The kids are alright, how about you?

An appeal to fellow 40-plus folks to wake up from selfish slumber and join our kids

This post contains violent and disturbing images. I recommend you watch them, with full sound, pause, reflect on what you see, and act as your conscience demands.

This was written three days ago. Since then, more disturbing images and footages of the massacre have appeared from Bangladesh as the internet connection has been returned. More disturbing propaganda by the regime too. There is also disturbing news of security forces sieging entire streets, conducting door-to-door searches, and detaining, abducting and torturing young people.

The main audience of this piece, the English-reading comfortably upper middle class middle aged men and women of Dhaka, what will it take for you to rise up against this murderous regime?

‘There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen’, said Lenin. About a week ago, in a decades-old Bangladesh, social media posts of some old friends caught my eyes. There was a bemoaning of razakar-tagging. There was a concern about the trust deficit that people feel about the authorities. There was empathy about the bleak outlook faced by the educated, urban youth.

No, there was not a whiff of direct criticism of the regime. These posts were couched in very polite, oblique language. But the interesting thing about the posts is that they were there.

These folks have lived their comfortable lives, trying to expand their enterprises, and helping those close to them do better. Politics didn’t seem to affect them. In fact, they had remained silent about, if not actively cheered on, manifold transgressions of the regime in the past 15 years, from the Pilkhana massacre to the January 2024 dummy election.

Yet, something about the imagery of a young man opening his chest to bullets penetrated their cocoons. One might cynically characterize posts of some of the relatively famous individuals as strategic positioning. Let me give them the benefit of the doubt and accept that they sincerely felt the rotten state of things in Bangladesh of mid-July 2024.

There is a lot of explainer-type content about what underpinned the initial demands about the quotas in public service jobs, how Hasina’s callous insults infuriated a generation, the massive popular uprising of 18-20 July and the brutal suppression by the regime. Nonetheless, a few aspects are worth repeating.

First, the quotas for freedom fighters’ families are hard to justify on any grounds of social equality. There are far better ways to support the war veterans. These quotas were about patronage and clientelism more than anything else.

Second, the student movement has been building for a while. It was not noticed or appreciated by many pundits and analysts, myself included. Some even pooh-poohed it as crass materialism —they don’t care about any higher ideals like human rights or democracy and are only concerned about getting cushy public service jobs. This line of thinking not only missed the growing momentum of the movement on the ground, but also failed to appreciate the precarious labour market faced by young graduates.

Thanks to the neglect and abuse of the education sector by the regime, graduates of our public universities are not equipped for globally competitive private sector jobs. The regime’s mismanagement of the macroeconomy means it is now much more expensive to go overseas. In a precarious world, even a menial public service job offers certainty. This is why the initial movement resonated with students.

Third, the participation of various segments of the society, from the students of private universities who come from the affluent suburbs like Uttara or Mirpur DOHS to transport workers in Gabtali speaks of a society that is seething with discontent. Never mind the pundits. Those who live in Bangladesh and have remained ignorant, wilfully or otherwise, about how their neighbours feel must open their eyes because, in a densely packed land like ours, no one is safe unless everyone is safe.

Fourth, the widespread anger about the regime brutality is creating a groundswell of activism and clear appreciation of politics among the younger generations. Images of female students in burqa-nekab and jeans-tops marching side by side speaks of a generation that knows the importance of fundamental rights over identity politics. The clearly articulated demands of the students, and their use of technology to organise and mobilise, speak of political acumen maturity. Old people who disparaged the youth as ‘I hate politics generation’ didn’t see this coming, and now need to reflect.

And that brings me to the last point.

The true ‘I hate politics’ generation is not the students —mostly 15-25 year olds, many of whom have no political memory other than the Hasina dictatorship —but their parents: people of my generation, in our 40s and 50s. It is this generation, my own, that stopped caring about politics after the 1990s. We turned away from politics at our student life, and stopped voting in our adult life, saying ‘both sides are bad’. So, we shrugged when Hasina stole three elections from us.

We confined ourselves to our private spheres and allowed the public institutions to be systematically destroyed by the regime —the more affluent of us didn’t care because we could afford alternatives, and the poorer ones accepted that in Bangladesh the rich do what they want the poor suffer what they must.

We remained silent, looked away, or even cheered for ‘strategic positioning’, Hasina’s sins and crimes over the years —after all, we were safe.

Well, we are no longer safe. In the last week, Hasina has killed our neighbours. Next time, it may well be us.

As the internet reopens, feeds are flooded with stories and videos that are too hard to bear. The kids who lost their friends will carry their trauma, fight their private demons, and will organise to slay the demon that is the Hasina regime. They will be alright.

But dear ‘I hate politics’ reader in 40s and 50s, what about you?

First published in Nuraldeen.

Videos and images of the uprising

The volunteer in the last video was killed by the murderous Hasina regime minutes after this was filmed.