Opinion Politics in Bangladesh: One year after Sheikh Hasina’s ouster, it is all agenda and no vision

Unlike uprisings elsewhere with similarly high participation of intellectuals and educated sections, the July uprising was characterised by a lack: A lack of declarative texts. Imagine the American Revolution without the text of the “Declaration of Independence”, the French Revolution without the “Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen”. Or the 1960s’ protest movements across the world without their famous slogans and manifestos. The best example of all is, of course, the Communist Manifesto.

For Bangladesh, it has been a year of “rule by committees”, including the “reform” commissions which were delegated with the task of formalising the textual aspects of the revolution. The process unsurprisingly dragged on, with the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and the Jamaat-e-Islami easily intervening and influencing the decisions to their favour, in spite of the interim government taking care not to appoint members openly partisan to these parties.

All the struggle, if we are to believe the student leaders and the chairmen of various commissions, is to produce that elusive text which will metaphysically salvage Bangladesh from both its past and future. The only things they miss are the present as it is and the people as they are. Even the usual inspired writing that results from a moment of such high energy is absent here. Only insipid commentary, poetry and theory that vilifies Hasina and her rule have been produced. Ironically, during the rule of Hasina, not everything was about Hasina; after her ouster, though, it seems that everything is haunted by the ghost of Hasina. The towering presence of Sheikh Hasina is now being replaced by her towering absence; the new minions are no match.

The students, though, have created one big legacy — that of anti-fascism without fascism. Over the past year, Bangladesh has seen the flourishing of anti-fascism in popular rhetoric. The pejorative use of “fascism” has proliferated, without any real referent. It can refer to anything uncomfortable — it has been used as an excuse to conduct mass arrests, target journalists, oppose reforms, support reforms, delay elections, call for elections, criticise bureaucratic delays, create bureaucratic delays, and most of all, as a talking point.

Philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis defines ideology as something that allows us to distance ourselves from what we do. This is exactly the function of “fascism” in Bangladesh today: It helps to mystify rather than justify an action. Under this ungrounded anti-fascism, the country goes on doing what it has been doing, just with different people at the helm and a moral high ground that allows them to pursue their goal ruthlessly. This solipsistic anti-fascism will surely sleep through the actual social and political problems that Naya Bangladesh is witnessing.

Kuriakose Mathew teaches politics and international relations at the School of Liberal Arts and Management Studies, P P Savani University, Surat. Arjun Ramachandran is a research scholar at the Department of Communication, University of Hyderabad