Nearly a year after Hasina’s exit, stability still eludes Bangladesh

August 5, 2025, marks one year since former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina sought refuge in India, following a wave of violent unrest across Bangladesh that left widespread destruction and countless lives lost. Many in the country had hoped that her departure would bring a return to order and stability. Instead, the situation has deteriorated sharply, with law and order collapsing on multiple fronts. A stark example of this is the recent violence in Gopalganj — a traditional stronghold of the Awami League (AL) and home to a significant Hindu minority, comprising nearly 40 per cent of the population of the area.

The National Citizen Party (NCP), which is believed to enjoy open backing of the ruling dispensation of Muhammad Yunus, in active collaboration with Jammat-e-Islami (JeI) and other communally fanatical parties, resorted to unprovoked violence in attacking the Awami League activists in Gopalganj in an ostensible bid to weaken the AL bastion and demoralise the Hindu population, keeping aloft the communal frenzy. Several people were killed by the security forces, and at the time of writing the column, the city is filled with tension and uneasy calm notwithstanding the imposition of stringent prohibitory orders and security forces resorting to indiscriminate firing resulting in deaths and injuries, and the paramilitary forces and the army are seen in clear visuals protecting the NCP and Jammat activists in the hold of the Armoured Personnel Carriers (APCs) to save them lest their crime be exposed.

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This spurt of violence in Gopalganj signals that the law and order machinery is still far from satisfactory. Also, according to a prominent Dhaka Daily, Prothom Alo (July 17), the commemorative march marking the July 2024 uprising was planned well in advance by the NCP and its affiliates, and the authorities were obviously indifferent to any wake-up calls or straws in the wind. This also shows complete failure of the intelligence apparatus of the government. Interestingly, the advisor in charge of law and order, Lieutenant General (Retired) Jahangir Alam Chowdhary, is not only an army veteran but also headed the then Bangladesh Rifles (BDR), now renamed as Bangladesh Border Guards (BGB). The ineptitude on the part of the general speaks of a complete lack of oversight in reining in the disturbing law and exercising order and control over the national intelligence with far-reaching security implications.

Now, two things are glaring and can’t be ignored. One, the Hindus will be more vulnerable in Gopalganj in particular, and the cascading effects of the ensuing violence are likely to reverberate in other Hindu pockets in Bangladesh, where they could possibly be the target of violence, with their places of worship and immovable property more vulnerable to the communal elements. Two, with the tacit support of the interim regime under Muhammad Yunus, anti-AL forces, including the NCP and the Jammat, in all probability, will be emboldened to take on the AL cadres in order to further decimate them. And three, by implication, it is largely believed that the AL and Sheikh Hasina, perceived to be India-inclined, anti-India rhetoric will escalate further amongst the vernacular media and other quarters of the political and social entities.

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After dwelling upon the Gopalganj violent clashes, which are still fresh in minds, exposing the government’s abject failure to contain public order and lawlessness, it would be imperative to examine what all happened within the year post-Hasina’s departure from Dhaka.

Subsequent to Hasina’s departure, complete anarchy prevailed all over Bangladesh, indicating there was no government control or semblance of any law and order. The communal elements, robbers, and criminals had a field day for several months, looting and vandalising at their free will. There were hundreds of prisoners, including hardened criminals, who escaped from the prison, and not only that, there were outrageous lootings of the armouries, broad daylight dacoities, and murders. In addition, the communal elements attacked various minority groups, including Ahmadiyas, Shias, Sufis, etc, and their places of worship were openly desecrated and vandalised. Hindu places of worship were targeted in particular, and many temples were attacked, and their idols were defiled and destroyed.

While stock taking of the major violent happenings in Bangladesh during the post-Hasina period, it would also be pertinent to highlight the lawlessness when the unbridled violent mob brought down the residence of the father of the nation, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, looting all the pieces kept in the residence-turned-museum and destroying precious possessions reminiscent of the bloody freedom struggle of 1971. Analytically, this shows the mindset of a large number of ungrateful people who shamelessly tampered with history, destroying all evidence of the Liberation War. Sadly, the government, the military, and various arms of police forces were mute witnesses to the destruction, leading the people to believe that there was indeed a government complicity in turning a blind eye when the perpetrators carried out this mindless violent act.

Under the circumstances, it would also appear desirable to touch upon some other occurrences in the aftermath of Hasina’s departure from the political scene, which had a profound negative impact on the social, political, and cultural fabric of Bangladesh.

The most disturbing development was the present regime’s steady proximity towards Pakistan, which once unleashed such highhandedness with immense ferocity by committing genocide in 1971 without so far tendering any apology for the large cases of violation of Bengali women by Pakistani occupation forces and the grotesque inhuman acts on the Bengalis before the liberation. While it is politically alright for Bangladesh to befriend Pakistan, amnesia should not be to the extent of conveniently forgetting atrocities once so viciously committed.

To illustrate further, it would perhaps be politically unwise to observe Pakistan’s founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s 76th death anniversary being held in the National Press Club, Dhaka, in the presence of the Pakistani Deputy High Commissioner. It may be recapitulated that Jinnah, who was anti-Bengali and anti-Bangla, always opposed the use of the Bengali language in place of Urdu. In sum, involving the Pakistani High Commission and remembering Jinnah is indeed a departure from the past and an endorsement of Jinnah’s two-nation theory and anti-Bangla ideology. This has also hit hard the secular forces within Bangladesh, the progressives and liberals as well as the freedom fighters and pro-liberation forces.

In another development post Hasina, there were demands for renaming one of the hostels of Dhaka University to Allama Muhammad Iqbal, who was chiefly responsible for supporting the idea of a separate Pakistan. This trend also merits a close watch as to whether the intelligentsia of Bangladesh is moving towards a direction with Pakistani leanings.

In a different vein, it would also appear that there is a subtle move to remove the powerful presence of Tagore amongst the Bangladeshi minds, as he had influenced Bengalis in a big way in the fields of music, dance, literature, drama, etc. A mob vandalised the historic Rabindra Kacharibari in Bangladesh’s Sirajganj district, which has an ancestral mansion of Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore, and attacked the auditorium on the mansion premises and assaulted its director in the month of June this year. Following the attack, authorities in Bangladesh shut down the site and formed a probe panel to investigate the incident. It could, however, be an eyewash. It is an irony that this act of vandalism drew more criticism in India than in Bangladesh.

Meanwhile, another unfortunate incident has come to the fore, which speaks poorly of the Yunus administration and its vision to keep things under control. The old heritage ancestral property belonging to film icon Satyajit Ray’s paternal grandfather, Upendra Kishore Ray Chowdhury, was demolished in the district of Mymensingh in Bangladesh very recently to make way for a new semi-concrete structure for Shishu Academy. This bizarre step has naturally hurt the sentiments of hundreds and thousands of Satyajit Ray’s fans all over India, leading the governments of India and West Bengal to protest and stop the demolition.

Such an outrageous act on the part of the Bangladesh authorities also shows that the Yunus-led administration in Bangladesh is completely insensitive to the sentiments of heritage and ancestral property of Upendra Kishore Ray Chowdhury, who was a noted writer and academic, plus a prominent and progressive social reformer. The strong appeal by the Indian side has forced the government of Bangladesh to rethink the demolition, as it would again expose the present Bangladesh regime in a dim light. Such a glaring amiss, which was perhaps unthinkable during the previous regime, and, therefore, it is important to highlight this while auditing the performance of the present regime in the last nearly one year.

In an ultimate assessment, it is clear in the preceding year, the present regime has failed to meet people’s expectations in the maintenance of law and order, safety and security of the minorities and their places of worship and properties, controlling the communal and fundamentalist forces, or even checking the economic downturn.

The government, according to the analysts, has also failed miserably to improve ties with India, with no signs of any improvement. The government-controlled media continues to be hostile and biased amid a sharp rise in human rights abuses as charged by many. It is likely that these factors will play a dominant part in the upcoming elections scheduled some time next year. In fact, a large segment of the population is so miserable and disillusioned that they are silently wanting Hasina’s rule back again, perhaps for an orderly and tranquil regime with their dignity intact.

The writer is a retired IPS officer, adviser NatStrat, Bangladesh watcher and a security analyst. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.