Statues of liberty and tyranny

Every revolution has a defining moment. The Yanks had it when they hurled tea chests into the Boston Bay.

- R. PRASANNAN

The French had it when they stormed the Bastille. The Bolsheviks had it when battleship Aurora fired blank shots at the Winter Palace in St Petersburg.

Revolutions, these days, have their defining moments when icons fall in town squares, or mobs invade palaces of the powerful. We saw it in Budapest in 1956, in several east European and central Asian capitals in the 1990s, in Cairo, Tripoli and Baghdad in the new century, and in Colombo two years ago. Last Monday, we saw it in Dhaka.

This time, however, few of us rejoiced; rather, many shed a tear. Not for the icon that fell in the town square, or for his politically misguided daughter who abused her power and wasted the democratic dividend that had been bestowed on her. We shed a tear for Bangladesh, a nation we had helped create.