achieved an immense victory that ended more than a decade of oppression. “When I came to know that she [Sheikh Hasina] resigned, it was one of the happiest moments in my life. It was the biggest victory for the Bangladeshi people, second only to the Independence War in 1971,” Bhuiyan shared. Shakawat Hossain, a student at University Canada West, provided his reflections: “What I have learned is that anything is possible. Any government can be removed at any time. If we find that we are not happy with something, we should be protesting it, doing the right thing, and speaking up about this topic.”
A majority of the interviewees agreed that the Bangladesh protests can serve as a model for student-led uprisings against authoritarianism worldwide. Bangladesh has become a beacon, demonstrating that change is possible and inspiring those oppressed. Mashrafi observed: “An idea that was going around is that fear is contagious, but so is bravery. When you are cornered to that extent by the violence of the state, people don’t really care if they live or die. What others could learn is seeing the vulnerability of dictatorial regimes. Through fear, they portray themselves as strong, but it’s really just a sandcastle.”
The abrupt end of Hasina’s rule opened up a political vacuum and has left Bangladesh in a state of uncertainty under an interim government led by Nobel Laureate Dr. Muhammad Yunus. Some hold concerns about the future: “People might not be able to maintain this unity that we have right now. Now everyone has their own diverging opinions on how we can better shape the country,” Fairuz said. Still, the people of Bangladesh await the upcoming elections with a gleam of celebration in their eyes. “If things go well in the elections, I would love to see my country in a much better state. People within my country have struggled for a long time,” Hossain shared. “I hope to see people live a life where they’re actually happy.”
Despite political uncertainty, it seems that the student uprising has led Bangladesh to a new era of striving toward democracy and transparency—for the first time in many years, the people can envision a country where their needs will be met and their voices heard. “I think whatever the future holds is going to be better than the past that we have been through,” Rahman shared. “Just seeing that people come together and the solidarity that we have shown has improved the trust within the people themselves.” Most of the students I interviewed shared her optimism.
Goliath’s corpse rots in the rising sun, unable to hurt anyone—there is no trace of the fear he once inflicted. David wipes the sweat off his forehead. There is much work to be done, but for now, the future is bright. The giant has been slain, and a new dawn of hope rises in Bangladesh.