It was really at night when it happened, following what seemed even at the time like an unnecessary provocation.
In the streets of the Dhaka University campus, thousands of students, young men and women, chanted the word.
For years, Awami League's increasingly authoritarian tendencies were called out by opposition parties, human rights groups, and government watchdogs. Still, none were able to point the finger at the top of the pyramid of tyranny in quite the manner students had done in Dhaka and all around the country.
"Tumi ke, ami ke? Razakar! Razakar! Ke bolechhe, ke bolechhe, Shoirachar! Shoirachar! [Who are you, who am I? Razakar! Razakar! Who said it, who said it? Autocrat! Autocrat!]."
That was the slogan that rang out through the streets of DU, which had been the first witness to the Pakistan Army's nine-month slaughter of Bangladeshis in 1971, aided by the army's local collaborators, known as Razakars.
It is a word loathed by Bangladeshis. It represents ultimate betrayal. On July 4, 2024, it wasn't the students who first uttered it. They were repeating and responding to something that the then-prime minister Sheikh Hasina said earlier that day.
The spark that lit the flame
At a press briefing on her just-concluded three-day visit to China, while answering a reporter's question, Hasina said, "Why is there so much resentment against the Liberation War and the freedom fighters? If the grandchildren of the freedom fighters don't get quotas, then should the grandchildren of the Razakars get quotas? That is my question."
She was referring to the ongoing countrywide protests by students and job seekers over quotas for civil service jobs. There was a 30% quota for freedom fighters' descendants.
Her words led to ordinary students, with strength only in numbers and not in political clout, chanting at the top of their voices what many may have dared only whisper for the previous 15 years.
The temperature had already been high following the 5 June High Court order declaring illegal a 2018 government decision to abolish quotas. On 4 July, the Supreme Court upheld the HC order until further orders, hiking the mercury further.
But Hasina's use of the word "Razakar" as a response to a movement waged by students of a country in economic hardship and job shortages was the spark that lit the flame.
The movement had earlier become one that was coordinated throughout the country under the "Anti-Discrimination Student Movement" banner.
As students of DU started protesting and chanting slogans against the PM's rebuke around 11:00 pm, so did their fellows in Jahangirnagar University, Chittagong University, Jagannath University, Rajshahi University, Comilla University and other public universities around the country. It continued long into the night.
24-hour ultimatum issued
Earlier that day, thousands of students marched from DU to Bangabhaban to give a memorandum to the president demanding that he convene an emergency parliament session within 24 hours to reform the quota system. They defied police obstruction and marched to Bangabhaban, where a 12-member delegation submitted the memorandum to President Mohammad Shahabuddin around 2:30 pm.
Foreshadowing the countrywide groundswell of anger and scorn occasioned by Hasina's dismissive remark, students of other public universities also marched to their respective deputy commissioners' offices to submit similar memorandums to be forwarded to the president.
A movement transformed
The veneer of invincibility was perhaps never stronger around Hasina, who had just half a year ago won her fourth election on the trot. Two of those, including the 2024 one, were boycotted by the BNP, the main opposition and the previous ruling party. Ensconced in power, she had become used to making brash, ill-advised public statements.
These included giving hungry people dietary suggestions from her Gono Bhaban perch amid skyrocketing food prices, saying she should throw critics of the Padma Bridge project off the completed bridge, and before that dismissing the ever-worsening traffic situation and the consequent public hardship as a sign of car owners' affluence.
But as was eventually proven, her Razakar remark to a movement born of suffering and thirst for justice was a step too far.
Because, for the students, it seemed to be the height of disregard and injustice. This was best encapsulated by the chant that rang across the country: "Cheyechhilam odhikar, hoye gelam Razakar [We wanted our rights, but we became Razakars]".
In the coming days, some would baulk at this invocation of the loathsome word by the students, who have long been associated with the spirit of the Liberation War.
But perhaps they failed to fully grasp that the tide had already turned, and that in a day the quota reform movement had become something greater – a quest for a new liberation.
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