Notes from a Revolution

Salimullah Khan is a Dhaka-based political analyst and public intellectual who teaches at University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh. Snigdhendu Bhattacharya speaks to him about the implications of the Bangladesh uprising

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Salimullah Khan is a Dhaka-based political analyst and public intellectual who teaches at University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh. Snigdhendu Bhattacharya speaks to him about the implications of the Bangladesh uprising

How would you describe the developments of the past one and a half months? 

The events of July-August represent a festival of the people against an oppressive, exploitative and tyrannical government, which repressed the will of a sovereign people with the brute force of a neo-colonial regime. 

They are best described as a return to history, as Alain Badiou said for one. By history, I mean that pristine ethic of equality, human dignity and social justice that got embodied in the 1971 Liberation War of the nation. These events are a return, in the sense of the people’s reassertion of their right to liberty and human dignity, in a word, the right to freedom of truth. 

The fierceness of repression, as seen in the last one month and a half before the fall of the regime, was only a concentrated expression of its one-and-a-half decade-long record of counter-insurgency warfare, denial of trade union rights and free and fair elections, forced disappearances and the enforcement of an array of draconian laws such as the Cyber Security Act, 2023.

The July-August revolution is likely to leave a historical legacy for all usurpers in the future if they want to learn: any attempt against a sovereign people’s right to liberty is bound to fail. A united people can never be vanquished.

What are your impressions of and expectations from the interim government?