The scenes in Dhaka today are reminiscent of an earlier era, when thousands of Bengali youth marched against the imposition of Urdu as the national language. The students and youth of Bangladesh in 1954, had set in motion a chain of events that culminated in the liberation of Bangladesh 17 years later.<\/p>\n
<\/a>Today, thousands of students are once again marching on the streets, and opening fire on them, are not the legions of Pakistan\u2019s police state and army, but the paramilitaries, police and thugs of the Awami League led republic of Bangladesh.<\/p>\n As of writing this, a 105 people have been reported to be killed, mostly at the hands of the state. In response to the peaceful protests by the students, the government unleashed the paramilitaries and armed thugs of the Awami League. The demands of the students were dismissed by an arrogant and unsympathetic government, and now it responds with overwhelming force.<\/p>\n Prime Minister Sheik Hasina is gambling on the backs of unconditional support from India and China, as well as the successes of the stage managed rigged elections where the oppositional parties have disappeared entirely.<\/p>\n <\/a>Historical and material forces at play :<\/p>\n <\/a>Pakistan imploded under the weight of it\u2019s internal contradictions. Being cornered for the scramble for princely states that ensued after the partitioning of India, it found itself poorer, and worse off than it\u2019s much larger neighbour India. The bourgeoisie had to militarize, not only to match the strength of India\u2019s armed forces, but also to ensure the other republics of Pakistan would remain under the thumb of the land owning bourgeois elite in Punjab. This militarization would not be enough to keep the Bengali people tied down, who were the first to revolt successfully against the Pakistani state.<\/p>\n <\/a>The Pakistani state brutally cracked down on the independence struggle using coercion and military force to restore Pakistani rule, but this failed by the resistance of the Bengali people, and the intervention of the Indian army. India\u2019s intervention, while ensuring Bangladeshi independence, ensured that the bourgeois Awami League would come to power. What followed was another disaster, this time brought about by the Awami League\u2019s mismanagement of the economy, and corruption. No sooner had the nascent Bangladeshi state emerged, did it sink to autocracy with the Awami League at the helm.<\/p>\n <\/a>This autocracy, supported by India, fell soon after to a military coup, launched by ambitious officers of the newly formed Bangladeshi Army, an army created with India\u2019s help, forged in the independence struggle. Over the course of it\u2019s short lived autocracy, the Awami League under Sheik Mujibar Rehman gifted the people of Bangladesh a devastating famine, and the terror of the BAKSAL regime. The military regime that emerged right after, reversed some of the progressive gains achieved by the liberation war, the regime of General Zia made Islam the state religion, and began a process of normalization with Pakistan, and the United States.<\/p>\n <\/a>Order was restored, but not democracy. Bangladesh remained as impoverished as before. Eventually General Zia died, allegedly assassinated, and replaced by General Ershad, a government which was far more favorable to India, albeit a right wing dictatorship, who formalized Bangladesh\u2019s transition to an Islamic republic.<\/p>\n <\/a>Democracy, and Secularism, the twin ideological pillars of the liberation war lay dead and buried. However, the masses did not lay idle for long. Movements to restore democracy succeeded in overthrowing the Ershad dictatorship. Democracy returned, but it was under the leadership of two viciously corrupt and exploitative bourgeois parties. The Awami League led by Sheik Hasina Wajed (who is the current ruling party, and has been ruling uninterruptedly since 2009), and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, a party that was formed by General Zia and led by his daughter Khaleda Zia. Much of the last decades of the 20th century and the first decade of this century was shaped by the rivalry of the two \u2018begums\u2019. Their political rivalry drenched the country in blood, and began a reign of terror against Bangladesh\u2019s Hindu minority, who had already been disenfranchised and suffered from institutionalized discrimination. Pogroms took place in Bangladesh again, in response to mass riots against Muslims in India.<\/p>\n <\/a>While the begums fought, the country remained poor, it\u2019s people among the poorest in the world. Bangladesh was dismissed as a \u2018basket case\u2019. This remained so, until a turn in the country\u2019s fortune from 2006 onwards, when the \u2018basket case\u2019 would become the sweat shop for the world\u2019s textile industry.<\/p>\n <\/a>The sweat shop of the world :<\/p>\n <\/a>Decades of impoverishment created an easy to exploit cheap labour force. As traditional centers of world textile production started to decline, production shifted to low wage zones, in South and South East Asia. Bangladesh became a beneficiary of this shift. In the year 2006, the BNP government collapsed, followed by a care taker government which lasted for longer than it\u2019s mandate, up till 2009. The elections that year saw the Awami League winning by a large margin, and beginning Bangladesh\u2019s transformation into an autocratic sweat shop.<\/p>\n <\/a>The Awami League, modeled it\u2019s regime on the most autocratic form of the Congress government under Indira Gandhi. While appearing to placate the demands of the masses, the party remained firmly rooted in the interests of the bourgeoisie. In fact, the Awami League has become a main pillar of the newly emerging Bangladesh bourgeoisie. Many facets of the Awami League\u2019s rule mimics the old autocracy of the BAKSAL regime in the 70s. The Awami League has further sought to legitimize itself by using the legacy of the independence struggles. Never mind the fact that Bangladesh\u2019s liberation was achieved in large part by leftist forces, and revolutionary organizations, which the Awami League actively crushed once in power.<\/p>\n A key moment in the recent history of Bangladesh was the Shahbag Square protests, where once more the youth was on the streets, calling for justice for the victims of the genocide perpetrated by the Pakistani army and it\u2019s collaborators during the liberation war. The protests centered around Shahbag square became a mass movement throughout the country, but the Awami league successfully hijacked it and turned it\u2019s focus to the death penalty for a few arrested war criminals. They had used the people\u2019s movements as a tool for their own political gains.<\/p>\n Since then, the Awami League tightened it\u2019s grip, while persecuting its political opponents, chiefly the right wing bourgeois opposition the BNP and it\u2019s allies. While the active suppression of reactionary forces is always welcome, especially so when it comes at the hands of progressive forces. In the hands of the Awami League, what was actually achieved was a legitimization of the right wing Islamist parties. The people now suffer under the autocracy of the Awami League, whose ministers grow rich off sweat shops churning out clothes for fast fashion. Billions are made while the workers producing this wealth are subjected to some of the worst conditions of work, and the worst wages.<\/p>\n The disaster at Rana Plaza, which happened two years before the Shahbag protests, shed light on this reality. Under Sheik Hasina, Bangladesh has become the sweat shop of the world, a \u2018growth story\u2019 lauded by mainstream capitalist media. Today, the youth are burning this \u2018model\u2019 to the ground.<\/a><\/p>\n The COVID pandemic and the jobs crisis in Bangladesh :<\/p>\n Few developing nations have been as hard hit by the pandemic than Bangladesh. The COVID pandemic and the consequent lockdown measures imposed across the world, brought economies to a screeching halt. Bangladesh, which relies greatly on immigrant labour remittances and cheap garment exports, saw hundreds of thousands of migrant workers laid off, or sent back, and garment contracts being canceled.<\/p>\n The cancellation of the contracts resulted in shrinking earnings, and as is always the case, the burden of the crisis was passed on to the working class. While the rich garment bosses could stave off the crisis with their millions, the average garment worker, who is more often than not the only bread winner of the family, would have to suffer unemployment and wage cuts. The garment workers went on the warpath, going on strike, and protesting for fair pay, against lay offs and wage increases. With the central pillar of the economy crumbling, the rest of Bangladesh\u2019s faltering economy started to crack. In turn, this created a job crisis for the youth.<\/p>\n The COVID pandemic was followed by another crisis, brought upon by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the subsequent sanctions on Russian oil exports. The already struggling economy of Bangladesh, found itself in the worst possible situation with high oil prices further adding inflationary pressure.<\/p>\n Thus we come to the present, where the youth have no prospect of jobs, and have to make ends meet when prices are surging. The result we see today where hundreds of thousands of student youth across the country are out protesting, braving the police and the thug force of the Awami League, to make their demands met.<\/p>\n The quota system in Bangladesh :<\/p>\n The quota system in Bangladesh reserves set number of seats in educational establishments and public employment. The quotas reserved are as follows : 10% of seats reserved for women, 10% of seats reserved for those applying from certain districts, 5% of seats for ethnic minorities (of the Chittagong hill tracts and similar groups). To this, the Sheik Hasina government has added a 30% quota for the descendants of those who fought in the liberation war. This comes at a time when the youth of Bangladesh have to deal with unemployment rates over 12% and runaway inflation.<\/p>\n While on the surface, the intention may seem benign, as a reward for those who sacrificed for the liberation war. However, in practice, this becomes a ploy to corner seats for those linked with the ruling party. Indirectly, this only enhances the power of the Awami League over the educational institutions of the country and in the realm of public employment. The move had been proposed in 2018 when it was withdrawn and sent to the High Court for adjudication. The High Court, subsequently gave it\u2019s verdict in favour of the Quota system upholding it\u2019s constitutionality.<\/p>\n The students went back to protest, and the Prime Minister Sheik Hasina responded by calling them \u2018Razakars\u2019 after the dreaded paramilitary collaborators of the Pakistan army in 1971. The insult only inflamed passions of the students who went on to strike. The Awami League responded with harsh policing actions, and sent their lumpen thugs to break up the strike. This had the opposite effect, and sent the country, and especially the capital, into a spiral of violence. Sheik Hasina rightly sees the students uprising as a threat to her autocracy, for the students are fighting more than just the Quota system, this is a flashpoint of a much larger, and deeper movement to fight the autocracy of the Awami League government.<\/p>\n The protests go beyond the Quota system :<\/p>\n While the excessive quotas are the first spark of the protests, it speaks to a larger issue of Awami League\u2019s autocracy. The system that Sheik Hasina has built up and perfected over the 15 years of her rule, where she has transformed Bangladesh into an autocratic sweat shop for multi national garment conglomerates, is what is fundamentally being challenged here.<\/p>\n The quotas come at a time when Bangladesh is facing mounting unemployment, spiraling inflation, and overall economic crisis. The effects of the COVID pandemic are still playing out, with industries struggling to recover staggering losses, and cutting down on hiring. The weak economy of Bangladesh, remains dependent on an adverse trade with India, and inequal relations with the imperialist core. The export of cheap textile and the direct export of labour through supplying immigrant labour are the twin pillars of this largely rural agrarian country. The bourgeoisie has had 50 years to turn Bangladesh around, and all they have proven, is their ability to suppress the people of Bangladesh. Sheik Hasina now joins a long line of autocrats in Bangladeshi history going back to her father, Sheik Mujibar Rahman.<\/p>\n In November last year, the garment workers were on the warpath in Bangladesh, going on strike to raise their abysmally low wages, and improving the conditions of work. They too had to face repression from the infamously bad police and paramilitary of Bangladesh. Now the students face this, after protesting peacefully for their demands. The government does not listen, it does not want to listen, it only wants to cling on to power, no matter how many bodies pile up and how much damage is done. They must make common cause against a common enemy in the form of Sheik Hasina and the Awami League party.<\/p>\n In the face of such an enemy, the students and youth of Bangladesh must have the working class and the youth of the world on it\u2019s side !<\/p>\n STAND IN SOLIDARITY WITH THE STUDENTS OF BANGLADESH !<\/p>\n DOWN WITH THE HASINA GOVERNMENT !<\/p>\n QUOTA REFORMS NOW !<\/p>\n FREE AND EQUAL EDUCATION FOR ALL !<\/p>\n Further reading :<\/p>\n \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The scenes in Dhaka today are reminiscent of an earlier era, when thousands of Bengali…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-statement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newwavesouthasia.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newwavesouthasia.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newwavesouthasia.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newwavesouthasia.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newwavesouthasia.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newwavesouthasia.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newwavesouthasia.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newwavesouthasia.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newwavesouthasia.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n