The question is not whether this election will solve all of Bangladesh’s problems, it will not. The real question is whether it can reopen a democratic pathway that has long been blocked.
At the end of the day, the final test of this government is not whether the referendum passes or not, but whether they have been able to hold a credible election and whether the referendum process itself was managed without a hitch.
As Bangladesh prepares for the long-awaited national election, it is important to remember that strengthening democracy and building peace on the foundation of collective amnesia will be a disaster for our nation.
What if Bangladesh's problem isn't the divides themselves? Secular versus religious. Bengali versus Muslim. Shahbag versus Shapla. Aspiration versus stagnation. What if the real problem is our inability to tolerate disagreement at all?
Until 2019, people in the country used to say the country was on the right track. After 2020, there has been a sharp decline. Recently, 53% of people now say the country is running well again.
Here is the cruel asymmetry that exposes the game. Hurt religious sentiment is always, unfailingly, something felt by the majority or by those who claim to speak in its name. No minority, no freethinker, no ordinary citizen can ever demand accountability for the trampling of their own emotions.
The real victory of any revolution lies not in the fall of an old regime but in the birth of a culture that resists repeating its mistakes. Bangladesh’s revolution will have meaning only if it leads to a politics that listens, includes, and endures.
We stand today at a critical juncture. The authoritarian state has collapsed, but the authoritarian mind endures. The struggle for democracy, therefore, is no longer against a regime -- it is against ourselves.
Until democracy regains its moral soul -- until citizens can question without fear and leaders can lose power without vengeance -- it will remain a performance, not a principle. And if this performance continues, one morning we will awaken to discover that democracy has quietly turned into its opposite.
One year after the July Revolution, the memory of brave young lives lost continues to light the path toward a just, democratic, and united Bangladesh
