To quash the movement, the government needs to accept its
demands
The aftermath of the Shahbagh movement showed us that we
can tolerate, and even congratulate, the death of people who are portrayed as
anti-Islamic. The repression of the movement to save Sundarbans showed us that
we can tolerate public assault of activist, even those who are elderly and
socially respectable, if they are portrayed as “leftist.”
Opinion, Dhaka Tribune
The history of this decade’s social movements in
Bangladesh is a history of an examination of tolerance for Bangladesh and the
endurance of the ruling regime.
The assault on the quota reform movement showed us that
the ruling party could withstand its operatives being identified as attackers
as peaceful protesters, so long as they can be portrayed as misdirected or
controlled by BNP-Jamaat.
But at this point of the history of our nation, we are
presented with a new and a tougher question: Can we, as a nation, tolerate dead
kids? So far, the answer seems to be negative. Hundreds of regular people have
expressed solidarity with the protest movement of the students. Pivoting from
that support, the students have so far demanded structural reforms to the
public transportation system and an end to the insidious bus cartels among
other things.
These are positive reforms that the majority of the
country agrees with, but as we have seen with previous movements, the support
of the majority can shift and they can also turn a blind eye to the fate of the
protesters, if the opposing forces play their cards right.
So what would it take to make these crazy, stupid, brave
kids “separable”? It is a hard task. Bloody uniforms are tough sights to bear.
So the state decides to close the schools, in an attempt to strip the
protesters of their childhood and turn them into homo saucer.
But that doesn’t work. After repeated requests from many
of their compatriots, they decide to pour to the streets with their uniforms
on. Their identity becomes their protection. Their perceived childhood, the
fact that they stand one year away from university, may be ticket to safety,
whereas many who were only a couple of years older than them were comfortably
maimed in front of the nation’s naked eye.
Would that trick work? Would painting these kids as
partisans, or blasphemers, or enemies of the state grant the state the right to
violate them? Probably not. If the state would stand against the uniformed
school-goers, the nation would soon stand on the other side of the bargain.
While there are already attempts underway to smear these
kids through partisan tropes and (social) media manipulation, they have largely
been rejected by the majority.
What is to be done, then? One way is to water down the
tough challenges raised by the protesters. If they demand the resignation of
Minister Shahjahan Khan, water it down to a demand of apology. If they demand
structural change in the governance of the roads, water it down to enforcement
of existing licensing laws. If they demand an increase in the current
punishments for vehicular manslaughter, throw them under a pile of legal
documents and sell it as an all-curing snake oil, but that is merely a sliver
of the changes that the kids want.
Would this work? So far, it hasn’t. The minister has
apologized, the PM’s office has vowed enforcement of laws and Minister Obaidul
Quader has promised swift legal changes, but the kids are not appeased. They
continue their blockades and keep demanding justice. What this justice means is
elusive, and may be a bundled articulation of the myriad demands of the past
movements, the souls of which are still alive in the students today.
These kids have proven that they are the best of
students, because they learn from history. They decided to stay nonpartisan.
They decided to stay laser focused on their issue. They decided to minimize
public disruption. They decided to criticize the rulers when necessary.
Most importantly, they have shown that traffic
administration, much like any other state affairs of Bangladesh, can be orderly
and efficient, only if the controllers of those wish to work in the public
interests.
These kids have corrected a lot of the mistakes of the
previous movements and they will teach the protesters and reformers of the
future. They have so far withstood all the old ploys of diversion, misdirection
and manipulation. To quash this movement, the government needs to accept its
demands, at least to some extent, or come up with a new mode of disruption that
can make dead kids, and bloody kids, a tolerable sight for the Bangladeshi
masses.
The road ahead is difficult for all of the parties
involved. But at the end of it, lies sunshine.