by Obaidul Hamid :

THIS article brings two student movements in Bangladesh together. The juxtaposition will tell many things about the nation and its people — it’s past, present, and future. It will help understand the nature of the relationships between heroism and terrorism, democracy and autocracy, nationalism, and national betrayal. This may also be an opportunity for remorseful self-searching for some and egoistic other-bashing for many.

Indeed, I am talking about the student movements of 1952 and 2024, which have taken place in the same soil with different names: East Pakistan for the former, Bangladesh for the latter. In 1952, we believed we were under Pakistani colonial rule at the end of British colonial dominance in 1947. In 2024, we are free, and we are our own masters. In the early days of Pakistan, we were subjected to the discriminatory whims of Pakistani rulers. We now enjoy the considered benevolence of democratic rule. Pakistani rulers showed fake religiosity; our current rulers are stalwarts of genuine secularism.

However, the main actors in both movements are the same. They are students. Both student groups were motivated by similar causes. The students in 1952 protested an unjust language imposition; the students in 2024 are protesting an unjust quota system in jobs. In 1952, Bangla-speaking students were trying to speak to an Urdu- or English-speaking government that lived thousands of miles away in West Pakistan. In 2024, the students requested an audience from Bangla-speaking government authorities who literally lived in the next neighbourhood. It is their own government, headed by the daughter of the founding president of Bangladesh, the ‘father of the nation’.

On both occasions, the linguistic channel of communication was switched off. What was allowed to speak instead was a bullet. Nevertheless, there is a world of difference between the two movements.

On February 21, 1952, the police fired at the protesting students around the Dhaka University campus, killing about half a dozen. This ignited a language movement across the country. The movement succeeded in establishing Bangla as a co-state language of Pakistan alongside Urdu. It created history and gave us the essential national symbol of the Shahid Minar. The language movement provided the main inspiration as well as the main reason for breaking away from Pakistan. We believe that our independence from Pakistan in 1971 cannot be imagined without the 1952 student movement.

February 21, 1952, is an essential chapter of our indelible history. It’s the National Martyrs’ Day in Bangladesh. The public holiday is an occasion for the nation to reflect on the sacrifice of the student heroes of 1952. The day is an auspicious moment to make a collective pledge that they will live in our national and social memory as long as Bangladesh lives. They will never be forgotten in the country or in our history.

Bangladesh, as a nation, has also succeeded in globalising this student movement. On Bangladesh’s advocacy, UNESCO recognised February 21 as International Mother Language Day, which is now celebrated the world over every year. As the global communities commemorate the value of mother tongues, they remember our nation, our language heroes, and the student movement.

What started as a student movement locally in 1952 has become part of the global community and of universal significance.

Now, consider the other student movement, which is still unfolding as I write. Hundreds of students have been killed by their own police at the order of their own government with weapons bought with their own money. The exact number of student casualties will never be known in a country where numbers have lost their numerical significance. Many of these innocent and unarmed students were shot point-blank. Abu Sayeed at Begum Rokeya University in Rangpur couldn’t have believed that his extended chest would be the target of the police bullet. The young man might have never imagined that he would have to lose the wicket of his life on his own university grounds. The student who had shouldered the responsibility of bringing food to his impoverished parents was released from the role rather prematurely.

The festival of killing and bloodletting happened (and is happening) all over the country. Those killed and injured are from high schools, colleges, and universities. They are students at public as well as private institutions. Images of students carrying the dead bodies of their fellow students and of those brutalised may eclipse scenes from Hollywood horror movies.

Many photographs circulating in social media, also published in print media showed that the killing spree was facilitated by the student wing of the party in government, the Bangladesh Chhatra League. The notoriety of the ‘golden boys’ is well known. They reportedly had the full mandate from the party high command to handle the protesters, and they demonstrated their capacity in the streets, on campuses, and in residential halls.

As student protests spread all over the country, the government imposed a curfew and deployed the army with a clear shoot-at-sight order. The internet and communication networks were shut down, disconnecting the country from the rest of the world.

The shutdown was needed to erase evidence of the killings on the one hand and to prevent the flow of information about the brutalities within and beyond the country on the other. The students are now facing mass arrests in the second phase of the heavy-handed protest management process.

As things are being given the appearance of normalcy, at least publicly, the history of the second student movement is being written by the government, security forces, and the ‘independent’ media. The students protested an unjust quota system for government jobs. In a country where the youth unemployment rate is 41 per cent, students and graduates can legitimately speak against a system that gives undue privilege to certain people and restricts their own chances of employment.

However, instead of listening to the students, the government labelled them ‘razakars’ — those who collaborated with the Pakistani army during the liberation war in 1971. It was this insensitive linguistic and discursive act that angered the students the most. The Awami League has had a monopoly on capitalising on the razakar metaphor. It always worked as an effective political strategy for the party to stop dissenting voices. However, the student protesters deconstructed the hegemonic discourse this time by chanting counter slogans.

Although the students destabilised the razakar discourse, it’s only temporary. They don’t have the power to construct truth and write history. Therefore, they will have little control over the discourse and history that will be written about them. The process of demonising the students has already started. The movement has been linked to anti-liberation forces for giving legitimacy to the killing. This discursive construction will be further advanced by talk shows, debates, and opinion pieces by ‘freedom-loving’ intellectuals and media personalities. They will emphasise how the nation needs another liberation war to free the country from the tentacles of razakars, Pakistanism and Islamic fundamentalism.

The two student movements that are so similar in so many ways are bound to have different trajectories now and in the future. They will also have contrastive histories — one of heroism and nationalism, the other of terrorism and razakarism.

Although we live in a free-market economy, the trading of histories is not comparable to that of consumer products. Therefore, Abu Sayed’s mother’s tragic cry is likely to go out of (re)production in the current discursive regime: ‘Tui mor chhaoak chakri na dibu na de, Kintu marlu kan’ (Fine if you don’t have a job for my boy, but why did you kill him)?

I can’t assume that our memory will be sharp in this age of collective amnesia, but if you are one of

the exceptional few, please treasure this sub-altern history. Tell the world how the poor mother cried for justice for the unjust killing of her son.

Obaidul Hamid is an associate professor at the University of Queensland in Australia. He researches language, education, and society in the developing world.