Why July will be lost long before it is forgotten

The term "July Warrior" doesn't sit well with me.

I will watch, with my own eyes, July too being transformed into a Liberation War industry.

I write this as an inevitable truth—not as a possibility. If it turns out not to be true, I will be overjoyed by that defeat. It is the only defeat that, should it come, I would count as a victory. But I suspect that, with a broken heart, I will have to watch my own thinking prove right.

A revolution still searching for its name

Two years have passed since July. Run a content analysis of today's newspapers and you'll see it: some call it the "July Revolution," others the "July Uprising," still others the "Monsoon Revolution." 

The curious thing is that those who use these names are, in one way or another, trying to hold on to July—and yet in their own thinking, the picture of July isn't clear. At the opposite end of this spectrum stand those who call July merely "alleged."

But think about it—do you know Egypt's 2010 uprising by any name other than the Arab Spring?

Then you must understand: we remain hazy about exactly how to mobilize public discourse. You'll never catch anyone even asking the question: how did the name "Arab Spring" settle into our public psyche without a shred of contention? And not just in one country—it took hold under this very name across dozens of countries around the world.

Have you seen any attempt to apply that same mechanism to July? 1971, after all, has survived across generations as our Liberation War.

So what name will you and I leave behind for July, for the future?

Do you still not understand why, in constructing political history, we need at least a minimal consensus on July's name? And if you don't understand even now, then tell me—who is left to explain it to whom?

Let me remind you of this much: the question of building language is bound up with power. And it is bound up with building strong institutions—institutions that shape power.

So the question I want to throw out is this: beyond the flood of rhetoric about July, beyond the squabbling over who gets the credit, beyond a handful of single-day event-management exercises—do you see a single step being taken toward building a considered, long-term sphere of historical influence?

Think about it. There's no need to get worked up while answering your own question.

Think.

My answer is clear and unambiguous—no, it is not.

The machinery behind the violence

We look at July, essentially, through the lens of a month or so of criminal acts and state repression carried out by Sheikh Hasina and her regime's henchmen. Or, slowly, we are becoming accustomed to looking at it that way. It is astonishing to contemplate what collective dementia this signals.

But a more disturbing reality is this: in the two years since the uprising, have you seen a single piece of academic or investigative work that lays out a real framework of the political-economic structure that was chiefly responsible for making the Awami League so violent?

I am not interested in scattered pieces of good work done here and there, at different times.

To build a meaningful framework for how Bangladesh's structure of corruption was turned into a kleptocracy, the touchpoints you would need to address include:

a. Subversion of Public Institutions—that is, who held the locus of control over the enormous wealth extraction achieved by subverting the state's institutional structures?

b. How was this vast financial criminality legalized by rearranging the country's legal framework? Who were the key stakeholders, from drafting to enactment of those laws?

c. Who were the domestic and international structures that functioned as supply-chain intermediaries in this enormous wealth transfer?

d. The most important question is this: to patiently document this vast chain of wealth distribution through evidence-based research. That would let us see which government institutions—directly or indirectly benefiting from this immense criminal enterprise—gradually turned, one by one, into monsters.

We've seen reports on Benazir's expensive watch. We know about Harun's infamous “bhaat er hotel”. We know about DC's goat scandal too.

But when it comes to building a responsible, accountable future state—one that keeps the history of past deprivation and persecution firmly in view—which matters more: this steady stream of juicy, story-driven reports, or a genuine effort to lay the blueprint of the crime bare before the nation?

And this effort is, at its core, a question of coordinating short-term and long-term projection.

Look—when Prothom Alo refers to the Aynaghar, a secret detention system acknowledged by the United Nations, as "alleged," it builds a powerful narrative in favor of fascism. Because Prothom Alo has become an enormously influential institution.

In our characteristically childish way of thinking, we Bengalis tend to view Prothom Alo as the Awami League's mouthpiece. And this notion is also popular within political circles.

But truth lives outside the circles you and I imagine—in a dispassionate world of its own.

And that truth is this: Sheikh Hasina intensely disliked Prothom Alo. Matiur Rahman and Mahfuz Anam, for their part, would never even show up at Hasina's press briefings.

But Prothom Alo and The Daily Star view this Bangladesh from a lukewarm position—half-free, half-captive—a "secular" stance sitting within a Western-Indian cultural sphere of influence. And to keep that particular way of seeing intact, they know perfectly well that their most credible ally was, in all likelihood, Hasina and her Mafia League.

So the more important question is not what Prothom Alo says, but what it does not say. And whatever it does say—the manner in which it says it—whose political narrative does that manner end up strengthening?

But the central claim of my whole argument is this: the very process by which they became "Prothom Alo" over the last two and a half decades is the single most important case study for the question of building July's future narrative.

Which brings us back to what I said a moment ago: this effort is essentially a question of coordinating short-term and long-term projection.

The people I hear constantly talking about "holding on to" July have, in their words, no shortage of appetite for tearing institutions down—but nowhere near as much of a plan for building the future up.

The revolution has yet to find its culture

This conversation about Prothom Alo brings me to another crucial question: nothing plays a more powerful role in building a revolution's narrative than its presence in pop culture.

How is July doing on this front? Can you imagine—the events of July are, in truth, an Odyssean tale?

What extraordinary stories they could make.

You could write film scripts in almost any genre—black comedy, political thriller, murder mystery, psychological horror, action, suspense thriller—centered on Bangladesh between 2009 and 2024.

Let me come back to the connection with Prothom Alo I mentioned at the start of this piece.

At the center of this discussion stands one of the most important figures in Bangladeshi pop culture—a man who was once very much within Prothom Alo's inner circle: Mostofa Sarwar Farooki.

In the decade after 2000, Farooki, almost single-handedly, struck a blow against the Shantiniketan-style, theatre-trained, Kolkata-centric dramatic idiom by making neorealist television dramas. As a result, that Shantiniketan wall standing between the language of drama and the language we actually speak was, in effect, shattered.

When I talk in various film circles, I describe Farooki's drama serial 420 this way:

It's Bangladesh's answer to Hollywood's The Godfather.

To me, it is a kind of magnum opus for understanding the ecosystem of Bangladesh's political criminality.

What Anurag Kashyap achieved in 2012 with Gangs of Wasseypur, Farooki had already accomplished, in large part, five years earlier, in television format, through 420.

Anisul Hoque was an important companion in Farooki's early work. Through that connection, Farooki also built a close relationship with Prothom Alo. He won the Meril-Prothom Alo award many times over.

Seeing the Farooki who emerged after July made me happy.

I no longer remember where I read or heard this. Let me paraphrase it: The revolution did not merely change the nation; it changed the conscience of those who witnessed it.

In a short span of time, Farooki turned out several visual works. This man is, after all, still here. He hasn't died.

So couldn't we build a large-scale film project around him? Who is thinking along these lines? And if no one is, then why not?

It's easy enough to strike the pose of a refined intellectual by intoning "the cultural struggle is a long one." But does anyone actually set out on that rough, uneven road—the discomfort of building something, the long labor, the organizational patience it demands?

Are we preparing ourselves to walk that road with the self-assurance of Hadi?

The enemy is our love of convenience

Let me bring this to a close.

Here, I think, is the essence of what I've been trying to say: July rose like a great flood against the industrial complex of selling "chetona," and in doing so placed before us the possibility of a new Bangladesh. Whether that possibility will itself turn into another chetona-industry is, for me, no longer a matter of speculation. It is an already-embodied reality.

The hopeful part is that there is still time to change this reality's course.

But whether that possibility survives depends on another war.

In this war, we ourselves are our own opponent.

Because our real enemy is not some hegemonic superpower. Our real enemy is not Sheikh Mujib. It is not Hasina or her Mafia League either. No fascism is our ultimate adversary.

Our real enemy is our endless love for convenience—our unconquerable addiction to the easier comfort of the present, in place of the difficult but promising road of building a long-term future.

The day we understand that shouting "July, July" in the streets is a kind of catharsis for us—that it manufactures a false gratification of having achieved a great deal, but does not, in itself, build the equal society the martyrs of July dreamt of—that is the day we will shed the shell of "July er chetona" and truly begin our journey toward a genuinely revolutionary aspiration.

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Omar Nasif Abdullah is a Senior Lecturer of Marketing department of North South University