Years ago, when the government was going full tilt at implementing the Citizenship Amendment Act, which, together with the National Register of Citizens, threatened a communal conflict of massive dimensions, I had written: “Today, the issue, which is quite familiar to the ruling party, has spun out of control in Assam and all parts of the country, particularly in urban areas. The attempt to isolate Muslims in the category of illegal migrants has boomeranged. Riots, agitations, hartals and violence have rocked the country. This is not an agitation spearheaded by Muslims. It is a spontaneous outburst in which all communities are expressing their ire. There seems to be no indication that it is masterminded or led by any political party. Political leaders of other parties appear to follow the agitators.”
The Bangladesh conflagration, which drove out the well-entrenched Awami League and the seemingly immovable Sheikh Hasina, brings to mind once again the power of the youth and its inability to stand injustice and unfairness, their strong resistance to untruth at the top, their unwillingness to accept a regime that they feel is tainted with corruption and is insensitive to the real problems of an impatient younger generation. It also highlights the fact that the generation gap between those who rule and the aspiring youth is widening day by day.
This is not confined to Bangladesh. In 2022, the Aragalaya movement in Sri Lanka saw the end of the Rajapaksa hegemony. The Bangladesh movement was very similar to the Sri Lankan one, except that an attempt was made initially by the Sheikh Hasina government to ruthlessly suppress it. Hundreds died, but the movement only grew in strength until the Bangladesh Army decided that enough was enough and the killing must stop.
In Sri Lanka, violence was lesser and the police were reluctant to turn on the protesters. Two emergencies were declared. The Rajapaksas also sought divine help. The personal shaman of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa was sent with bottles of charmed water to the protest site. At the same time, Mahinda Rajapaksa’s visit to Anuradhapura to seek the blessings at the Maha Bodhi site was met with angry protests.
As in Bangladesh, in Sri Lanka the ruler’s palace was raided and pillaged, and he had to flee to the Maldives. Likewise, Hasina’s mansion Ganabhaban was ravaged by uncontrollable mobs, and she had to be rescued and flown to India by the military at a very short notice. Gotabaya was permitted to return to Sri Lanka, where he lives a non-political life in obscurity. Hasina is still in India; her future is uncertain. She is presently hated in her homeland, and there is loud clamour for her return and judicial trial.
Parallels have been drawn between the Bangladesh and Sri Lankan agitations by the agitators, too. Speaking on a Zoom call from Colombo, the Inter University Students’ Federation leader Madhushan Chandrajith recently said, “We, too, have traversed a similar path. In 2022, the Sri Lankan populace ousted the tyrannical regime of Gotabaya Rajapaksa, a racist despot.”
The Sri Lankan agitation came in the wake of a severe economic crisis. While Sri Lanka was weighed down by huge external debt, Bangladesh’s debt level is around 40 percent of the GDP. Bangladesh has been leading India in per capita GDP for four years. The official unemployment rate in Bangladesh decreased to 4.20 percent in 2023 from 4.30 percent in 2022, but youth unemployment remained high. In the global market for readymade garments, Bangladesh raced ahead of India after the removal of the European and American quota system.
Yet, the people, particularly the young, were dissatisfied and rose in revolt. The trigger is said to have been the introduction of a quota system for the children and grandchildren of Mukti Bahini soldiers who fought for freedom from Pakistan. Following resistance, this quota was given up in 2018, but Bangladesh’s courts chose to reintroduce it in a diluted form. No wonder, following the revolt, the Chief Justice has also been forced to resign.
Perhaps the figures of prosperity—GDP per capita and a sound fiscal position—did not resonate with the actual field position as the youth perceived it. Government statistics probably camouflaged what Joan Robinson called “disguised unemployment” by including casual workers and half-employed agricultural labourers in the government employment statistics.
Sri Lanka and Bangladesh are not the only examples of popular upsurge against authoritarianism. The Arab Spring caused the “biggest transformation of the Middle East since decolonisation”, as A Murad Agdemir put it in his 2016 book, The Arab Spring and Israel’s Relations with Egypt. By the end of February 2012, long-established heads of state had lost power in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen. Civil unrest broke out in Bahrain and Syria, and in Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Oman and Sudan. Minor protests occurred in Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Djibouti, Western Sahara and Palestine. The end of powerful despots like Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and Muammar Gaddafi in Libya were expressions of people’s power.
In 1976, South African students rose against the denial of proper education to black students. Armed police broke up the agitation, killing and maiming hundreds. June 16, the day on which the Soweto Uprising occurred, is now observed as the National Youth Day in South Africa.
Other examples of youth-led crusades include the environment movement fronted by Greta Thunberg and a women’s rights movement spearheaded by Malala Yusafzai. The 2022 protests in Pakistan were against economic mismanagement, tyranny, corruption and poverty.
There is undoubtedly a churn among the global youth—a refusal to accept untruth and a willingness to rise and protest against injustice. Several factors can trigger such movements locally. Tyranny and injustice towards sections of society are probably the most dominant ones. And economic distress, particularly unemployment, can create an atmosphere conducive to such movements.
Such distress cannot be wished away by putting up GDP growth figures and other financial parameters. When pain is felt by the people in the lower rungs of the socio-economic pyramid, they will believe no government that tries to hide it behind a phalanx of statistics. Wisdom lies in understanding problems at the lowest level and working towards solving them within a democratic framework, rather than waiting for the volcano to erupt.
(Views are personal)
(kmchandrasekhar@gmail.com)
K M Chandrasekhar | Former Cabinet Secretary and author of As Good as My Word: A Memoir