Daring to Defend the Anti-discrimination Student Movement

By: Mahmudul Hasan   Source: The Daily Star Sep 22, 2024 No Comments


Some academics, journalists, and writers – including myself – started discussing the formation of the Forum for Bangladesh Studies in 2021.

It was officially launched on October 10, 2022. Under the aegis of the forum, I have had the opportunity to work closely with some of the best minds of our country, including Dr Badiul Alam Majumdar.

My involvement with the forum helped me become more conscious of what was going on in Bangladesh during the 15-year autocratic rule of Sheikh Hasina. It also brought on a greater sense of urgency for me to write and publish opinion pieces devoted to issues of the day and taking the Hasina regime to task. However, I was perturbed by the fear of possible government reprisals.

After reading some of my essays critical of the Hasina government, one well-meaning academic friend once cautioned me saying, "Be careful." I understood his message but couldn't stop writing. His kind concern for my safety increased my respect for him.

I shared my disquiet with Dr Badiul Alam Majumdar. He told me that if we stopped writing, that would embolden the repressive regime, and if many of us wrote, it would be difficult to hound us. He added that he kept raising voice against the regime's abuse of power to have a clear conscience. I agreed with him and increased the volume of my writing on what was happening in Bangladeshi politics.

However, despite conquering my fear of government oppression, I faced an unforeseen backlash from some of my friends. My stance against Hasina's autocracy alarmed them. Like me, they hated the regime to the bone, but they didn't consider it safe to maintain communication with someone who wrote columns in newspapers criticising the government. They went to the extent of not answering my phone calls; I respected their standpoint and stopped calling them.

I didn't see much logic in being overly fearful. I thought it was important to show solidarity with brave and courageous writers and journalists who were writing from within Bangladesh against the oppression of the Hasina regime. Moreover, the newspaper editors who published my writings were all based in Bangladesh. So, living thousands of miles away from the country, why should I be scared?

Then came the anti-discrimination student movement in July 2024. In the second half of that month, the government sought to punish the student protesters with point-black shootings, airstrikes from helicopters, and other violent measures.

Generally, an invading force uses such methods to subdue an occupied nation. But our own security forces used them, killing and maiming thousands of our students in broad daylight. Images of the cruelty of the government were unbearable—they had a chilling effect on me.

At the same time, I was outraged to see that some of our intellectual elites were providing the government with intellectual cover-ups while our unarmed students were being killed en masse.

I understood their security concerns, but I thought that, at the very least, they could remain reticent. Instead, they chose to abet autocracy. Perhaps, they thought that the regime would survive that wave of protests, and with time, things would once again fall in place.

Fear gripped all of us—in Bangladesh and in its diasporas. We could not anticipate such a murderous venture by the Hasina government to quell the student movement, nor did we comprehend the logic behind using our security forces to kill our young people in the streets.

I suffered from a severe Hamletian dilemma. Shall I or shall I not write about the government repression on the student protesters? I wanted to write, but would my writing jeopardise the security of my family members in Bangladesh?

The internal battle within me was raging. It was between my urge to rise to the occasion and write, and the need to consider the safety of my family members back home. As I was torn between these two dominant emotions, on July 30, I received a request from a journalist friend in Dhaka, saying, "If possible, please write a piece on the student movement… we all are distraught. But we are speaking."

This message reinforced the severity of the situation and the urgency to speak up. It boosted my morale and I shed my fear and hesitancy. I immediately produced two essays: "What leads students to defy death on streets" (New Age, July 31, 2024) and "Violence against students: A tribute to our little John Hampdens" (The Daily Star, August 4, 2024).

I had written "Hasina's memory-killing tactics and our responsibility" before Hasina fell and fled on August 5. But it was published afterwards, on August 7.

In post-Hasina Bangladesh, my friends who sought to distance themselves from me now answer my phone calls. Intellectual elites who were hesitant until the morning of August 5 to call a spade a spade now describe Hasina's rule as an autocracy. Many of them who adjusted with the Hasina regime then are now readjusting with the interim government and with the new reality.

They lived a comfortable life then and may continue to do so now. But I have great respect for those writers and journalists who wrote and spoke against Hasina's autocracy at a time when others didn't consider it prudent to do so. I feel morally privileged that I belong to this group.

Did my writings over the years shake Hasina's autocracy? Did they help mitigate the sufferings of people in Bangladesh and elsewhere? Or, did they embolden the anti-discrimination student movement? The answers to all these questions are probably in the negative.

Not many writers are able to make a material difference in society through their writings. In "In Memory of WB Yeats", the Anglo-American poet WH Auden writes in reference to his fellow litterateur WB Yeats's literary career:

Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.

Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still,

For poetry makes nothing happen.

Yeats's literary career was largely inspired by the troubles in his country, Ireland, and he wrote to fix them. But, according to Auden, Yeats's work didn't do much to establish peace and stability in Ireland. Likewise, Hasina's autocracy got me out of my academic cocoon and motivated me to write essays on down-to-earth issues that affected Bangladesh during her rule.

But I don't think Hasina fell because of my writing. Why do I continue writing then? To use Dr Badiul Alam Majundar's words, I write out of a need to have a clear conscience. Regardless of its effects on others, my writerly commitment to noble causes serves as a source of moral comfort for me. This is very important to me. I would like to end this essay with a relevant quote from the 11th century polymath Ibn Hazm: "It seems unworthy of a man to consecrate himself to something which is not higher than he is…. One who consecrates himself to lesser things is like one who trades a precious gem for a pebble."

Dr Md Mahmudul Hasan is professor of English at International Islamic University Malaysia. Email: [email protected].

Related Suggestions

A Lesson I Learned About Elections
Unity and Action: American Muslim Political Engagement
I’m a Muslim, Republican, Naturalized Citizen. Stop Demonizing Immigrants.
Can Bangladesh's 2024 Uprising Become Its Own 'Terrible Beauty' Like Ireland’s Easter Rising?
Restoring dignity of students
The Elephant in the War Room: How Power and Greed Blind Leaders
Writing in the time of autocracy
Hind Rajab to Aafia Siddiqui | Re-humanizing the De-humanized
Racism and Hypocrisy in the Senate: The GOP's Attack on Arab American Witness Maya Berry
Hasina’s autocracy and The Duchess of Malfi
August 5 in retrospect: A narrow escape from total surrender to autocracy
A New Morning Has Broken in Bangladesh
 
COMMENTS DISCLAIMER & RULES OF ENGAGEMENT
The opinions expressed herein, through this post or comments, contain positions and viewpoints that are not necessarily those of IslamiCity. These are offered as a means for IslamiCity to stimulate dialogue and discussion in our continuing mission of being an educational organization. The IslamiCity site may occasionally contain copyrighted material the use of which may not always have been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. IslamiCity is making such material available in its effort to advance understanding of humanitarian, education, democracy, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law.


In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, and such (and all) material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.