It was around 10pm on October 27 when a group of left-wing activists began chanting “Joy Bangla” near the Purana Paltan intersection in central Dhaka.
The slogan drew an immediate response. A group of protesters, apparently mistaking the procession for an Awami League demonstration, chased the marchers towards the headquarters of the Communist Party of Bangladesh (CPB).
The protesters surrounded the building for nearly an hour. CPB leaders accused activists affiliated with the Jatiyatabadi Chhatra Dal and Jubo Dal of attacking party members. Chhatra Dal's central leadership later denied issuing any instruction for such an attack.
The little skirmish ended that night. The argument it triggered has continued.
At its core is a slogan that once united Bangladesh's independence movement but became closely identified with the Awami League during Sheikh Hasina's dictatorial rule.
Some CPB leaders still consider “Joy Bangla” as part of the country's Liberation War heritage, regardless of how the Awami League used it. For others, chanting it now risks helping rehabilitate a party removed from power by the July Revolution.
The disagreement has divided senior communists, drawn accusations of ideological betrayal and raised questions about the CPB's relationship with the Awami League.
Daily Waadaa spoke to at least five current and former senior CPB leaders, along with political analysts, to examine the dispute. Their accounts revealed a party struggling to agree on its political identity after Hasina's fall.
Its general secretary has warned that the slogan could help restore the Awami League's political relevance. His predecessor rejects that argument and says he will defend the slogan for as long as he lives.
Other senior leaders express confusion on whether the general secretary's position represents an official party decision.
Despite attempts to contain the disagreement, the CPB has yet to adopt a formal collective position on the slogan.
The events began with a demonstration outside Meena Bazar on Dhanmondi Road 27 late last month. A platform called Protibadi Shilpi Janata had organised a human chain to protest the obstruction of female Baul singers from performing in Sunamganj.
Some participants chanted “Joy Bangla”.
Police subsequently detained Dipak Shil, a former Bangladesh Chhatra Union leader, over allegations related to the slogan. Following his release, CPB activists organised a procession in Purana Paltan. The slogan was heard again.
This time, protesters confronted the marchers, shouting: “There will be no place for the Awami League in Bangladesh.” The protesters chased the procession and surrounded the CPB headquarters.
CPB activists blamed Chhatra Dal and Jubo Dal members for the confrontation. Chhatra Dal General Secretary Nasir Uddin subsequently said the organisation had issued no instructions to attack the communists.
CPB General Secretary Abdullah Kafi Ratan initially defended the slogan.
“Joy Bangla is a slogan of our Liberation War,” he told a media breifing recently. “The Awami League committed many wrongs while chanting ‘Joy Bangla’, but that does not mean we should abandon it.”
Even if someone had used the slogan during a CPB procession, he added, that could not justify an attack on the party office. Within 24 hours, however, Ratan offered a different assessment.
“Those who are chanting ‘Joy Bangla’ now are facilitating the process of making Awami League politics relevant again,” he said.
He said that during his long political career, including the movement against military ruler Hussain Muhammad Ershad, he had never heard “Joy Bangla” chanted at a CPB programme.
“Some are now claiming that the CPB has chanted ‘Joy Bangla’ countless times,” he told Waadaa. “That does not match my experience.”
Ratan argued that the Awami League had gradually made the slogan part of its partisan identity by combining it with “Joy Bangabandhu”. The association became stronger, he said, because of public experiences of repression under Hasina's government.
Communists, in his view, should establish an independent political identity rather than help restore the standing of the ousted ruling party. His argument found little consensus among some of his senior colleagues.
The disagreement became public when a newspaper published a photo card quoting Ratan's warning about rehabilitating the Awami League. The general secretary shared it on his Facebook page.
The response was immediate.
Of nearly 500 reactions, about one-third were laughing reactions. Most of the 327 comments criticised or mocked him. Some commenters accused Ratan of adopting positions associated with Jamaat-e-Islami.
Senior CPB figures joined the exchange. Mihir Ghosh, a central committee member, challenged Ratan's account of the party's history. He recalled that former CPB president and adviser Manzurul Ahsan Khan had ended speeches at public meetings with “Joy Bangla, Joy Socialism”.
CPB activists had also used “Joy Bangla” during the Ganajagaran Mancha movement demanding trials of war criminals, Ghosh wrote. Ruhin Hossain Prince, a former CPB general secretary and current central committee member, went further.
Speaking to Waadaa, Prince rejected the suggestion that chanting the slogan would help the Awami League return. “This is the battle cry of the Liberation War,” he said. “It was misused in the past, but that does not mean it has lost its relevance.”
Abandoning it, Prince argued, would amount to surrendering an important part of the country's history to the party that had appropriated it. “If we refrain from chanting it when necessary, we will simply surrender it to those who misused it,” he told Waadaa.
“I do not believe this slogan facilitates the return of any fallen political force. And as long as I am alive, there is no reason for the Communist Party to believe that either.” Ratan was equally unwilling to retreat.
Contacted by Waadaa about the criticism from his own party, he dismissed accusations that his position reflected Jamaat-e-Islami sympathies.
“Those who have become Awami League supporters, those with an Awami League mentality, those who are Awami League bootlickers — let them call me Jamaat or Shibir. I don't bother,” he said.
Ratan maintained that his position represented the CPB's official stance.
He also warned that party members who challenged it from within the organisation could face disciplinary action under its constitution. Asked about criticism from former leaders, he was dismissive.
“I don't care what former leaders say,” he told Waadaa. “Nurul Islam Nahid and Nuh Alam Lenin were also once our leaders. Former leaders have no right to comment on the Communist Party.”
The CPB's relationship with the Awami League has long been a subject of debate within Bangladesh's left. The party supported the independence movement and subsequently maintained varying degrees of political cooperation with the Awami League.
But the collapse of Hasina's government in August 2024 altered the political environment in which that relationship is assessed.
To some communists, the uprising created an opportunity to establish a political identity independent of the Awami League. Others remain concerned that the weakening of the Awami League could strengthen religiously conservative political forces.
Selim Reza Newton, a teacher in Rajshahi University's Department of Mass Communication and Journalism and a former CPB organizer, sees the current dispute as evidence of a possible shift in the party's ideological direction.
“Since the Pakistan period, the CPB's political narrative and actual practice have been closely associated with the Awami League,” Newton told Waadaa.
“But even then, there was a section within the CPB that wanted to stand independently, under its own banner, outside the Awami League. That section gained some strength after the July uprising.”
Newton said the party remained divided between two political instincts.
“One section still believes it was better when Hasina was in power because, after her departure, the religious conservatives emerged,” he said. “But Ratan's faction believes: We don't want the mullahs, and we don't want Hasina either.”
The distinction, Newton suggested, concerns how the CPB should respond to the post-2024 political order.
Should it continue to define itself partly through opposition to religious conservatism, even at the risk of appearing aligned with the Awami League?
Dhaka University political science professor Dr Sabbir Ahmed believes the dispute could have organisational consequences.
He told Waadaa that tensions in the CPB's historical relationship with the Awami League had emerged towards the end of Hasina's rule and became more pronounced after her removal.
“This is not resentment, nor merely opposition. It represents a kind of ideological change,” Sabbir said. He pointed to the repeated fragmentation of Bangladesh's left-wing parties since independence.
“Since independence, left-wing parties have fragmented repeatedly and rapidly,” he said. He described two currents within the CPB: one closely attached to the political legacy of the Liberation War and another seeking to adapt to the changed political environment.
Sabbir characterised the latter as an opportunistic tendency. “This sounds like the beginning of a split,” he said.
Political analyst Mohiuddin Ahmed offered a different interpretation.
He sees little evidence that the CPB has fundamentally changed its political orientation.
“Since 1972, the CPB has consistently acted as a collaborator of the Awami League. It has no separate politics of its own,” Mohiuddin told Waadaa.
“It is therefore natural that they would chant ‘Joy Bangla’. There is nothing surprising about it.” He suggested that some CPB activists were seeking to preserve their association with the Awami League in case the ousted party regained political influence.
Within the CPB, veteran leaders have sought to contain the controversy. Some describe it as an inner-party ideological struggle, a familiar feature of communist organisations.
They point to the history of disagreements within Marxist movements, including those involving Vladimir Lenin, to argue that internal debate is not necessarily evidence of organisational breakdown.
Yet several acknowledge that the public display of debate over a single slogan has damaged the party's internal cohesion. Some senior figures have also criticised the tone of the Facebook exchanges, regarding the personal attacks and ridicule as signs of weakening ideological discipline.
So, does the CPB actually have an official position on “Joy Bangla”? Ratan says it does. Other senior leaders disagree.
Mihir Ghosh told Waadaa that “no formal party decision had been taken.” “Whether someone says it makes the Awami League relevant or not, that is not the CPB's position.”
Mihir insisted that the party was seeking an alternative to the country's established political forces. “The CPB has no scope to rehabilitate the Awami League,” he said. “The party has moved beyond bourgeois politics and is working towards an alternative.”
Mujahidul Islam Selim, a former CPB president and member of its current presidium, offered a more qualified position. He acknowledged that communists had used “Joy Bangla” in the past and could use it again.
“We have chanted it at certain times, and we will chant it again,” Selim told Waadaa. “But it is not a slogan that defines the identity of communists.”
Asked about the disagreement within the leadership, Selim declined to align himself with either side. “You are trying to use me to publicise divisions within the CPB,” he said.
“I am not on anyone's side. I am a Marxist. I am a communist.”
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