A fight for soul and identity: THE WEEK reports from Bangladesh

Dhaka and Mymensingh

Come, make merry and rejoice

There reaches the summer storm,

Flying the flag of the new and the young

He is the eternal beauty

Who knows how to destroy and build again.

When Kazi Nazrul Islam—born in undivided India and laid to rest in Dhaka—wrote these lines, now etched outside the Nazrul Institute amid the crowded streets of the Bangladesh capital, he could not have foreseen their many afterlives. Would he have imagined how his words, once claimed by the builders of Bangladesh in 1971, would return more than half a century later as a language of cultural resistance in 2026? The culture he nurtured is being politicised and contested in the most brutal way. Today, the greatest tragedy of Bangladesh’s struggle is the hundreds of nameless, faceless young people who have lost their voice in the roar of rebellion, leaving behind families struggling to bear the loss. This cultural war, which continues after the July 2024 rebellion, is stretching Bangladesh’s social fabric to its limits. The killings—whether political, religious or criminal—have become the final outcome of a broken democratic system.

Sharif Osman Hadi, one of the prominent leaders of the students-led July 2024 rebellion who set up Inquilab Manch, an Islamist revolutionary cultural platform, lies buried beside Nazrul after being shot by assailants on December 12, 2025. Not far away, at Udichi, one of the country’s oldest cultural institutions, Nazrul’s poetry was burnt to ashes a week later, the embers bringing tears to its guardians. Both loved Nazrul. Yet in death and destruction, they stand apart, hurt and angry.

The distance between poetry and blood has never been far in Bangladesh. “Our culture and armed resistance merged during the Liberation War,” says Rafiqul Hasan Khan Jinnah, an elderly cultural activist, standing in front of piles of burnt literature at Udichi. “We carried songs in one hand and guns in the other. I was studying medicine in Dhaka when I joined the student movement in the late 1960s. The Pakistani government had banned Rabindranath Tagore’s songs. We moved from village to village in hiding, singing revolutionary songs and taking up arms when necessary,” says 80-year-old Rafiqul, who is now settled in the United States. He is shocked to see culture reduced to a tool of power, where young people are becoming expendable and the survivors are inheriting not just new memories of resistance, but mourning as well.

The struggle, says Tahmina Yasmin Neela, vice president of Udichi, will continue. “The people of Bangladesh have actively fought autocracy and religious fundamentalism in 1971, 1990 and again in 2024. They demand secularism, non-discrimination, equal rights and dignity for all.” The July 2024 rebellion, she says, symbolised a stand against all forms of extremism and instability in the country: “In recent days, cultural spaces have been attacked and fear has been spread by undemocratic forces. Yet, once again, people are standing together and resisting.”

The loss runs deep across the left, the right and the centre. One side clings to an older Bangladeshi Bengali cultural identity, one in which figures like Nazrul embodied a world where India was still close to their heart. Another side rejects the past as they knew it, seeking to redefine identity anew, not through Nazrul’s emotional attachment but through his spirit of rebellion, asserting a distinct Bangladeshi Muslim identity.

“Don’t see us through the prism of a broad Bengali culture but through a Bangladeshi Muslim cultural lens,” says Fatima Tasnim Zuma, sitting next to racks of books by new authors, graffiti artists and handmade art and craft on display at the Inquilab Manch. The two-room set-up is perched on the second floor of a building in a narrow lane on Kazi Nazrul Islam Avenue in Dhaka. Not everyone can enter, but Zuma lets us through.

Zuma, who is in her 30s, comes from Cox’s Bazar, far from Dhaka’s corridors of power, yet her adult life has been influenced by political violence. Her political consciousness has been shaped by a refusal to allow culture to legitimise repression. Zuma met Hadi years ago through university networks, but the student protests opened up opportunities to act on their ideological convictions. “We used to spend hours debating how important it is to understand history from multiple perspectives, especially through the sacrifices of our own freedom fighters in the 1971 Liberation War,” she says. “We are not anti-India. We are against Indian hegemony. It is also not about religion, it is about domination.”

Her family feared for her safety. Over time, they gave in to her resolve. “Now they are inspired,” she smiles. “Our role is to create pressure for justice for Hadi, for stabilising the state before voting. We have no faith in political parties.” Her public profile rose after the September 2025 Dhaka University Students’ Union elections, where the Jamaat-e-Islami’s student wing, Bangladesh Chhatra Shibir, secured 23 of 28 posts. Fatima won her position with 10,631 votes.

Campus politics has become another arena where cultural identities are being weaponised. “Shibir won not because campuses suddenly became uniformly Islamist,” says Zillur Rahman, executive director of the Centre for Governance Studies in Dhaka, “but because the Awami League’s student wing, the Bangladesh Chhatra League, collapsed, the opposition space fractured and the Shibir emerged as the only organised force in a moment of political reset.”

Ironically, Hadi nursed political ambitions. “He wanted to contest elections from the Dhaka-8 constituency as an independent, where the Jamaat was standing in opposition, projecting its own candidate Dr Md Helal Uddin,” says Asif Bin Ali, a doctoral fellow at Georgia State University in the United States. “Yet in his death, Hadi has become a rallying point for the Jamaat in its election campaign.”

For other youngsters like Mehedi Hasan, 32, a former soldier from Barishal and member of the Inquilab Manch, expressing anger and dissent has become inseparable from his love for poetry. “I have found a voice and I must speak. If people don’t listen, that’s okay.” Hasan hails from a middle-class family and, like many aspiring youngsters, pursued an MBA to tap newer career opportunities. However, caught in a cycle of rejecting the old for the new, he is uncertain about his future. “I just keep reciting Nazrul,” his voice trails off.

The uncertainty is palpable as poets, artists, thinkers, journalists and many young people worry that there may be an attempt to erase the wide range of opinions and ideologies that sustain a multi-dimensional social cohesion. A well-known young poet based in Dhaka, who refuses to be named for fear of retribution, says, “A situation is being created where if someone does not speak in my language, I will not let them speak at all. Nationalism is certainly necessary, but extreme nationalism is terrifying. Tagore always envisioned the Mother of the World’s shawl spread on this country’s soil.” Bangladesh is meant to embrace humanity at large—culturally open, plural and welcoming—rather than wrap itself tightly in a narrow, exclusionary nationalism.

Colourfully decorated rickshaws run past the narrow street leaving the Inquilab Manch behind. Not far away, young girls and boys are celebrating their love of Nazrul through open conversations about shared Bengali culture, describing the canvas of Bangladesh from the prism of the past to the present. “Forces that oppose Bangladesh’s cultural traditions have always existed, but they become louder when democracy weakens,” explains Dr Sarwar Ali, secretary of Chhayanaut, one of Bangladesh’s most renowned cultural institutions, founded in 1961.

The evening sky lights up in Dhaka as young girls wearing ankle bells run about the brightly decorated corridors of this cultural hub, where expressions of rebellion or compassion are taught through dance and song. The day’s classes are over and parents wait outside for their children, who look forward to another day of joyful expression. Chhayanaut, widely known for promoting Bengali music, heritage and culture, was attacked a month ago by assailants who broke instruments and ransacked rooms. Broken tablas and other musical instruments are stacked in a corner, almost artistically rejecting the shallowness of attempts to repress an inclusive society.

Ali, 80, places this moment in historical perspective. “These attacks on people, cultural spaces and media houses are not new,” he says. “Cultural institutions represent openness and plurality. When they are attacked, democracy itself is under attack.” He is also careful to distinguish faith from extremism and violence. “This is not about religion. It is about narrow interpretations of identity.”

What has changed in recent months is the brazen visibility of violence and the dangerous attempt to frame culture as the enemy. During the July 2024 rebellion, a large number of arms and ammunition were looted from police and other law enforcement agencies. The numbers were pegged at around 5,000 firearms and more than 6.5 lakh rounds of ammunition. The police claim to have recovered some, but thousands are believed to be still missing. “I plan to procure an arms licence,” says a filmmaker in his 40s who has been vocal in his criticism of the past regime. “I don’t feel safe in the country any more. My wife and young daughter are also under threat. I keep receiving threat calls.”

The scars run deep, beginning in Dhaka’s traffic-ridden lanes and opening into wide stretches of green fields along the Brahmaputra, landscapes that once displayed the richness of fertile land, art, literature and folk culture. The five-hour drive to Mymensingh, about 120km north of Dhaka, shows the development of highways over the last few years, making travel smoother, though some flyovers are still under construction as infrastructure work has slowed recently. Markets in small village clusters along the highways are teeming with people going about their daily business, selling wares and vegetables. Mymensingh is one of the largest electoral constituencies in Bangladesh, but today it carries the blot of a gruesome killing in one of its smallest villages, Tarakanda. The fields of Tarakanda wear a solemn look as memories of a local man being hung from a tree and burnt by a mob on December 18 tell the story of a hollowed social structure.

The Robidas family stands as a testament to this breakdown of civil society in a country struggling to rebuild. Meghna Robidas, 20, stands speechless before a photograph of her husband Dipu Chandra Das holding their one-and-a-half-year-old daughter in his arms, wondering whether she will be able to rebuild her life. Dipu’s mother, Shefali Robidas, has been in a state of shock ever since. Dipu worked at a government-owned garment factory in Bhakula during the week and returned home to Tarakanda on weekends. The entire family waited eagerly for his return. His monthly income ranged between 18,000 and 20,000 taka, which family members said was sufficient to manage household expenses.

Dilip, Dipu’s cousin, said he had no enmity with anyone in their village of around 50 households, largely inhabited by members of a minority community. He said the family had close friends from the majority community and had always lived peacefully. “He was promoted recently and his colleagues got jealous. They got into a fight with him that day and beat him up before throwing him out of the factory premises. Then the mob took over.” The family has been visited by workers from the BNP, the Jamaat and even the Awami League offering help. Awami supporters are scared to disclose their identity.

The family’s faces light up at the mention of India. “Our family links go back to Jalpaiguri. I have been a fan of Mithun Chakraborty,” says one of them. Dilip, who plays the flute and sings at community functions, is an aspiring musician. “Will you see my Facebook page?” he asks excitedly, briefly breaking into English. Dilip sings from the heart. He may not be as eloquent as celebrated poets and singers, but his raw passion brings life to the forlorn community.

Today, as people in Bangladesh struggle to define their identity, the impatience that accompanies this search has bred unease and mistrust. What makes the situation more precarious is the frustration that has built up among the youth who took part in the student-led protests. Destruction is brutal and fast. Rebuilding is slow. It demands patience, humility and care.

Mahfuz Alam, the brain behind the student-led protests, symbolises this struggle to move forward after the mass euphoria has faded. “Today, Bangladesh is stuck in a familiar cycle: everyone is searching for someone to blame. That happens everywhere after a popular mass uprising.” Alam, who recently quit his role as an adviser in the interim government to fight elections, decided not to contest after he felt the student-led party NCP had compromised its aspiration to create a new political system by joining hands with the Jamaat-e-Islami for vote-bank politics, while the BNP was too top-heavy to make space for him. “The BNP and the Jamaat have already recaptured institutions without being in power. I saw this first-hand in the government.”

“Bangladesh politics has been pushed back into a binary—secularists versus Islamists,” he says. “We were trying to move beyond that, to focus on nation building rather than cultural or ideological warfare. Today, politics is once again trapped in the 1971 narrative. The aspirations of 2024 are nowhere to be seen.”

So where does hope reside? It lies, stubbornly, in democracy. As Bangladesh prepares for its first competitive national election in nearly two decades, the challenge is enormous. A prolonged absence of electoral legitimacy and a society fractured along political, cultural and identity lines make this task difficult. The ordinary Bangladeshi is neither impressed nor enthused. He is nervously hoping for change that secures his daily commute from home to work without fear of petty crime, theft, extortion, killing and hooliganism suffered especially over the last one and a half years. Others hope the political class has learnt its lesson, that the cycle of corruption finally ends and their long-missed freedom to speak, share and criticise can be earned back.

“I will vote for stability and inclusivity. We want good relations with our neighbours. We are waiting to travel to India,” says Ismail, who works in a coffee shop and wants to explore new opportunities. For those whose daily life is a struggle, casting a vote is far down the priority list. “I have never voted. If I can earn daily bread for my family, that is enough,” says Haroon, a daily wager in Mymensingh.

For women like Zamila, 53, who grew up in Dhaka and voted for the Awami League when she turned 18 in 2008, the faith has worn thin. She says she has not found her name on the voter list since. “I tried to vote in 2013, but my name was not there. I am not sure if it will be there this time either. So I am not going to vote.” Zamila is pragmatic. “Hasina might have been authoritarian and corrupt. But she brought development to the country. I really hope whoever comes to power brings more jobs, infrastructure and facilities for people.”

In this altered moment, the BNP appears to hold an electoral advantage, widely seen as capable of restoring stability, while the Jamaat is also expected to increase its vote share.

Since the mid-1990s, Bangladesh politics has largely been framed as a binary contest, the Awami League on one side and an ‘anti-Awami League’ front on the other. That front was anchored by the BNP and the Jamaat-e-Islami. “It was a purely electoral alliance against the Sheikh Hasina-led Awami League,” says Dr Faham Abdus, a Bangladesh-born researcher and political commentator.

That strategy paid off handsomely in 2001, when the alliance secured a two-thirds majority in parliament. Yet, beyond opposition to Awami League dominance, the partnership had little ideological coherence. “The BNP has long positioned itself as a liberal, inclusive, centre-right party in the Bangladeshi context, culturally Muslim but politically non-Islamist,” says Asif. “In contrast, the Jamaat is explicitly Islamist-oriented.” Economically, however, all major Bangladeshi parties occupy a centrist space, making culture and political identity the real fault lines. “Once the Awami League is not in the electoral fray,” says BNP general secretary Mirza Fakhrul Alamgir, “the BNP and the Jamaat have naturally come to opposite sides.”

However, Jamaat leader Mir Ahamad Bin Quasem, popularly known as Barrister Arman, believes there are no absolutes in politics. “We are expecting the Jamaat alliance to give a very close contest to the BNP and if there is a tie, electoral pressure can mount and throw surprises.” Arman, a Jamaat candidate from the Mirpur constituency, is pinning his hopes on common grievances such as alleged enforced disappearances and human rights violations during the Hasina regime to build a working relationship with the BNP. For him, this relationship is personal. His rival candidate, Sanjida Islam Tuli, a human rights activist and founder of Mayer Daak, a platform for families of victims of enforced disappearance, is like a sister to him. “Tuli’s brother is still missing,” says Arman. “I wish her well. I praise her on every platform.” Asked whether the Jamaat leadership frowns upon this, he says, “This is an emotional issue for us. We don’t want to fight our political rivals. We have common issues to address.” The emotive issues Arman refers to resonate across parties. Tuli shares similar empathy for Arman, whose father went missing between 2016 and 2024 and was freed after the July protests.

The BNP is banking not only on modern conservatives and centrists but also on sections of disillusioned Awami League supporters who prioritise law and order over ideological loyalty. Another advantage for the BNP is its early declaration that it wishes to avoid revenge politics and focus on stable governance. “Khaleda Zia made it clear that the BNP does not want to continue the cycle of vengeance,” says an observer. “That stance matters in a country exhausted by conflict.”

The Jamaat-e-Islami, meanwhile, is witnessing a noticeable resurgence and its vote share has risen from the single-digit figures it commanded two decades ago. While the BNP struggled with organisational problems following the 17-year exile of Tarique Rahman, the Jamaat, despite being banned under Hasina’s regime, used the time to work on the ground and build a strong cadre base. A recent example is the victory of its student wing, Chhatra Shibir, in the Dhaka University elections.

The NCP-Jamaat alliance is already being courted by global players. Whether it is the European Union or American diplomats such as Tracey Ann Jacobson, the US chargé d’affaires till early January this year who hosted NCP leaders like Nahid Islam in recent months, or US trade representatives holding virtual meetings with the Jamaat leaders, interest in Bangladesh’s democratic transition extends beyond the neighbourhood of India, Pakistan or China.

For the Jamaat, the alliance with NCP offers an opportunity to openly claim the July movement and put forward young faces to counter the BNP’s advantage. For the NCP, which has little vote outreach beyond Dhaka, it is a question of political survival. “We are clearly explaining that this is an electoral alliance made out of practical necessity,” says Nahid Islam, convenor of the NCP, aware of the disillusionment among some prominent faces such as Tasnim Zara, who resigned in protest, arguing that an alliance with Jamaat goes against the ethos of the July protests.

“People believed there would be new thinking, new politics. But if the outcome is another power-seeking alliance, then we must ask, what exactly is new politics?” says Shamaruh Mirza, a biomedical scientist and human rights activist based in Australia. Mirza says the BNP’s progressive plan outlined by Tarique Rahman has resonance among the diaspora. Back home, she concedes, whoever governs next must remember that “authority without humility will breed resistance. The country cannot afford that again.”

The binary contest, however, cannot be viewed in isolation. It is a by-product of the fact that the Awami League, with its large vote base, finds itself out of the electoral fray. All major political parties are keenly aware that the conduct of the previous three elections discredited the Awami League and that any misadventure now could invite a similar fate. For, whichever side comes to power, public expectations will remain high. Beyond debates over culture, identity or history, real issues on the ground, such as corruption, favouritism, institutional integrity and livelihoods, will shape voting behaviour.

This makes the fate of the Awami League’s traditional vote base one of the election’s greatest uncertainties. Three scenarios dominate political thinking. A significant portion of Awami supporters may simply abstain, especially in the absence of familiar symbols, leadership and organisational confidence. Others may shift strategically to the BNP, viewing it as the only force capable of restoring order and preventing further breakdowns in law and governance. “A much smaller fraction may drift towards the Jamaat in highly localised contexts, though this is unlikely to be decisive at the national level,” adds Asif.

There is also a growing sentiment among Awami League cadres and sections of the public that the party must reinvent itself in the post-Hasina period. For now, the prevailing view is that the BNP will be the principal beneficiary of any Awami decline, not the Jamaat. At the same time, the Jamaat is positioning itself as a major power broker in a post-election scenario. “Pre-election coordination between the Jamaat and the student-led party born out of the 2024 movement has normalised it as a mainstream electoral partner,” says Zillur. “At the same time, it has created tensions within youth politics, where secular and liberal voices remain uneasy.” Critics continue to raise serious concerns, particularly over minority rights, women’s rights and cultural pluralism, as well as the party’s historical baggage. “If they emerge as the second force or coalition pivot, they will shape the character of the next government,” explains Zillur.

For now, all eyes are on whether the elections can be conducted without violence or booth-level rigging and whether voters will be given a genuine opportunity to choose. Keeping a close watch is also the army, which has positioned itself as a non-partisan and stabilising force during the country’s democratic transition. This comes with a rider. “Historically, the army has had significant influence in our society,” says Major General (retd) Fazle Elahi Akbar, founder chairman of the Dhaka-based Foundation for Strategic and Development Studies. “If elected leaders fail again, the army will once more side with the people.” A breakdown of the electoral process would mean the army stepping in, regaining control and clearing the path for a caretaker government until democracy can be tested again. That is the last option the country and its people may not wish to exercise this time.

The struggle to embrace democracy in Bangladesh, therefore, is not merely an electoral process. It is a test of whether a new Bangladesh can create space where culture, dissent, history and power coexist without fear or favour. More importantly, the larger question that remains unanswered is whether the country can finally end the cycle of assassinations and exiles.