Nahid Islam, a pupil protester who was sworn in as a minister in Bangladesh’s interim authorities in 2024, in Dhaka.
Rajib Dhar/AP
conceal caption
toggle caption
Rajib Dhar/AP
DHAKA, Bangladesh — Final summer season, 26-year-old Bangladeshi pupil activist Nahid Islam did the unthinkable. Together with just a few companions, he set the stage to carry down the authoritarian Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her authorities.
It sparked Bangladesh’s first ever Gen-Z rebellion and concluded with Hasina rapidly fleeing to India in a helicopter.
The scholars’ actions got here at a heavy value: no less than 1,400 individuals misplaced their lives and lots of others had been injured, principally by the hands of Hasina’s safety forces.
For Islam, the eight months since then have been a whirlwind. The sociology graduate was promptly made a part of the interim authorities led by Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus, and extra just lately, he turned the convener of a brand new student-led political celebration, the Nationwide Citizen’s Social gathering (NCP).
It is past something the little-known son of middle-class educator mother and father might have imagined, however Islam stays unfazed.
“There was no strategy to take away the regime besides via an rebellion,” he tells NPR in Dhaka. “We knew negotiation wasn’t an possibility. But it surely wasn’t simply towards the regime—it was towards a complete corrupt system.”
Is a brand new political period doable?
The query many Bangladeshis are asking now could be: Can the rebellion translate into long-term political illustration, or will the nation’s long-standing political institution proceed to keep up its stranglehold?
Islam believes a brand new political period is feasible—however it is going to take time. His imaginative and prescient for the centrist NCP is one which stands aside from the previous guard and brings a contemporary method of doing issues in what he describes as a “post-ideological” period.
“We wish a brand new political system and a brand new structure,” he says. “The present one allows authoritarianism. We want reform in order that future governments cannot repeat the errors of the previous.”
He is referring to accusations of corruption, oppression, human rights abuses, and an absence of freedom of speech that endured for years underneath two of Bangladesh’s important political events.
Precisely 54 years in the past, on March twenty sixth, 1971, East Pakistan, now referred to as Bangladesh, declared its independence from West Pakistan. This led to a brutal nine-month warfare, which was adopted by a interval of one-party rule and, finally, a army takeover that lasted till 1991.
Since then, it has been dominated by the Awami League, led by Hasina, and the Bangladesh Nationalist Social gathering (BNP), led by Khaleda Zia, widow of former army ruler Ziaur Rahman.
The third-largest celebration, the religiously conservative Jamaat-e-Islami, has additionally been influential. It has been banned on quite a few events as a consequence of accusations of inciting violence, most just lately in 2024. The ban was lifted by the interim authorities.
Main polls and media platforms in Bangladesh predict that the BNP will dominate the upcoming parliamentary elections, that are as a consequence of happen in December or quickly afterwards.
Tapping right into a political vacuum
With most Awami League leaders both exiled or imprisoned, and uncertainty about their participation, a political vacuum is forming that Islam desires to faucet into.
In accordance with Bangladesh’s Bureau of Statistics, 1 / 4 of the inhabitants is between the ages of 15 and 29 — that is 45.9 million individuals.
Bangladesh’s Election Fee mentioned voter turnout within the 2024 elections was round 40 % — though unbiased analysts imagine it to be decrease.
“The rebellion has proven {that a} new political technology has emerged,” Islam says. “They’ve new aspirations. This technology rejects the previous events. We imagine there’s a social demand for change.”
As a part of this shift, the NCP has already begun crafting its manifesto, with a give attention to training, healthcare, local weather change, and addressing the particular wants of the nation’s youth.
However Naomi Hossain, a political analyst at SOAS, College of London, believes the NCP will face quite a few challenges.
“If college students safe 25 % and even 50 % of the votes, it would not essentially translate into as many seats,” she says, “even within the fairest elections, as a consequence of how constituencies and first-past-the-post politics work, all elections distort in style preferences indirectly.”
A brand new technology vs new concepts
The NCP additionally faces the fact that many younger individuals are aligned with the coed wings of the BNP and Jamaat.
Mohammad Abu Bakr Siddique Molla, a spokesperson for Jamaat-e-Islami within the UK, says that despite the fact that NCP targets younger Bangladeshis, each his celebration and the BNP even have pupil organizations.
“These organizations performed a serious function within the rebellion,” he tells NPR. “When the elections come, the Gen-Z technology can be divided — some will help the brand new political events, whereas others will again Jamaat or BNP.”
Some key Gen-Z figures aligned with current political events embrace Sadek Kayen, the chief of Jamaat’s pupil wing and a Dhaka College pupil, in addition to BNP pupil leaders Rakibul Islam Rakib and Nasir Uddin Nasir.
These, together with many different distinguished pupil activists, performed a vital function in constructing the momentum that led to the rebellion. They proceed to be central figures in shaping the way forward for Bangladesh’s political panorama.
Abdul Moyeen Khan, a senior BNP member, believes that the reforms Islam and his celebration are pushing for are a part of an ongoing course of, and never can’t essentially be formed by generational variations.
He says that it is not that the Previous Guard will retire at this time, and the younger technology will take over tomorrow. “It would not work that method in society. Reform is a steady course of. A brand new political technology is not outlined by age— it is formed by new concepts.”
Nonetheless, Hossain says, the brand new pupil celebration has broad in style help and sympathy as a consequence of final yr’s rebellion and the sacrifices these younger individuals made.
“There is no motive to imagine that in the event that they carry out fairly effectively within the subsequent election and acquire some help, they will not construct their motion over time and appeal to the institutional help and funding they want.”
Islam stays reserved when requested if he sees himself as Bangladesh’s future prime minister.
“We imagine in collective management,” he says. “I am the chief now, however I will not be sooner or later. What issues is our long-term imaginative and prescient. The rebellion is just the start—we need to construct on that.”
NPR reached out to a consultant of the Awami League for remark however obtained no response.
