Revolution success an outcome of politics, nothing else

Anti-discrimination student movement of July 2024

All people of Bangladesh stand united behind the Interim Government that has taken over in the wake of the August 5 student-led people’s revolution. They will do everything possible to ensure that this government succeeds to bring about the needed reforms and call a fresh election to establish a representative government as early as possible.

Some unwanted comments from a section of coordinators of the movement have scopes to be misinterpreted as negation of politics. One such statement was made by Sarjis Islam who said ‘we have defeated one fascist not to rehabilitate another fascist political force’. This has been responded to in the social media in different ways some in opposition to it and some others lending support. 

The people recall with pride the supreme sacrifices made by the students during the height of the movement from July 14 to August 5 when most of the killings by the fascist forces including their armed civilian cadres were committed in open day light. The killers not only shot down people in movement but also tried to hide bodies and at the same time prevent registration of the dead at hospitals by stealing register books. In one instance four dead bodies of students were found at a locked up wash room of the Dhaka Univeristy Arts Faculty building after the July 19 carnage.

The dead however by no means were all students or the hundreds of thousands of people who came down the streets of Dhaka from within as well as outside defying curfew on August 4 and 5. Students were in the forefront and determined to continue the movement, come what may. Behind them were their parents brothers and sisters plus young shop keepers, hawkers and even richshaw walas and street children. The political parties like the BNP and its allies had brought the movement to the boiling point in 15 years at the cost of hundreds of enforced disappearances, cross-fire deaths and imprisonment of hundreds of their leaders and workers. Their participation in the July-August movement was total. The dead included minor children and day labourers and middle-aged people.

The point here is that it was a people’s movement and they were all-out to end the economic, political, administrative, judicial and social injustices that were perpetrated for 16 long years. After the success of the movement the primary task is to reform the statecraft that was misused in every possible way to suit a fascist rule that would last indefinitely. Decrying politics or unwisely addressing political forces would be counterproductive because it is politics, and nothing else, which will decide the destiny of the nation. Calling all political forces fascists indiscriminately will serve no useful purpose. Rather, this will weaken the base of support of the Interim Government. Reform of the state is the dream of all the people, not just one section of them.