Bangladesh’s Student Revolution: The Quota System

by Priscila Werton and Imtiaz Mahmud

Overview

In 1971, the Bangladesh Liberation War, an armed conflict led by nationalists and a self-determination group, resulted in the independence of Bangladesh (at that time East Pakistan) from Pakistan (West Pakistan).

When Bangladesh was still part of Bengal under British rule, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (Mujib) emerged as a pivotal student activist, spearheading the country’s quest for independence. He served as both president and prime minister, representing a liberal, secular, and left-wing (nationalism, socialism, democracy and secularism) faction that evolved into the Awami League. His legacies include the secular Constitution of Bangladesh and the transformation of East Pakistan’s state apparatus into a fully independent Bangladeshi state. Mujib’s legacy is controversial among Bangladeshis due to issues such as economic mismanagement, human rights violations, and authoritarianism. The Awami League faces criticism for fostering a personality cult around Mujib.

In 1975, Mujib was assassinated along with most of his family during a military coup by a few young renegade army officers. The only survivors from Mujib’s family were his daughters, Sheikh Hasina and Sheikh Rehana, who were in Germany then. After the coup, they were barred from returning to Bangladesh and granted asylum in India. A martial law regime was established. Sheikh Hasina lived in New Delhi in exile until 1981 and, in 1996, was elected Prime Minister of Bangladesh. A murder case was subsequently initiated in the courts of Bangladesh to avenge her father’s death. Several of the fifteen assassins, including the coup leader, were arrested and put on trial. Some became fugitives, and most of them were given the death penalty.

After a controversial first term in 1996-2001, during the 2006-2008 political crisis, Hasina was detained on extortion charges (in 2007) and won the 2008 election. In 2014, she was re-elected for a third term in an election boycotted by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (her main opposition) and criticized by international observers. Hasina won a fourth term in the clouded polls of 2018 and a fifth term in 2024, marred by violence and widely held as fraudulent and rigged. Her government was marked by economic mismanagement and rampant corruption, leading to rising foreign debt, increasing inflation, youth unemployment and banking irregularities.

The Mujib family administration used left-wing agendas such as political independence and secularism as tactics to keep itself in power—a dictatorial governance disguised as democratic to manipulate the population and make political arrangements to eliminate opposition. Hasina solidified herself in power with narcissistic delusions, tampering with faith and blaming the people for the social struggles of the country.

Recent Years

There is a high demand for government jobs in Bangladesh. Due to the increasing unemployment rates, government offices provide the average population with better pay, benefits, and social security. After the Independence War, Hasina’s father instituted a quota system to include freedom fighters (war heroes), people from underrepresented districts and war-affected women in the Bangladesh Civil Service. This system has undergone several modifications and is currently the trigger for the student revolution.

Back then, having a quota system was a fair decision and widely seen as affirmative action as it aimed to include pro-independence forces and marginalized people in government jobs and rebuild the country. The system is aimed at fairness and correcting historical disparities, just like quotas in other countries, such as Brazil. Many war heroes came from marginalized communities without access to social conditions that would allow them to get government jobs by meritocracy.

It turned out that this quota system needed changing. As time progressed, the number of war veterans claiming jobs with the quota decreased, so the quota system was extended to their children in 1997. It has also been extended to all women, as the quota for the war-affected women remained unclaimed in 1985; people with disabilities; minority groups such as Indigenous people (who are not recognized as Indigenous by the government); and third-gender people (Hijras who are also known as hermaphrodites, eunuchs or transgender women. The Bangladeshi government does not recognize the entire LGBT community)[1]. So far, the quota system seems fair, but Hasina has extended the quota system to the grandchildren of war veterans, the third generation of freedom fighters’ descendants.

In 2018, students organized a peaceful movement to reform the quota system, not abolish it. The police reacted violently against the protesters, and after the confrontation, Hasina abolished the quota system in 2018, coming into force in 2020. Descendants of the freedom fighters filed a lawsuit with the Supreme Court against the decision taken by Hasina to abolish it and to claim their rights to quotas. The High Court recognized the abolition of the quota system as illegal, reinstating it in 2024.

In June 2024, the students again organized a peaceful protest calling for reforming the quota system, the July Revolution. Hasina and her ministers started to make provocative statements toward the students, which allowed the pro-government student wing, the Chatro League, to attack the peaceful quota reform movement. A clash broke out between the protesters and the Chatro League. To control the situation, Hasina’s government decided to crack down on the protesters. It started persecuting the students and the coordinators of the protest, resulting in hundreds of deaths and forced disappearances. Hasina’s Information Minister accused the students of being drug addicts and terrorists and denied any violence or deaths. After the backlash and violent crackdown against students from public universities, students from private universities who did not join the protest until July 18^th decided to support public school students, and the movement gained momentum.

The protest began in June 2024 in response to the Supreme Court of Bangladesh reinstating 56% quotas in the civil service, where 30% were reserved for the descendants of freedom fighters. Students feel like they have a limited opportunity based on merit. The response to the reestablished quota system for government jobs quickly spread throughout the country, gathering civilian support because of the growing dissatisfaction against an oppressive intervention. The situation was further complicated by many other ongoing concerns, like the government’s inability to manage a prolonged economic downturn, reports of rampant corruption, human rights violations, and the absence of democratic channels for initiating changes.

The government sought to suppress the protests by shutting down all educational institutions. Then, deployed police and armed forces declared a shoot-at-sight curfew and an unprecedented government-ordered internet and mobile connectivity blackout nationwide that effectively isolated Bangladesh from the rest of the world. Around mid-July, the Bangladeshi government blocked social media in the country, including Facebook, TikTok, and WhatsApp, for over a week.

Despite the curfew restrictions, the movement remained ongoing as it expanded its demands to 9 points, including accountability for violence, Hasina’s apologies and government ministers’ resignation. The government’s use of widespread violence against the public turned the student protest into a people’s uprising. On August 3^rd, the movement turned their nine demands into one demand, which was the resignation of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her cabinet to step down and take responsibility for the deaths and called for nationwide civil disobedience. In the meantime, the government denies that its security forces killed any protestors.

As of August 2^nd, there were 215 confirmed deaths, more than 20,000 injuries, and more than 11,000 arrests in various parts of the country. According to the Bangladesh Health Ministry, more than 1000 people were killed during the protest[2]. UNICEF reported that at least 32 children were killed during July’s protests, with many more injured and detained. However, determining the exact number of deaths has been difficult because the government reportedly restricted hospitals from sharing information with the media without police permission, and numerous individuals with gunshot wounds were buried without identification.

August 4^th was the deadliest day as the pro-government activists and their youth and student wings coordinately launched a brutal attack on the protestors, killing more than 100 people. Subsequently, the protesters called for a long march in Dhaka to force Hasina to resign. On August 5^th, hundreds of thousands of people took over the streets and started to march towards the Gana Baban, the Prime Minister’s official residence; under pressure, Hasina stepped down and fled to India with her sister.

Connections with Brazil’s upcoming 2024 elections:

Unlike the one in Bangladesh, the left-wing movement in Brazil is not a dictatorship in disguise. It fights to guarantee citizens’ rights and fairness. The movement’s agenda is not to keep the left in power, eliminate the opposition, or respond violently to widespread protests. The Brazilian Left is a movement for social change and the legitimate empowerment of the people. Although often criticized for not being united, the left in Brazil is a heterogeneous movement that encourages critical thinking and discussion and respects political oppositions that converge for society’s welfare. It’s not a matter of the movement’s disunity but its democratic character. Political movements with homogeneous thinking are based on manipulating and silencing critical thinking, naturally leading society to a dictatorial path without room for dissent.

Although the left-wing movement in Brazil has a feminist character when it aims for equal rights (it should be equality rights, it is not there yet) for men and women, having women in power just because they are women doesn’t solve things. Although I am 100% in favour of increasing women’s political participation in Brazil, elected women need to be committed to feminist agendas that defend socioeconomic rights and ideals in the country. Voting for a woman just because she is a woman can lead to an even worse religious and ideological bias within the government. Women in power can rule against social causes, as seen in Bangladesh.

A peaceful student-led movement is reshaping Bangladesh’s fate. Students are leading the fight for human rights in the country. Science and education have empowered students to demand a better country. May Bangladeshi students inspire Brazil.

[1] Hijras, the Third Gender (Bangladesh) (atlasofhumanity.com)

[2] Seeking justice for protesters killed by Bangladesh police – DW – 09/06/2024