Collected
July 2024 was a monumental political episode in Bangladesh: it was sudden, tumultuous and to a great extent, unthinkable. Many of the media outlets founded after the uprising have called it a revolution. But the members from diverse and marginalized communities who spoke to us differ. The uprising did not usher in any structural changes beyond the fall of the Awami League government. Many different factions and communities participated with their own visions and agenda, but as a whole there was a lack of a coherent political vision. And the result was the subsequent competition for occupying the vacuum left by the fallen regime.
Jahan, who maintained contacts with other protesters and community members, shares how the bodies of the martyrs were buried quickly in the chaos of 5th August and after.
Jahan also thinks very little has been done to commemorate the martyrs of the uprising. Instead, the glorification of a few like Mugdho and Abu Sayeed has superseded many others who are lost from public memory.
Aggrieved families are still searching for their loved ones. There has been very little effort from the government to resolve the matter.
The ‘Wall of the Dead” at Anjuman Mufidul Islam. Among these 114 buried in unmarked graves in Rayerbazar in July-August 2024 are many victims of the July massacre.
Both the interim and post-election periods have seen many political leaders making grand gestures about various ethnic, religious and gender minority communities. However, these gestures were often laced with discriminatory and misinformed ideas of morality and sometimes violent exclusion. Following the aftermath of the uprising, the country’s democratic aspirations have increasingly been hijacked by majoritarian, religious supremacists.
An alarming rise in mob violence and coordinated attacks on mazars were met with little or no law enforcement or government response.
Targeted, unprovoked assault on queer folks, public beatings of sex workers and policing of women went up quickly and continue to threaten their public and private lives.
Digital spaces have also been a site for harassment of women and people of other genders. A research report by Activate Rights found that during and after July-August 2024 publicly visible women faced systematic technology-facilitated gender-based violence in order to silence their political participation and deter broader female engagement ahead of future elections.
Elsewhere, marginalised communities like tea workers were given false promises of increased wages. At a rally in Kamalganj, Moulvibazar in January 2025, Sarjis Alam, the then Chief Organizer of the Jatiya Nagorik Party, exclaimed that all liquor shops around the tea estates be destroyed while making bold remarks about how all National Tea Company estates should be reopened and that their fair wages, education, health care, housing and employment should be ensured. What the liquor stores have anything to do with their livelihood was unclear.
Tea garden workers’ demands for better wages continue to echo in the tea estate areas more than a year since the rally.
On 15th November 2025, the “International Khatm-e-Nabuwwat Grand Conference” issued a direct call to officially declared Ahmadiyyas as non-Muslims. The conference was attended by members from BNP, Jamaat‑e-Islami, Islami Andolan Bangladesh, Khelafat Majlis, Bangladesh Khelafat Majlish, Bangladesh Khelafat Andolon, Bangladesh Nezam-e-Islam Party, Jatiya Ganotantrik Party (JAGPA), and Bangladesh Development Party, none of whom opposed the demand.
In the two-week period after the uprising, The Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council documented 2,010 incidents of attacks on religious minorities. Sixty nine places of worship and temples were targeted, vandalized, or set ablaze during this 16-day period and at least 157 homes were looted, vandalized, or destroyed.
While many of our interviewees were disappointed with the post-uprising scenario, Jahan thinks that the only coherent demand of the uprising which was the fall of the dictatorial and undemocratic regime, had been achieved.
Ishan mentioned that they did not imagine the ousting of Hasina or the fall of the Awami League would happen in his lifetime.
A view shows a mural of Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina vandalised by protesters, a day after her resignation, in Dhaka, Bangladesh, August 6, 2024. Photo: Reuters
