On August 5th the Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina resigned. Hasina was forced out by a mass uprising initially led by students, that then spread across the country in response to the government trying to violently suppress the demonstrations. The regime had long lost the popular mandate to rule, had lost the battle of narratives and finally had lost the streets. By the evening of August 5th, a few hours after Hasina had resigned and fled to India, rampaging mobs attacked and torched every symbol of the regime in Dhaka and elsewhere in Bangladesh.
Workers’ rage needs communist direction
The fall of Hasina came from a combination of mass anger of workers and students taking to the streets and showing once again the power of the working class. At the same time the lack of political direction of the mass movement has allowed the situation to be used to benefit different ruling class factions in Bangladesh who are no better than Hasina, as well as the Chinese imperialists. This is a lesson that keeps getting repeated. A workers movement, no matter how militant, must be led by class conscious ideas to benefit the working class. Ultimately only a communist movement can free the working class from the boss’ dictatorship. That’s because workers then run all aspects of society.
Since the fall of the brutal dictator on August 5th, the winners appear to be the Bangladesh military which is firmly in control of the government, the Chinese imperialists who were unhappy with the discord under Hasina and the fundamental Islamist parties who were suppressed by the Awami League (Economist 8/10). None of these forces will be good for the working class in Bangladesh.
The politics of the mass student movement which started the uprising has been muddled as a wide range of factions joined in for their own purposes. The initial movement against the restoring of patronage in government job quotas for the ruling party was seized on by the Islamist students. This movement is friendly with Pakistan and the opposition party movements who see a chance to gain power and are likely more connected to China (Stratfor.com, 8/9).
Chinese bosses’ exploit racism
The Chinese imperialists have steadily increased their presence in Bangladesh, with there now being over 700 Chinese companies and $1.4 billion in investment. This money has increased and acted in unison with rising anti-India sentiment in Bangladesh (orcachuna.org, 2/5), a common theme of the anti-Hasina movement. Already, just since the fall of Hasina, there has been an increase in attacks against Hindu workers in Bangladesh (AP 8/13).
Few could have foreseen this turn of events in 2008, when Hasina’s party, the Awami League, won a landslide victory in an election that recorded the highest voter turnout in Bangladesh’s electoral history. Yet, in the 15 years following that election, Hasina unleashed a reign of terror that is unparalleled in the recent history of Bangladesh.
Every institution in the country – the police, the bureaucracy, the judiciary, the universities, the chambers of commerce, the labor unions and even her own Awami League Party - was hollowed out and placed in firm control of bureaucrats and politicians loyal to Hasina. The state institutions were then used to crush any last vestige of political opposition in the country and to financially benefit Hasina’s inner circle. Political dissidents and opposition organizers disappeared in the hundreds, as they were detained, tortured for years or murdered in secret prisons – the “Aaynaghar” or “the room of mirrors.” Financial corruption reached such ludicrous proportions that one of Hasina’s personal assistants was alleged to have amassed 34 million dollars in kickbacks before he fled the country.
And yet, the Awami League won three national elections – in 2013, 2018 and 2024 - essentially uncontested and without any major political crisis.
Hasina’s political propaganda rested on three main arguments. First - the Awami League was the rightful political heir of the freedom fighters (the “Muktijoddha”), while the opposition was a coalition of groups who historically opposed the struggle or tried to subvert it – the “Rajakar”, as she would disdainfully refer to them. The imposing statues of Sheikh Mujib and the celebration of the liberation struggle therefore became symbols of political legitimacy for the regime. The second argument was that the Awami League was the only party capable of keeping the right-wing Islamist extremists from power. This was cynically linked to the physical security of the religious minorities, safeguarding of their property and places of worship. The third argument was that the country could prosper economically only under Sheikh Hasina’s leadership. The government undertook mega-projects to drive the point home, even when the economic logic for such projects was highly dubious.
The limitations of student protests
This well-rehearsed narrative, aided by a brutal state machinery worked well for a while. However, months before her final uncontested election, it was becoming increasingly clear that Hasina was losing the battle of narratives, both at home and abroad, in trying to justify the brutality of the police state against all forms of political dissent. A depressed economic outlook post-pandemic, aggravated by a slew of bad economic decisions, didn’t help either.
It was at this historical juncture that the student protests exploded. The Awami League deployed its standard playbook with the police massacring hundreds of protestors, critically injuring and abducting many thousands. As the repression increased over the days and the weeks, a fractured political opposition came together and ultimately ousted Hasina. What happens going forward is still difficult to predict, but without a revolutionary communist movement led by the working class, one capitalist faction or another will continue the brutal oppression of workers in Bangladesh.
