An image that brought her down

In 2014, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and its ally Jamaat-e-Islami thought that sheer violence would be able to bring her down. They of course had reason to believe that. 

In 1996 and then again in 2006, Sheikh Hasina successfully deployed violence to bring the BNP government down from power. But Sheikh Hasina, who a year earlier had scrapped the caretaker government system she had once helped come into being, held on. 

The extremists had also thought violence could bring her down. They thought targeted killings and gruesome terrorist attacks on foreigners would destabilise her government. 

But they were wrong. Sheikh Hasina held on. 

Hefazat-e-Islam thought if they could rally all the religious groups and institutions to take over Shapla Chattar they could bring her down. They were also wrong because she held on.

In between, there were stories of coup attempts, pressure from the UN, the United States and pressure from Dr Yunus's friends in the West; but nothing seemed to faze her. 

In January 2024, when she successfully defied considerable international pressure and saw off BNP and its allies' resistance on the streets for a third successful outing, everyone thought the game was well and truly over.

Enter Abu Sayeed, the youngest of nine brothers and sisters of a struggling family. 

Abu Sayeed was the first in his family to enter Begum Rokeya University and had hopes of joining government service once he finished his education. Hence the quota reform movement was very dear to him because his future depended on it. 

He became one of the primary organisers of the protests at his university.  

On 16 July, the second day of the quota movement protests turning violent, Abu Sayeed was on campus demonstrating, when the police shot at him. 

He was standing at least 50 to 60 feet from the police, with nothing but a stick in his hand and no aggressive intent, and yet the police shot at him - once, twice and thrice - before he succumbed. 

But before he fell, this young man flayed his arms out and bared his chest, allowing the bullets to hit him one after the other. That evening and over the following days, the whole country saw the video over and over again, of courage standing up to brutality, and something began to grow in the hearts of the countrymen. 

The next day came Mugdho. A master's student of Bangladesh University of Professionals, Mugdho was captured on video running amidst the violence to help out the protestors by distributing water bottles among them. 

'Pani lagbe pani' – Mudgho's last words before we see the image of bloodied water bottles on the ground, began ringing in the ears of every countryman.  

The image of a young man baring his bloodied chest, and the voice of another young man shouting 'Pani lagbe pani' became the symbol of the resistance. 

The students had decided to stand up to Hasina the moment she launched her Chhatra League goons on them, but the whole nation, who were until then content to repeat the lies of chetona and development that she had made us repeat over and over again, suddenly began to feel the delayed stirrings of their conscience.

Hasina had cowered the whole nation through the fear of stigmatization, harassment, destruction of reputation and livelihood, arrest and legal harassment, physical harm, extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearance.  

Fear had gripped the whole nation and even the international community had resigned itself to her endless presence. 

And then came Abu Sayeed, Mugdho and hundreds of other young men, many less than 18 years old, who showed us how you stand up to a dictator.

So, in the end, what did it take to bring down a dictator? Was it violence, terrorism, coup, or international pressure? None of these, it would seem. What it took was the image of courage and compassion. Of one youth standing up to the bullets being fired at him. Another, passing around water bottles amongst compatriots, while bullets rained on them.