The July Uprising that forced the authoritarian Sheikh Hasina to fall and flee from the country happened as a spontaneous outburst of the people’s dissatisfaction with the ruling regime. To a great extent, the movement was unorganised or loosely organised at best. Many people came down onto the streets without knowing who was leading the movement. Some images spread across the internet had caught the eye of the people, especially of Nahid Islam whose bruised body sparked a strong outrage. However, the video that played the strongest role in making the regime completely unsupportable to the people was that of Martyr Abu Sayed being gunned down by the police in Rangpur. Abu Sayed was a coordinator of the movement, but many other people lost their lives in the movement who were not central coordinators. Even children looking out of their windows to see what the commotion was about were killed. In these circumstances, it will only seem historically fair to accept the movement as an outburst rather than a planned meticulous coup of some sort, which is being proposed by some Awami League apologists.
Of course, there were some plans by the politically zealous movement coordinators who wanted to bring down the Hasina regime by any means necessary. But the scores of people who came down on the streets risking their lives were not associates of those plans. That is why we can see many unplanned events taking place all over the country that were expressions of the deep hatred that the people harboured for the Awami League regime. One of those expressions was the “Monument of Hate” in Dhaka University Campus. This monument was created when a number of protesters defaced a mural of Sheikh Hasina made on a pillar of the metro rail in the Dhaka University campus that was serving as a propaganda tool to make the people aware of all the good things that the regime had done. In response, during the July Uprising, the people expressed their rejection of the propaganda by putting a garland of shoes around the autocrat’s image, smearing paint and throwing rocks, bricks and other things at the mural. This led to the development of a unique memorial of hatred that proved how much the people had rejected her propaganda.
However, recently, the “Monument of Hate” was painted over. The word spread on social media and students gathered in front of the pillar to express their dissatisfaction and opposition. The repainting process was interrupted and a new graffiti was drawn on the pillar that showed Hasina as a bloodthirsty demon. This is better than nothing, but the historic “Monument of Hate” has already been destroyed. The expression of people’s pent-up anger and dissatisfaction has been covered up with standardised white paint. This is not just an isolated incident. As Bangladesh is going through the stage of reckoning with the movement, there have been a number of incidents that have led to the erasure of historic moments and a standardisation of the history of the movement that acts to valorise certain groups and marginalise the voices and actions of others who have not been organised or vocal about protecting their participation in the movement.
There has been a noticeable effort in making the movement seem like a credit to certain groups. Understandably, political groups like the Jatiyotabadi Chhatra Dal (JCD) and the Islami Chhatra Shibir (ICS) have tried to magnify their efforts in making the movement a success. While it is true that the movement would be greatly hampered if these groups did not participate, it would be a great deception if people were to believe that activists of these groups were the sole leaders of the struggle or played a more than significant role in making the movement a success. Just like the repainting of the Monument of Hatred, the history of the movement is also being painted over by the political operatives who want to gain an advantage in the politics of votes by hijacking the glorious popular victory of a mass uprising. The repairing of the Monument of Hatred is only a metaphor. It is up to us to figure out the true meaning behind this effort to erase the messy and complicated history of our contemporary times. History is a continuous process and it is up to each generation to preserve their own history for the generations to come. Just like the loss of the Monument of Hatred is a loss for our collective memory, so are the efforts to paint the glory of the July Uprising in political colours.
The Monument of Hatred, as it stands now, is also a reference to the July Uprising that saw many caricatures of Hasina being used to drive up popular support for the uprising. However, the historical defacement of the autocrat’s face can never be replaced. While new paint can make the old image come back, a new garland of shoes can be put up over the autocrat’s face and renewed defacement can create something resembling the previous state of the mural, the original effect and significance of the Monument of Hatred is and always will be irretrievable. It is good that the students of Dhaka University promptly protested to their authority’s decision to paint over the Monument and the authorities apologised, but they should, at the same time, oppose and resist the efforts by political apparatchiks who are trying to coopt the glorious history of their movement. These efforts are not limited to only the established political groups who want to win seats in the coming parliamentary elections, but newly forming organisations as well. The people should oppose and resist the efforts to monopolise the history of the July Uprising by any single political entity and the uprising should forever be remembered as a concerted effort of people-power. No efforts to repaint the history of the July Uprising should be tolerated. The July Uprising is one of the most glorious episodes of our contemporary history, in which the people demonstrated that their concerted effort was greater than the power of any autocrat, even if they had the support of the most brutal and suppressive machinery at their disposal. We need to preserve this legacy to make the victory of July worth the sacrifice.
Anupam Debahsis Roy is a PhD student at the University of Oxford. He can be reached at anupam.roy@sociology.ox.ac.uk
