Bangladesh Soured

Legacy of Student
Politics
By Naeem Mohaiemen New York, NY, USA
November 2, 2012

Artist Naeem Mohaiemen examines the

volatility of student unions as the
protagonists of a ferocious and
instrumentalized politics on university
campuses across Bangladesh.

A student stands to speak at Jahangirnagar University, 2012. Photo by Saydia Gulrukh.

A friend sent me a jubilant newspaper clipping by mail from Bangladesh. The

manila envelope took two weeks to arrive at Oberlin Collegeit was pre-internet
time. The headline read, in 48-point font, The Photo We Were Not Allowed To

Print. Underneath was a grainy image of students running over barricades as

shield-carrying police chased them with sticks. That was 1990.
I tenderly laminated the page and attached it to the door of my dormitory room,
writing a note above it in black marker ink: This is student politics.
While I was navigating my first year at Oberlin, Bangladeshs longest-running
military regime (19821990) was overthrown by a sustained tide of mass protests.
The abrupt end of the junta, with President Hussain Mohammad Ershad
abandoned by his own army, recalled the last scene of Satyajit Rays absurdist
classicHirak Rajar Deshe (1980). As a grand statue of the king is pulled down,
people cheer dori dhore maro tan/raja hobe khan khan (now grab and pull that
rope/the king will shatter into pieces).

My dormitory provocation was a

reminder of other contexts, where the
stakes were higher. People died,
governments fell.
Oberlin has a long progressive tradition, going back to its antebellum history, and
more recently, its organizing role in the civil rights and Vietnam War era. In the
1980s, it was a flashpoint for anti-apartheid activism. But with Nelson Mandela out
of prison, campus political organizing seemed to be turning inward. The biggest
campaign at that moment was about students not being allowed to protest on the
presidents manicured house lawn. My dormitory provocation was a reminder of
other contexts, where the stakes were higher. People died, governments fell.
But within that laminated image was also a faint touch of glamorization. I had left
for America in 1989, just as the Dhaka University battles against the military
reached fever pitch and classes were halted. I never got the results of my first
year exam. Instead, I started again as a freshman at Oberlin. Looking back at the
Dhaka years, I tended to get misty-eyed about the political power of that campus.

The euphoric news headlines about the fall of the Ershad government obscured
the high price paid by students. Campus protests led to the governments frequent
orders to shut down classes, which produced the dreaded session jams
extreme delays in graduation caused by the recurrent closures. Some of my
classmates, who stayed back in Dhaka, waited seven years to get their final
degrees. Politics had real, immediate costs for them; possibility and danger were
perpetually entwined.
A Long Tradition
In Bangladesh, student politics, physically based around university campuses,
have a long and effective tradition. During various stages in the countrys history
as British India, then East Pakistan, and finally an independent nation after 1971
resistance to power has often crystallized through student protests. Key
anniversaries are routinely memorialized: 1952 (language riots after Pakistan
attempted to impose Urdu language on all regions); 196869 (anti-military
protests that toppled General Ayub Khan); 1971 (the Bangladesh independence
war, during which students and professors were targeted by death squads); 1990
(the ouster of the Ershad military regime); and most recently, 2007 (anti-army
riots which led to the departure of an unelected caretaker government).

To be a public university student in

Bangladesh is to also be a protagonist in
a ferocious and instrumentalized politics.
Within this legacy, however, are three butscounter-streams that threaten the
future state of public education. First, as universities became political nerve
centers, their role as research institutions diminished. The brain drain is at a high
point, with many scholars now choosing to join nongovernmental organizations,
think tanks or overseas universities instead. Second, as public universities have
become ensnared in the notorious session jam, and in response to a population
bulge of people under the age of 30 (around 70% of the total population), private
universities have mushroomed. This means the class diversity once present on

public campuses has vanished. Students who can afford it are fleeing to private
universities.
The third crisis for public education is related to the universitys central role in
anti-state protests, which have repeatedly brought down governments, both
civilian and military. Aware and afraid of this potential, every democratically
elected government since the 1990 fall of Ershad has focused on capturing
university campuses. Each national political party has a student wing (subject of
my earnest yearning in the pre-1990 era) and uses it to control the campus. All
this is accompanied by muscle power, including the aggressive display and use of
hockey sticks, machetes, and pistols.
Outside the Capital
While the central campus of Dhaka University has long been besieged by power
politics, many of us like to think, perhaps naively, that Jahangirnagar
University can hold on to a different reality. Located just outside the capital, in the
suburb of Savar, the school maintains a reputation for having a strong leftist
campus. Many of its students have gone on to play active roles in national political
campaigns, including the ongoing Campaign for Protecting Oil & Gas from
Multinationals and the movement against open-pit coal mining. Students and
professors with links to Jahangirnagar have also been involved in a recent attempt
to create a broad alliance of leftist parties, called Bam Boloy (Left Belt).
In spite of a strong left history, Jahangirnagar is now gripped by the same muscle
politics strangling other public campuses. As the countrys only fully residential
campus, the sprawling university is also a small town and community in miniature.
This means there is also more potential for a lucrative division of spoils. Student
political groups not only guide political activity, they also control the campus
economy, collecting money from transactions like the allocation of hostel housing,
on-campus transportation, and shops.

After the Awami League party came to power in 2009, its student wing (the
Bangladesh Chhatra League or BCL) took control of the campus. Since then, the
BCL has split into two factions over rivalries about the appointment of student
council seats. One faction is aligned with the universitys Vice Chancellor (VC),
chemistry professor Shariff Enamul Kabir, and was ascendant in the battle for
control of the campus.

Student graffiti mocking Vice Chancellor Shariff Enamul Kabir covers the grounds of the
university campus, 2012. The thought bubble reads, I will eat you, I am the VC. Photo by
Saydia Gulrukh.

Things came to a head earlier this year when a student was killed by members of
his rival faction. The vicious nature of the murdera prolonged beating with rods,

within earshot of security guardsalong with a photo of VC Kabir eating cake from
the hands of one of the alleged ringleaders, generated angry headlines. Alumni
and former professors of the university joined forces with student activists and
teachers under the slogan Save Jahangirnagar.

Campus organizing makes student life

perpetually volatileone step away from
becoming homeless.
After a summer of protests, rallies and hunger strikes by professors and students,
a habitually obstinate government (witness the removal of Muhammad Yunus from
Grameen Bank, and the World Bank bridge corruption scandal) finally backed
down. The Vice Chancellor was removed, and Professor Anwar Hossain was
brought over from Dhaka University to serve as the new VC.
The situation is still not stable. The symbolic removal of one man did not purge the
powerful student wing that owes him loyalty. While I was writing this, new faction
battles shook the campus. The authorities shut down classes for the second time
this year, and asked students to vacate their hostel rooms. A few days later,
classes reopened. This unstable cycle may continue.
To be a public university student in Bangladesh is to also be a protagonist in a
ferocious and instrumentalized politics. Successful campus organizing has national
impact; but this same organizing also makes student life perpetually volatileone
step away from becoming homeless, forced into permanent vacation.

A student enduring a hunger strike in protest of Vice Chancellor Kabirs role in the death of a
Jahangirnagar University student, 2012. Photo by Saydia Gulrukh.

A Day Of
By the summer, the campus had returned to some semblance of normality, and I
went out for a visit. Manosh Chowdhury, a professor of anthropology who was also
one of the leaders of the movement against the VC, had asked me to give a talk to
students. Jahangirnagar is home to the countrys first anthropology department
and I was curious to meet the students.
Manosh has diverse interests and likes to make unexpected connections. Coaxing
shy students into asking questions, he linked art practices with political activism.
When anthropologist and activist Saydia Gulrukh gave a talk to the same

classroom a few weeks later, I could see (via a students mobile phone video)
Manosh reciting a poem tracing the colonial roots of an Ivory Soap jingleone I
had translated for Saydia. Watching this and other clips of him speaking, you get
the sense of a restless polymath, energized by new overlaps and hybrid forms.
Later, Manosh took us to lunch at the bot tola (banyan tree). I imagined eating
under it, but the area had proper dhaba restaurants, and the tree did not actually
provide us shade (rather, it served as a geographic marker for rickshaw drivers).
Unlike other teachers who choose to stay in the faculty lounge, Manosh knew
many of the students there and spoke with them readily. Earlier, he had told me,
If I cant have real interactions with students, whats the point of teaching here?
Among the students who joined our lunch table was a cultural activist from the
theater department. His arm was in a cast, and his girlfriend sat next to him and
gently helped him eat (the fish bones would probably be difficult to pick out with
one hand). Manosh explained that he had been one of the protesters, and VCaligned thugs had broken his arm.
He seemed embarrassed at the attention, and went back to eating.
I asked, Do you think its over? Will the campus return to normal?
He replied, We won a small victory, but its only beginning. Long way to go.
I wondered what the next year would bring for the movement, and for this
student. The cause was just, but I hoped he would not become collateral damage,
losing years of classes while national political forces played games with the
campus.
Manosh cautioned that I was being too simplistic in analyzing the public/private
university tradeoff. Private universities are seen as a local fact of negotiating the
social classes. But with some close observation, you may find them to be an
expression of a global project.

A global project to depoliticize education.

A long way away from that laminated image at Oberlin.

Manosh Chowdhury speaking to students, video by Naeem Mohaiemen.

Special thanks to the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation for making this Global
Resident Report possible.

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One Response to Bangladesh: Soured Legacy of

Student Politics
1.

logicat says:
November 3, 2012 at 2:56 am
the reason that university campuses were ground zero for political
resistance in the 60s and 80s is because when you have an unelected
government in power supported by the might of the police and
military, the only form of resistance to it must by necessity be a rival
formation of young men able and willing to commit violence in
response to the violence meted out by the state, and the universities
are the only repository for a critical mass of such young men. even in
democratic times, the same holds true, since the party in power
exercises political control largely through the mobilization of armed
goon squads whose job it is to neutralize any threats to the regime that
could come from the campuses. you only need student politics when
the party in power is itself guilty of using armed force to maintain
power. but of course due to the nature of the beast (money, power,
patronage), the party in power almost always manages to dominate
the campuses, making them ineffective sites for the formation of

resistance to government repression. if student politics were banned

and the campuses turned into arms-free zones, we would all be better
off.