Ratan Kumar Roy

Portrayal of torture and victimization in the university. Inscription in Bengali: You are Safe. Photo Credit: Subarna Roy 


The BUET students’ protest manifested some of the vibrant cultural forms used by the contemporary student movement in Bangladesh. Departing from tactics of typical protest movements, they opted for a creative path aided by media and performative elements. A street play portraying the act of brutality at once questioned the nature of student politics, growing intolerance in society, crumbling ethos of the people and dubious political culture.

 

The  history of social movements in contemporary Bangladesh is vibrantly marked and characterized by students and youth-led protests. The most recent protest was in response to the brutal killing of Abrar Fahad, an engineering student of BUET (Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology) on 7 Oct 2019 by members of the ruling party’s student organization Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL) in the university hostel. Outrage over his murder swept through social media platforms. Along with reactions to his murder, his last Facebook post also went viral in the media. In this post, Abrar is critical of the bilateral agreement signed between Bangladesh and India during the ongoing visit of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to India. With reference to some historical facts and instances, he questions the decision to allow India to withdraw water from Feni river of Bangladesh.[i]  The BCL men allegedly interrogated him for hours before killing him. They suspected his involvement with Shibir, the student front of Jamaat-e-Islami. There has been a widespread socio-political resistance against Jamaat (as well as its student wing) with the charge of it being pro-Pakistan and a platform of the war criminals of 1971.

 

The BUET students’ protest manifested some of the vibrant cultural forms used by the contemporary student movement in Bangladesh. Departing from tactics of typical protest movements, they opted for a creative path aided by media and performative elements. A street play portraying the act of brutality at once questioned the nature of student politics, growing intolerance in society, crumbling ethos of the people and dubious political culture. Two crucial aspects can be drawn from the play performed as a resistance mechanism. Firstly, the performers-cum-protestors did not expect an immediate success in changing the suffocating conditions just because they were highlighting the failure of various efforts and mobilizations that resulted in the brutal killing of Abrar. Yet they continued with an ordinary performance, where in the last scene the protagonist was knotted tight and covered with plastic. His eyes were tied and he was left alone on the street. Viewers took twenty minutes to respond and came to the rescue. Such participative engagement of the people encouraged the performers to keep making efforts in stimulating masses and awakening their conscience.

 

The other provocative element they brought into the public domain was the graffiti that symbolized the torture and power exercised by the student wing of the ruling party. In this matter, the protestors expressed their discomfort with all kinds of student fronts affiliated with political parties. This in their view did not propagate an apolitical tendency. Instead, it was meant to invite fresh thinking about the nature of student politics at a time when organizational politics is blinded by narrow ideologies, vested interests and calculations for gaining power and popularity. Student protestors on the other hand, performed their politics in a more nuanced manner than the politically guided and orchestrated movements of typical mobilizations.

 

Graffiti symbolising the dead body of Abrar in the mortuary. Photo Credit: Subarna Roy


People are coerced and oppressed by politics (Inscription in Bengali: Politics. Photo Credit: Subarna Roy 


Protests by school students for road safety is another recent instance of the vitality of such protests. On 29 July 2018, a speeding bus ran over a group of students and killed two of them. Affected students began protesting and demanding road safety, along with capital punishment for the driver. Due to the spread of their demands and protest via social media, students from many other schools also came out on the street and showed their solidarity. Road accident deaths and injuries are an everyday phenomena in Bangladesh. Concerns in this regard have been raised in citizens’ movements, but authorities have taken little corrective measures. Notwithstanding the state inertia on the issue, on this occasion the students continued with their boycott of classes and blocking off main streets in the capital city and other towns. Parents also allowed their children to attend protests, considering the merit of their demands. Many of them also joined their children in street protests. The politics of ordinary masses was reflected in school students holding out handwritten placards saying, ‘We don’t want Digital Bangladesh; we want Safe Bangladesh’. It is difficult to dismiss such an expression by simply tagging it as apolitical. Ordinary Bangladeshi citizens were ridiculing the ploy of ‘Digital Bangladesh’ campaign, pointing out anomalies in their everyday social lives.

 

The reaction of the minister responsible for transport (who is known as leader of the transport union) further fueled protests. He was accused of smiling on the news camera and undermining the accident while responding to journalists. Students started creating provocative memes, icons and posters; spreading them through social media and even gained global support. In the meantime, they took over the streets of Dhaka and tried to regulate traffic as a symbolic protest to show how road safety could be assured. Henceforth, they started performing the role of traffic police and regulating the streets.

 

Mediatization of Social Protest

It is imperative to examine the mediatization of social mobilizations in contemporary Bangladesh, where the role of media has been significant. Mediatization enables a conceptual comprehension of the larger socio-political and cultural transformation in relation to media by examining both its micro and macro aspects. In the context of social protests in contemporary Bangladesh, the framework of mediatization provides a vital aspect of the changing trends of mobilization along with its ongoing process and meta-process in relation to mediated communication. 

 

The advent and spread of social media profoundly influenced the nature, formation and consequences of social mobilization in Bangladesh. During 2012-13 a series of events ranging from mob-violence, youth protests, occupy street movements by protestors in Shahbag, as well as in Shapla Chattar by the Hefazat-e-Islam, relied on social media platforms.[ii] Similar composition, coherence and correspondence of visually vibrant and mediated activism were evident during the mobilization by university aspirants against a question paper leak, anti-VAT movement by private university students, and protest by civil service aspirants against “unreasoned” reservations during 2014-2019.[iii] Broadcasting media also played a crucial role by disseminating and enhancing the visual and mediatized dimensions of protest mobilizations. Mediated micro aspects often become triggering factors in protest movements by creating a hype, speeding up reaction management, provoking protestors, as well as spreading rumor and vitriol, and disseminating fake news. 


Shahbag Protest 2013 by blogger youth. Photo credit: Kakoli Prodhan 


There has been an intimate correspondence of mediatization with the visual and performative dimensions of protests. Youth protestors introduced alluring visual dimensions to the street, and on the walls, both concrete and virtual. They have been bringing refreshing styles in every episode that unsettle the traditional protest manual of political parties and groups. Drawing a thin conclusion by labelling such youth and student protests apolitical would not allow us to see the polyphonic dimension and multivocality of activism in the current time. It is indeed worth inquiring into the organizational mechanism, motivational factors, and structural formations of such short-lived movements. Mediatized and visualized protest movements by the youth in contemporary Bangladesh invite deeper and intensive explorations to understand politics and culture in South Asia. In particular, visual projection and the role of digital media are more significant for student and youth protests in comparison to other organizational activism, be it trade unionism or right-wing mobilizations. The issue-based and unexpected mobilizations offer vibrant visuals due to their multiplicity and non-organizational and quasi-structured nature. Possibilities of dissemination on the digital domain, and the vibrancy of cultural and visual expression get multiplied because there is no burden to follow the chain of command, compulsions of organizational decorum and obligations to political motives, unlike the movements initiated by political parties, student organizations and other social activist groups.

 

It is a pleasure to conclude by quoting from a rap song posted on YouTube by Tabib Mahmud a university student and amateur rapper, who chose to rap as a way of resistance against corruption and socio-political disorder. In the music video dedicated to Abrar, he invites the youth to rise and introduces the figure of HipHop police, an imaginary force ready to punish the corrupt: 

 

“It is time to wake up youth, look, there is morning sun, 

Whosoever asks a bribe, will be punished... 

HipHop police have come to reopen the pending cases 

If the consequence turns hostile, will sacrifice for the country.”[iv]

 

         Ratan Kumar Roy is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Culture, Media & Governance, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. 

 


[ii] The Shahbag movement began on the 5 February 2013 when a group of young bloggers brought out their collective protest against a verdict by the tribunal that was set to prosecute the war criminals of 1971. The verdict, which declared lifetime imprisonment of a Jamaat-e-Islami Leader accused as a war criminal, was opposed by protestors who demanded death sentence. The protestors occupied the busy Shahbag intersection of Dhaka. In reaction to the Shahbag protest, Islamic activists mobilized themselves as Hefazat-e-Islam, alleging that the bloggers were atheists and enemies of Islam. 

[iii] Students started raising their concerns since there was a lack of initiative by the administration to resolve the alleged question paper leak before the exam. There was evidence of posts on Facebook about the leak, and allegedly leaked questions were available on social media. Students adopted Facebook as the prime medium of mobilization. A similar strategy was opted for protests by civil service aspirants, who demanded the removal of the quota system. Their agitation gained popularity as “anti-quota movement”. In 2015 private university students protested against the imposition of value added tax (VAT) on their tuition fees. They too adopted social media for information dissemination and publicity.

[iv] The music video can be accessed on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wsg0khczhM0, Last accessed on 31 October 2019.