“Gen Z made everything possible. They are the future of Bangladesh and they can create a better future”. This was the jubilant sentiment expressed by a Bangladeshi student to a CNN reporter in August 2024, at the height of the historic Gen Z revolution that ended the 15-year reign of Sheikh Hasina. Some 20 months later, this optimism has well and truly faded, culminating in February’s election, which returned the centre-right neoliberal Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) to power, with the far-right Jamaat-e-Islami party receiving a historic 31 percent of the vote. How did we get here? What destroyed the promise of the Bangladeshi Gen-Z Revolution?
Hasina didn’t come to power for the second time in 2009 as a dictator. She was elected as a representative of the Awami League (AL) but soon began to consolidate power. There was no single, decisive blow against democracy, but rather various legal and political manoeuvres that solidified her rule. An important one was constitutional reforms in 2011, which ended the previous practice of having neutral caretaker governments over election periods, opening the way for the Awami League to rig the following three elections. Her regime oversaw many human rights abuses, including the massacre of Shapla Square protesters in 2013, and the torture of political prisoners in the horrific Aynaghar centres (House of Mirrors).
Under Hasina, the Bangladeshi economy became one of the fastest growing in the world. The benefits of this growth were uneven, primarily going to the “Kotipoti”, a small group making up less than 1 percent of the population who controlled nearly half of all the money in Bangladeshi banks, and much more wealth overseas. These Bangladeshi capitalists were benefiting greatly from the neoliberal reforms, and especially from the cheap Bangladeshi labour that underpinned the profits of some of the richest corporations on the planet, including Nike, H&M and Primark (as well as Kmart, Big W and Best&Less).
On the other side of this class divide, the Bangladeshi working class was growing to be one of the largest in the world. The 4-million-strong garment industry workforce, 55 percent of which is women, is of particular significance. Over the last decade, ready-made garments accounted for roughly 80 percent of Bangladeshi exports. Workers in the industry face horrendous conditions, exemplified by the 1,134 workers crushed to death in the 2013 Rana Plaza collapse, caused by employer negligence. Garment workers mobilised, most recently in 2023 with tens of thousands striking for increased wages and better work conditions, shutting down hundreds of factories. However, the regime responded with brutal attacks, killing multiple unionists and arresting thousands.
Aside from the garment industry, the working class in Bangladesh is relatively weak, with around 85 percent of workers employed in the informal sector. Even in formal sectors, wages can be as low as $60 per month, and more than a million children are forced by poverty into hazardous work. Poor working conditions have led millions of desperate Bangladeshis to emigrate in search of better-paid work, including to the Gulf states, where roughly 10 million Bangladeshi workers live and labour in horrendous conditions.
Since the Rana Plaza collapse, unions have been reappearing in various industries with the backing of international NGOs. These unions are overwhelmingly top-down, employer-controlled organisations, which exist mainly to control worker activity. Unionism in Bangladesh has a rich history, with leftist unions playing huge roles in struggles in the twentieth century, but left-wing unions are now denied registration from the state. Union coverage is very low, with only 5 percent coverage in the garment industry.
In July 2024, protests were sparked by the government’s unpopular job quota. The quota provided a specific number of government jobs to family members of those who fought in the 1971 revolution. But while almost every worker or peasant family was involved in fighting in the war of independence, only those with ties to the Awami regime were recognised and received these special privileges. In a climate where jobs were already harder and harder to find for most young people, students soon took to the streets to protest this nepotism.
These protests were violently attacked by police. More than 1,400 protesters were killed over the course of the protests. The student actions against government policy quickly grew into mass daily protests calling for the end of the dictatorship, culminating in the resignation and flight of Hasina from Dhaka on 5 August. The protests were led by university students, workers and sections of the middle class also joining the demonstrations. Tens of thousands marched onto the streets despite the violent repression from the police.
On the night of 4 August, Hasina had ordered her generals to put an end to the protest movement by implementing a lockdown. However, the generals refused, because by this point it had become clear to them that their soldiers would not shoot the protesters. The generals were no allies of the revolution—they would soon help Hasina flee Bangladesh rather than face justice for her crimes. But they could recognise the reality of their situation: the mass struggle had overwhelming public support, which extended even to the military rank and file. Hasina had no choice but to resign.
The post-revolution mood in Bangladesh was absolutely jubilant. The presidential palace was stormed and taken over by protesters. Celebrations were held across the nation, and the emerging student leaders hailed as heroes. In the immediate aftermath, police were forced off the streets, having lost all credibility for siding with Hasina, and in their stead ordinary people took it upon themselves to conduct patrols and protect the temples of the Hindu minority. Over the next few weeks, hated figures from the previous regime were attacked and their homes burnt. Capitalists and Awami League members took their wealth and fled, mostly to Western countries. Bangladesh had seemingly entered a new era, one in which the people controlled their destiny, and the days of corruption and exploitation were over.
However, capitalism is a very malleable system. Without a real vision for what a new Bangladesh could look like, the student leaders, who had enormous authority after the revolution, sat down with the generals and agreed to form an interim government with the founder of Grameen Bank, Nobel Prize winner Mohammed Yunus. Yunus was an opponent of the Hasina regime, was seen as fairly popular amongst Bangladeshis and had ties with international figures such as Hillary Clinton. Yunus set up a cabinet of technocrats and a few of the student leaders, such as Nahid Islam. Yunus coopted the chants of the revolution and spoke about a new era for Bangladesh brought forth through the blood of revolutionary heroes—such was the atmosphere that an 84-year-old bourgeois banker could speak in such terms!
But Yunus had no interest in furthering the revolution. With the cover of the heroic student leaders, many of whom joined the new government, the revolution was reduced to a push for reform. The hundreds of students who had given their lives fighting the regime were recast as fighting for the opportunity to tweak the edges of the constitution, as Yunus endeavoured to return Bangladesh to business as usual.
One of his first actions was to bring the military back onto the streets. Protesters were openly rallying against any ideas of a military junta taking over. Having forced the police and military off the streets, the protesters wanted to keep it that way. With the respectable Yunus in charge, the army was called in to rein in the “anarchy”. It would not take long for the army to use its newly legitimised power against the working class. In September 2024, textile workers once again began to take action. Facing large rounds of lay-offs following the post-revolution capital flight, workers shut down 83 garment factories in a strike wave. The liberal reformist government responded by using the army to break the strikes.
In the middle of all of this were the student protest leaders. In the aftermath of the revolution, these young revolutionaries were national heroes. Their rapid transformation into typical establishment politicians, and their support for Yunus, disappointed and disoriented many of their followers. Almost a year after the revolution, they formed a party, the National Citizen Party (NCP). NCP stumbled straight out of the gate, describing itself as a centrist party, and having the underwhelming aim of creating a Second Bangladeshi Republic, this time with checks and balances. It also promised to fight corruption and fascism. However, there were immediately stories of NCP politicians being corrupt, and they soon formed a political alliance with the far-right Jamaat-e-Islami party.
The only student leader who had any credibility was the Islamic populist Osman Hadi. Hadi was a Bangladeshi nationalist, and called for the Awami League to be banned. He clashed with the NCP and interim government, accusing them of betraying the revolution. Hadi was shot and killed in December 2025, leading to an explosion of mass anger.
Unlike the revolution a year before, there was no clarity or purpose to the anger. The nationwide riots that ensued targeted anything related to India or the establishment parties such as the Awami League or BNP. Hindus were attacked, including the lynching of Hindu man Dipu Chandra Das.
By that point, it had become evident that the interim government had overstayed its welcome and could no longer control the Bangladeshi state. Elections were called for February 2026, with the main contenders being BNP and Jamaat. Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) originated as the pro-Pakistan militia that hunted and attacked independence activists prior to Bangladeshi independence. During previous periods in coalition governments, they used their position to persecute the Ahmadiyya minority. In the lead-up to the election, Jamaat moderated its image, portraying itself as the anti-establishment party of change and reform, and downplaying its traitorous history. Jamaat also spoke about women’s rights and empowerment, while refusing to run a single woman in any of their seats.
Meanwhile, the BNP positioned itself as the credible party of government. The son of former President Ziaur Rahman, Tarique Rahman, had been in exile in London over the last two decades, but was now back as the head of the BNP. Described as a gangster politician, Tarique represents the latest addition to the Zia dynasty, which had pro-US backers in the Bangladeshi ruling class. The BNP positioned itself as anti-corruption and offering a return to stability. With many Bangladeshis fearing a Jamaat victory, BNP won the election with 209 out of 297 seats. Jamaat, with 31 percent of the vote, took 68 seats, while the NCP won just six. Alongside the election, there was also a constitutional referendum about government reform, which passed with 68 percent of the vote, showing that there was still appetite for change.
The BNP government will not deliver that change. The Bangladeshi ruling class, previously served by Hasina, have flocked behind Tarique Rahman’s new government. Bangladeshi workers will continue to be brutally exploited by foreign capitalists. Poverty and repression will be rampant in this new regime.
There is a sentiment amongst many in Bangladesh that this was inevitable: politics is nothing but a cycle of betrayal and corruption, and nothing could have prevented it. The reality is that without an alternative source of power, this pattern will continue to repeat—people will rise up, but then power will fall back to the established bourgeois institutions of the state, the police, the military and the parliament. The only alternative source of power capable of forging an new type of society is the organised working class. Only workers can form democratic organisations that can take control over not just the streets, but the enormous productive resources that we all rely on but the capitalists control.
The future struggles in Bangladesh must take lessons from 2024: the existing institutions and political forces cannot be used to bring liberation, but are a barrier to it. And struggle will return. As one Dhaka University student put it after the revolution, “We’ve ousted this regime and will do so again if the new leaders fail to meet our expectations”.
