The July Uprising and Bengali-Muslim Majoritarian Hegemony in Bangladesh
Hana Shams Ahmed
“Majority/Minority Politics in South Asia” is an essay collection, co-edited by Mohsin Bhat and Natasha Raheja, that moves beyond nation-specific frameworks to foster comparative, cross-disciplinary, and cross-border inquiry into how majoritarianism takes shape across South Asia. The collection illuminates shared mechanisms of majoritarian rule and the varied forms of opposition they provoke, thus advancing critical scholarship on democratic erosion while contributing to public debates on resisting authoritarianism and rebuilding democratic futures.
On 15 January 2025, more than 300 protesters, including Adibashi students, university organizers, and community members, gathered in Shahbagh, Dhaka, under the banner of Shongkhubdo Adibashi Chattro Jonota (Aggrieved Adibashi Student Group). They planned to march to the National Curriculum and Textbook Board (NCTB) in protest of the removal of a school textbook cover image. The cover had depicted a popular graffiti from the July Uprising of 2024: a plant whose leaves represented the religious and ethnic communities of Bangladesh—“Muslim,” “Hindu,” “Buddhist,” “Christian,” and “Adibashi”—alongside the words pata chera nishedh (“leaf should not be torn”). Painted in red and green, the colours of the Bangladeshi flag, the mural symbolized an inclusive vision of the nation.
Before the protesters reached their destination, however, a group of 200 young men appeared, armed with sticks wrapped in the Bangladeshi national flag. They attacked the marchers, injuring at least twenty students, six of whom required hospitalization. The attackers later tried to justify the violence by claiming that recognizing Adibashis was tantamount to threatening the sovereignty of Bangladesh.
This episode demonstrates the paradoxical power of nationalist symbols. Just months earlier, Bangladesh had witnessed the most dramatic political upheaval in decades: the fall of Sheikh Hasina’s regime through the July Uprising. Protesters reclaimed the flag, the anthem, and the memory of the 1971 Liberation War as part of their resistance, forcing the departure of a prime minister who had ruled for fifteen years. As Nusrat Chowdhury has argued, Hasina’s fall marked the “return of politics” to a country long dominated by authoritarianism. Yet the January 2025 attack revealed that this political revival did not extend to pluralism. The flag, celebrated as a symbol of unity, was quickly weaponized against Adibashi students.
This essay takes this paradox as its point of departure. I argue that Bengali-Muslim majoritarianism in Bangladesh is sustained through three interrelated processes: selective historical narration, militarized governance, and identity construction. These axes converge in moments of crisis, such as the July Uprising and its aftermath, to reproduce exclusions that define the boundaries of citizenship. I argue that sovereignty in Bangladesh is secured by invoking 1971, normalizing militarization in Adibashi spaces, and enforcing majoritarianism by privileging dominant Bengali-Muslim groups and systematically excluding Adibashis. Symbols like the flag operate as affective technologies of selective inclusion: they inspire belonging for the majority while legitimizing violence against minorities.
Selective History: 1971 as Origin Story
During the July Uprising of 2024, many Adibashi students played an active role in protests. However, the movement also revealed enduring fissures within student-led mobilizations that echoed earlier moments of political unrest. One such instance was the contestation over nationalist slogans such as Tumi ke, ami ke? Bangali, Bangali ("Who are you, who am I? Bengali, Bengali"). While this slogan was meaningful during the 1971 Liberation War, when Bengali identity was under threat from the Pakistani state, its repetition in more recent protests—including the Shahbagh protests in 2013 and the Quota Reform and Road Safety protests in 2018—invokes Bengali identity in movements that are not centred on Bengali victimization.
For participating Adibashi activists, this slogan highlighted their continued exclusions within national movements. Adibashi activists challenged the homogenizing logic of the slogan, urging organizers to adopt the more inclusive "Adibashi-Bangali" to recognize Bangladesh’s multi-ethnic citizenry. Even during the July Uprising, several people made derogatory comments about Adibashi activist involvement. One comment that made the rounds was “Era noreo na, choreo na”—they barely move—meaning that they were not taking part in the uprising as actively as they should.
Much of Bangladesh’s contemporary political rhetoric remains anchored in 1971. The question of who fought in the Liberation War, who embodies the “spirit of 1971,” and who therefore deserves to be considered a rightful citizen of the nation continues to shape political discourse, decisions, and exclusions. The “spirit of 1971” is frequently invoked as a moral and political litmus test, used to assess allegiance to the state, determine legitimacy in the public sphere, and justify the repression of dissent. This rhetoric intensified under Sheikh Hasina’s rule, with punitive consequences for those who attempted to write alternative histories or question dominant narratives. Hasina is the daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who played a central role in the struggle for an independent Bangladesh and became the first prime minister of independent Bangladesh. As leader of the Awami League, she promoted a singular narrative of the country’s history that deified her father’s vision and instrumentalized the Liberation War to remain in power. Under her leadership, any critique of the Awami League was equated with opposition to the Liberation War itself, casting dissenters as enemies of the nation and traitors.
Anthropologist, filmmaker, and scholar Naeem Mohaiemen has critiqued this demand for a singular, sanitized historical account as a state-enforced “shothik itihash” or “correct history” that erases complexity, dissent, and competing memories in favour of a coherent, unbroken teleology since the first partition of historic Bengal. He describes Bangladesh’s history industry (e.g., literature, cinema, academia, commemorations) as “prisoners of shothik itihash,” where the official narrative serves the political agenda of the ruling party. This version of history invariably begins in the more recent past, deliberately excluding the deeper precolonial and colonial histories that shaped the region.
Writer Mahmud Rahman argues that Bangladesh’s “selective amnesia” regarding the end of British colonial rule in 1947 reflects a national discomfort with incorporating Partition into its historical narrative. This silence, he suggests, prevents a reckoning with not only the colonial legacies that continue to shape the nation but also with Bangladesh’s entanglement in the communal divisions of Partition. Scholarship on Bangladesh has similarly been marked by this selective amnesia, privileging 1971 as a singular founding moment while obscuring the deeper historical trajectories shaped by the Mughal, British, and Pakistani periods. The marginalization of Adibashi peoples is tied to this “selective amnesia,” and thus rooted in the state’s nationalist imaginary and shaped by the enduring legacies of partition and postcolonial state formation.
Militarized Politics: The Army as Political Decision-Maker
The day before Hasina fled the country was one of the most violent in recent memory: police fired live rounds into crowds of student protestors, many of the killings broadcast live. Yet amid the brutality, there was also calculated restraint. The military, notably, stood aside. They refused to engage. While police forces continued the assault, protestors recast the military’s inaction as heroism. The following day, with Hasina gone, students were seen cheering and exchanging high-fives with military officers. This image symbolized the military’s rehabilitation in the eyes of a new generation.
This moment was deeply symbolic, especially when contrasted with another moment fifteen years earlier: in 2009, Hasina’s electoral victory had ended the military-backed caretaker government. At the time, a photograph circulated showing a student kicking a military officer. The image was quickly withdrawn from newspapers, a fleeting but telling image of public sentiment.
Several recent developments invite scrutiny of the nature of mass political mobilizations in Bangladesh. The rapid rise and growing influence of the relatively new group, Students for Sovereignty, are particularly troubling. The group emerged in the aftermath of a widely supported student movement, yet it has not clearly explained why it frames the use of the term “Adibashi” as a threat to national sovereignty. This claim echoes a long-standing narrative advanced by the military and Bengali settler groups in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), despite the absence of any evidence of how the term poses a danger to the sovereignty of the state. A series of events surrounding the July Uprising—including the taunting of Adibashi students in Dhaka, the defacing of Adibashi rights graffiti (especially about Kalpana Chakma), the subsequent nature of the appointment of key political advisors (appointments by the military and without consultation with Adibashi civil society), and the mob violence and killings of Adibashi students in Khagrachari and Rangamati—raise more profound, structural questions about the nature of politics in Bangladesh. These events reveal the enduring power of majoritarian nationalism in Bangladesh’s political life, even after a transformative moment such as the July Uprising.
The military’s role in the July Uprising and its aftermath was anything but neutral. Its decision not to suppress the protestors was strategic, not passive. And its continued dominance was swiftly reaffirmed in the new political settlement—particularly in the CHT, which is the home of many Adibashis and where there are long-standing land disputes that every political party has strategically avoided addressing. Student leader Asif Mahmud, reflecting on post-uprising cabinet appointments, proudly claimed that student negotiators had rejected all military recommendations, except one: the post of adviser on CHT Affairs, since it was a sensitive issue related to state sovereignty.
If selective history provides the narrative foundation of majoritarianism in Bangladesh, militarization supplies its institutional backbone. The Bangladeshi state has never been politically autonomous from military authority. Since independence in 1971, the military has been both a visible and invisible force shaping the country’s political trajectory through coups, caretaker governments, and indirect rule. For Adibashi communities in the CHT, however, visible military presence has not been episodic but constant.
The contrast between Dhaka’s celebratory narratives of democracy and the lived reality of military occupation in the Hills underscores the asymmetries of power that sustain majoritarian rule. Military checkpoints, surveillance, and harassment are part of everyday life in the Hills. What was celebrated as democracy in Dhaka was experienced in the CHT as an unbroken continuity of occupation. Military presence is so deeply embedded in governance in the Hills that it becomes invisible to those not directly subjected to it. For Bengalis in Dhaka, military rule is remembered as an aberration, a caretaker period, a coup, a disruption. For Adibashis in the Hills, it is the structure of governance itself.
Just as significant is the military’s strategic involvement in national politics. The July Uprising enabled the military to recast itself as guardian of the people, rehabilitating its public image in a moment of regime collapse. Ultimately, the erasure of Adibashi voices from both street movements and institutional politics is not an aberration; it is characteristic of a political system that defines belonging through Bengali majoritarianism and upholds military power as a guarantor of national integrity.
Identity Construction: Bengali-Muslim Hegemony and Sovereignty Discourses
The group Students for Sovereignty was established informally sometime in early August 2024. Their presence became more visible with the launch of a Facebook page that served as the primary platform for disseminating their ideological positions and mobilizing supporters. The group’s central focus is on the “Adibashi issue,” particularly the use of the term “Adibashi” in Bangladesh—an issue the group considered to be important to Bangladesh’s sovereignty. Their first public action took place at the University of Dhaka on August 28, 2024, where they protested a statement made by the head of the caretaker government on August 25 that used the term “Adibashi”.
In September, the group organized another demonstration, alleging that India and the United States were conspiring to establish an independent “Jummoland” in the Hill Tracts and that the term “Adibashi” was a path to that. They called on all patriotic citizens to resist this move. On their Facebook page, Students for Sovereignty identify themselves as a “youth organization” with this as their intro:
“The ‘Students for Sovereignty’ is a popular platform for patriotic students. We are committed to upholding the country's sovereignty and territorial integrity. InshaAllah!!”
Three days after the attack on the Adibashi group in Dhaka, they posted this message on Facebook:
Students for Sovereignty Herey Gele Herey Jabey Bangladesh.
(If the Students for Sovereignty are defeated, Bangladesh will be defeated.)
The “sovereignty” argument used in the context of the CHT is, of course, not new. Its use goes back to when Sheikh Mujib, the country’s founder, infamously asked all ethnic groups in the Hills to “become Bangali.” Bangladesh was a new country then, not yet Bangladesh 2.0.
The formation of Bangladeshi national identity has relied on the fusion of Bengali and Muslim identities as central axes of belonging, effectively marginalizing those who fall outside this normative framework. Historian Willem Van Schendel has argued that this fusion emerged out of a post-1971 ideological crisis, where competing visions of nationalism (secular Bengali identity, political Islam, and cultural pluralism) vied for dominance, ultimately reifying a narrow definition of national identity that rendered Adibashi (Indigenous) and non-Bengali communities illegible to the state.
This ideological project, shaped by both colonial legacies and postcolonial aspirations, has operated through secular and religious registers to exclude ethnic, linguistic, and religious minorities such as Adibashi communities, Hindus, Buddhists, and Christians. The unresolved tension between Bengali and Muslim identities, deepened by state expediency and the politics of Islamization, has fueled an identity crisis that has not only marginalized minorities but also paved the way for authoritarianism in Bangladesh.
Partition of British India and the subsequent formation of postcolonial borders created not just geopolitical boundaries but also affective and political fault lines. In the CHT, these legacies continue to shape struggles over belonging, recognition, and justice. The Hills are not simply a geographic periphery but a contested space where competing claims to land, identity, and citizenship continued to be negotiated. Anthropologist Prashanta Tripura has argued that the state’s refusal to recognize Adibashi communities in Bangladesh’s constitution reveals a profound anxiety within Bangladeshi nationalism about its heterogeneous origins.
Nationalist Symbols as Technologies of Exclusion
The January 2025 attack on Adibashi students in Dhaka illustrates the paradoxical role of nationalist symbols in Bangladesh. The flag, reclaimed during the July Uprising as a symbol of unity and anti-discrimination, was soon weaponized against minoritized citizens, demonstrating a limited understanding of discrimination. The flag became a weapon of exclusion, wielded to enforce boundaries of citizenship and belonging.
Pluralism remains elusive in Bangladesh 2.0. The politics of shothik itihash (“correct history”) still privileges 1971 as the country’s sole origin story, erasing colonial and partition legacies, invisibilizing Indigenous history, and enforcing a linear narrative of liberation that casts dissent as betrayal. Militarized governance continues to entrench the army as the ultimate guarantor of sovereignty, positioning the military as both protector of the majority and enforcer of exclusion. National identity construction still fuses Bengali and Muslim identities while resolving their fragility by casting Adibashis as threats to sovereignty.
The fall of Sheikh Hasina may have brought the “return of politics,” but it has not addressed the deeper structures of majoritarianism. The foundational exclusions of the nation—its selective history, its militarized governance, its fragile identity—continue to define its political life.
Hana Shams Ahmed is a PhD candidate in Social Anthropology at York University in Canada. Her research examines Indigenous land rights, settler colonialism, and militarization in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh. Before entering academia, she worked for more than a decade in Bangladesh as a journalist with The Daily Star and as a human rights advocate, writing extensively on gender, minority rights, land dispossession, and state violence. During this period, she also served for six years as a coordinator of the International Chittagong Hill Tracts Commission, engaging in national and international advocacy on Indigenous rights.
Thumbnail credit: "Bangladesh Flag & Parliament Building" by Gary Lee Todd, Ph.D. is marked with CC0 1.0.
Prepared with the editorial assistance of Mishaal Mahmood.