Bangladesh: Students Have Often Led Protests That Have Transformed the Country

Now, they want the revocation of a quota in government jobs for the third generation of those who fought in 1971.

A nationwide curfew imposed by the Sheikh Hasina government in Bangladesh on Friday, 19 July, may not be enough to quell the student protests that began on 1 July. Already over 100 protestors have been killed in police firing and 25,000 protestors injured.

Prime Minister Hasina imposed the curfew after a massive breakdown of law and order. Social media reports claim that on Friday, the Mayor of Ghazipur was attacked and his bodyguard killed; protestors attacked a jail in Narsingdi in central Bangladesh. 500 prisoners escaped, and nearly 4000 protestors attacked a police base at Rangpur.

Despite reports of negotiations between some leaders of Students Against Discrimination, leading the anti-quota protests and Justice Minister Anisul Haq, the group clarified that protests will continue. Meanwhile, even on early Saturday morning, deaths are rumoured to have taken place.

Bangladesh’s history reveals that students have led the movements that transformed the country – from the language movement of 1952 and the Liberation War of 1971 to the movement that ousted the government of General Hussain Muhammad Ershad in 1991.

The current anti-reservation student movement, however, did not start out explicitly against the government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. With students raising slogans like “It’s a war now”, one wonders, though, what the political fallout of the agitation might be.

The students want the revocation of a 30 percent quota in government jobs for the third generation of those who fought in the nation’s 1971 Liberation War (“Muktijoddhas”). The quota seems disproportionate to the 0.13 percent share of the “Muktijoddhas” in the total population.

The total reservation in government jobs is 56 percent. Last year, about 346,000 candidates competed for just 3,300 civil service jobs. The protestors are, however, not against the quota for disabled persons, women and ethnic minorities.

By all accounts the unemployment situation in Bangladesh is grim. Private sector jobs have shrunk and government jobs with a greater security of tenure are few. Officials statistics from 2023 show that about one in five Bangladeshi youngsters in the age group 15 to 24 are neither in the classroom nor in a job. About 65,000 new graduates join more than two million youngsters entering the job market annually. They face higher rates of unemployment than the less educated in their age cohort.

The slowdown of the Bangladesh economy is palpable. The country’s GDP growth rate is declining, foreign investment has fallen and its forex reserves shrinking. This means fewer jobs will be created and incomes will be lower.

With growing job scarcity, any quota system, however justified, is bound to be criticised. The movement which started at Dhaka and Jahangirnagar Universities has spread to universities and colleges in Khulna, Chittagong, Barisal, Sylhet, Rajshahi and Comilla.

Sheikh Hasina abolished all reservations in response to a student movement in 2018. However, after a legal challenge, on June 5 the Dhaka High Court restored quotas. The students then gave the government till the end of June to abolish job quotas by bringing a Bill to parliament. The government filed an appeal against the High Court order in the Supreme Court which has scheduled the final hearing for 7 August. Now, the government is appealing to bring forward the hearing.

The student protests began on 1 July, when their ultimatum to the government ended. However, the confrontation sharpened after a press conference by Prime Minister Hasina where she indicated her government’s bias towards retaining the freedom fighters’ quota. Questioning the motives of the protestors she asked, “Why are they opposing the freedom fighter quota? Do they want the descendants of the Razakars to get all the facilities?” Razakar is a derogatory term used for those who collaborated with the West Pakistan Army in 1971.

The insulting comparison with traitors triggered massive anger amongst the students who began chanting defiant slogans such as, “Tumi ke? Ami ke? Rajakar, Rajakar. Ke Boleche? Ke Boleche? Shoirachar. Shoirachar.” (“Who are you? Who am I? Razakar, Razakar! Who said that? Who said that? The Autocrat, the Autocrat!”). Criticism of Sheikha Hasina as a ‘dictator’ and an ‘autocrat’ then spilt over into the posters and artwork accompanying the protests.

Her press conference confirmed the suspicion of student leaders that Hasina wanted to retain the freedom fighters’ quota because she believed their progeny were her supporters -- the quota policy would ensure a loyal bureaucracy.

Supporters of the regime and some policymakers have wrongly suggested that the student movement is being led by the banned Jamaat-e-Islami and the Opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). The movement was and continues to be decentralised with student leaders ensuring that no political party is able to take advantage of their agitation. The Chhatrashibir (student wing of Jamaat-e-Islami) or the BNP’s student wing, Bangladesh Jatiotabadi Chatra Dal which by no means enjoys a wide presence, may have joined the protests, but no political party is being allowed to control the agitation.

While the BNP would clearly like to see the movement transform into one demanding the ouster of Hasina, its leaders this correspondent talked to, admitted they had no role in starting the agitation. Initially, the party only criticised the torture of arrested students, openly supporting the agitation only after the first student death in police firing.

A former BNP minister in exile, himself a “Muktijoddha”, said, “The agitation is neither under our control nor do we know the direction it will take. But when students start dying in police firing, why should the BNP keep quiet? It is our country after all and these are our children.”

Although India has described the student protests as an internal matter of Bangladesh it would be surprising if it were not closely watching the situation. Many opponents of the Awami League tend to be critical of Indian ‘interference’ in Bangladesh.

There is without doubt a growing anti-India sentiment in Bangladesh and that is why New Delhi must help Dhaka deal with the current situation deftly and in a mature manner – minimising further deaths. India will have to balance its interests with those of the people of Bangladesh. They cannot be mortgaged to a political party or an individual.

(The writer is a senior journalist based in Delhi. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)