The declaration of Narir Dake Maitri Jatra illustrates what a truly intersectional feminist manifesto could look like, as it challenges imperialist, cis-Bengali-Muslim supremacist, heterosexist, and capitalist patriarchy, observes Nafisa Nipun Tanjeem
AS A transnational feminist scholar of social movements, when the Women’s Affairs Reform Commission’s report came out on April 19, I became keen on reviewing the 433 recommendations under 15 thematic areas. I was initially a bit frustrated to see that the report primarily focused on ‘equality between women and men’ [‘nari-purusher shomota orjon’] (p. 1). bell hooks, a Black feminist scholar, suggested twenty-five years ago that women trying to gain equality with men within the existing system of imperialist, white supremacist, heterosexist, capitalist patriarchy may eventually be able to secure a few more rights, but it will not topple intersecting systems of oppression. Men are neither the enemy nor the standard to achieve.
In the Bangladeshi context, it should be the imperialist, cis-Bengali-Muslim supremacist, heterosexist, and capitalist patriarchy that needs to be vehemently challenged. While the Women’s Affairs Reform Commission’s report proposed a good number of systemic reforms, including reforming the constitution, decentralising the government, reforming the criminal justice system, and so on, I would argue that the report left the question of calling for intersectional social and structural transformation mostly implicit and covert.
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Disjunctures of the Commission’s report
FOR example, the report addressed concerns of indigenous women and Rohingya women throughout different chapters. However, it used metaphors like ‘conflict zones’ [shongghatshlisto elaka] to describe the Chittagong Hill Tracks region and Rohingya refugee camps (p. 12) instead of clearly naming the Bengali settler colonialism and violence perpetuated by the Bangladesh army in the Chittagong Hill Tracks region or the exclusion of Rohingya women from meaningful citizenship. I reviewed the report to specifically find out what it said about trans, queer, and non-binary population in Bangladesh. To my dismay, I found out that the feminist ethos of the report was restricted to a binary understanding of the sex/gender system, erasing unique challenges faced by queer, trans, and non-binary communities.
The report did suggest constitutional reforms (p. 33), which included replacing the language of ‘sex’ [nari-purushved] with ‘gender’ [lingo-porichoy] (Article 28). This was perhaps an implicit gesture that the report was mindful of recognising gender diversity and differences, but — as I mentioned before — its overall ethos was asking for equality with men within the existing system. The report identified political and religious conservatism as the biggest challenge for women’s development (p. 26). Hence, it left out the questions of the way transnational, as well as local, imperial, neocolonial, and neoliberal forces shape social-economic-political dynamics of political and religious conservatism.
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What’s missing between right-wing attacks and the feminist response?
THE feminist concern about political and religious conservatism, as presented in the Women’s Affairs Reform Commission’s report, was reinforced by the response from the right-wing Islamist political groups and individuals, including Hefazat-e-Islam. For understandable reasons, the critiques of the Women’s Affairs Reform Commission’s report never came from the progressive side. There was little to no scope for discussing the critiques I have mentioned above. Right after the report got published, right-wing Islamist political groups and their allies started targeting the report and its authors. Instead of engaging with contents of the report in a holistic, productive, and respectful manner, they cherry-picked a handful of issues from the comprehensive list of 433 recommendations of a 318-page report and launched concerted attacks against a few proposals, such as, the recommendation for enacting legal equality and uniform family code, recognising sex workers under labour laws, and criminalising marital rape.
The immediate progressive and feminist responses vehemently supported the stance of the Women’s Affairs Reform Commission. Some of the arguments from the feminist side highlighted that the report merely suggested policy reforms. The recommendations were not necessarily policies or laws and were not legally binding. Others highlighted that the uniform family code was proposed as an option. The code would not replace the existing religion-based family laws. Some argued that the classic Islamic jurisprudence is no longer relevant for many reasons. Others pointed out the examples of Muslim majority countries that either achieved or are currently working towards attaining legal equality between women and men.
I would argue that the series of coordinated and often-hostile attacks from the religious right and the defensive response from the progressive and feminist side completely subsumed the possibilities of discussing how the recommendations put forward by the Women’s Affairs Reform Commission could have been further honed to challenge the imperialist, cis-Bengali-Muslim supremacist, heterosexist, and capitalist patriarchy and bring structural and systemic transformation in Bangladesh.
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What did the Commission ultimately achieve?
I WOULD argue that the bureaucratic, legalistic, and reformist version of feminism that wants to work through the existing system can only get us so far. The Women’s Affairs Reform Commission’s report, as a body of the current interim government, on the one hand, compiled a comprehensive review of women’s current status in Bangladesh and identified pathways to address challenges faced by women. It went above and beyond to highlight the intersectional plights of working-class women, rural women, indigenous women, refugee women, and women from many other marginalised and minoritised backgrounds.
On the other hand, the report was initially meant to compile a set of non-binding recommendations for the current interim government that was not formed through a national election and is not accountable to any elected parliamentary body. Therefore, there was no way most of the recommendations forwarded by this commission would see the light of day during the tenure of the interim government, as most of the recommendations would require broader structural reform. Then why did the commission put so much effort into compiling such a comprehensive report? The report said that ‘it hopes to stir public conscience, provoke thought, and help achieve equality for women through debates and discussions’ (p. 9).
I would argue that one of the most powerful contributions of the Women’s Affairs Reform Commission is that it revived some of the much-needed yet most controversial reform proposals that feminist movements in Bangladesh have been striving to achieve for a long time. Since the publication of the report, people are debating and exchanging arguments for and against issues, such as legal equality for women, recognition of sex work as work, marital rape, and sex education in various in-person and digital platforms. Invigorating debates and discussions is usually the first step to building public consensus for a social justice cause.
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Unintended, yet significant consequence of the report
THE other significant — perhaps unintended — consequence of the right-wing backlash against the Women’s Affairs Reform Commission’s report, the series of violent incidents and public harassment against women since the 2024 July uprising, and the lack of response from the state and the interim government was the rising critiques from many segments of feminist and progressive individuals and groups, which ultimately culminated in organising the ‘Narir Dake Maitri Jatra’ [Women’s March for Solidarity] on May 16, 2025. This is, I would argue, by far one of the most intersectional, transformative, grassroots, and vibrant public feminist demonstrations in the recent history of Bangladesh.
Narir Dake Maitri Jatra is a glowing example of a bottom-up, grassroots, and intersectional feminist organising, which did not have any single institutional platform or funder. In a country where the mainstream feminist organising has essentially turned into a 9-5 pm professional pursuit, where the acquiring of foreign and/or corporate funds and being accountable to the donors, as opposed to local communities, has become the norm for running NGOs, and where NGOs risk losing their registration if they seem to engage in ‘anti-state activities,’ revolutionary feminist pursuits are challenging to mobilise. Despite the challenges, Narir Dake Maitri Jatra successfully mobilised more than sixty feminist and progressive organisations as well as thousands of individuals, including but not limited to indigenous communities, religiously minoritised communities, working-class people, Dalit communities, people with disability, garment workers, tea plantation workers, homemakers, non-Bengali communities, sex workers, and trans/queer/non-binary communities. It followed a bottom-up crowd-funding model where the allies contributed solidarity funds based on their means.
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How Maitri Jatra transcended the Commission’s report
THE signs carried by participants at Narir Dake Maitri Jatra touched upon many taboo topics that the Women’s Affairs Reform Commission, as a body of the current interim government, dared not touch upon. For example, despite demanding institutional reforms for indigenous women in various sectors, as I mentioned earlier, the Women’s Affairs Reform Commission did not explicitly elaborate on the state-sponsored militarised violence against indigenous communities in Bangladesh. However, many participants showed up at Narir Dake Maitri Jatra wearing the Palestinian keffiyehs to take a critical stance against not only the Israeli settler colonial occupation but alsoÌý the Bengali settler colonial occupation of indigenous lands and militarised violence against indigenous communities. They demanded an end to the persecution of civilian indigenous Bawm people, including Bawm women and children. They demanded justice for the abduction and disappearance of Kalpona Chakma — the organiser of the Hill Women’s Federation. Another example of the way Narir Dake Maitri Jatra transcended what the Women’s Affairs Reform Commission could not pursue due to its limited institutional scope was holding space for trans, queer, and non-binary demonstrators. Trans-, queer, and non-binary women showed up with signs that courageously declared their identities and demanded space within the existing, mainstream feminist movements and the state.
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Byatagiri equally performed by ‘traditional’ religious and secular ‘modern’ men
GIVEN the current situation, when images and videos of angry madrassa-educated cis-Bengali-Muslim-men with beards, white caps, and long white dresses reprimanding the Women’s Affairs Reform Commission’s report in hostile ways on the ground of conflicting with religion circulated across social media, it would have been really easy for any secular, liberal feminist pursuit to reproduce the popular binary between fundamentalism and secularism. In fact, we have observed the oversimplified yet popular framing of tradition vs. modernity and Islam vs. feminism reproduced in many conversations and viral social media posts that circulated after the massive demonstration of Hefazat-e-Islam on May 3.
What these discussions largely missed was how byatagiri — an embodied performance of imperialist, cis-Bengali-supremacist, heterosexist, and neoliberal chauvinism — is performed by not only the ‘traditional’ right-wing Islamist individual men and male-dominated political groups but alsoÌý individuals and various bodies of the current interim government, many of whom ironically come from so-called ‘modern’ civil society backgrounds. Since the July uprising, in the wake of a series of violent incidents disproportionately targeting women and various minoritised communities, the interim government remained awfully silent and non-responsive. The government is yet to issue any statement condemning the targeted attacks against the Women’s Affairs Reform Commission — one of its own bodies — and its members.Ìý
Muhammad Yunus, the chief advisor of the current interim government, informed Al-Jazeera in a recent interview that the ‘consensus-building commission,’ which is currently coordinating with all political parties regarding identifying the most acceptable recommendations. The ultimate goal of the government is to find recommendations that all parties agree with. However, this specific consensus-building commission is comprised of seven cis-Bengali-Muslim men, and no one from the Women’s Affairs Reform Committee has been a part of this commission. Six areas have been highlighted as key reform areas: constitution, public administration, police, election, judiciary, and anti-corruption. Gender or reforming women’s affairs has not been considered as one of the priorities. Moreover, trying to determine the most ‘acceptable’ recommendations by popular vote from existing cis-heterosexual-Bengali-Muslim-male dominated political parties would be an alarming initiative and detrimental to the plight of women’s rights, especially when most of the major political parties have recently demonstrated a right-wing populist tilt.
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Beyond the binary of Islam vs feminism: Demanding intersectional, transformative changes
AGAINST this backdrop, Narir Dake Maitri Jatra situated itself against the rich history of intersectional struggles against systemic oppression, which included movements led by farmers, workers, environmentalists, students, women, and many other minoritised and marginalised communities in this region. Narir Dake Maitri Jatra went beyond the simplistic demand of achieving equality between women and men, as framed in the Women’s Affairs Reform Commission’s report. It eloquently articulated that ‘….from land rights of farmers to climate justice — every issue is a women’s issue and women’s rights are central to a just society.’ It reminded the interim, as well as future government, that freedom for women, workers, ethnic, religious, linguistic, and minoritised populations, Hijra, and gender diverse communities can never be conditional or be denied in the name of protecting a majoritarian national unity.
Narir Dake Maitri Jatra moved beyond the narrow focus on the backlash against the Women’s Affairs Reform Commission and questioned whether the interim government is surrendering to byatagiri — the majoritarian chauvinism — of those who ‘want to preserve an unequal status quo in the name of a farcical democracy and reform,’ Most importantly, despite facing a tremendous amount of backlash from some Islamist political groups and individuals, Narir Dake Maitri Jatra managed to stay away from the oversimplified binaries of fundamentalism vs secularism and Islam vs feminism and the framing of saving women from cis-heterosexual-Bengali-Muslim men. It insightfully elaborated on the way culture and religion have been weaponised to sustain the majoritarian rule and control over minoritised and marginalised communities. It expresses a powerful commitment: ‘Our traditions, cultures, and religions are much more complex, diverse, sensitive than that. And we will not let a select few determine, interpret, impose them on everyone by force, ignoring that diversity, or allow their parochial interpretations to become universal. We will not let anyone create a conflict between rights and religion and equivocate on the question of our rights and dignity.’
Just like Sojournor Truth’s ‘Ain’t I a women’ speech, I would argue that the declaration of Narir Dake Maitri Jatra needs to be taught in every feminist classroom in Bangladesh to demonstrate what a truly intersectional feminist manifesto, which challenges imperialist, cis-Bengali-Muslim supremacist, heterosexist, and capitalist patriarchy, could look like.
So, where do we go from here? Following Arundhati Roy’s framing of ‘pandemic as a portal,’ I would argue that the 2024 July uprising has offered us an opportunity to move away from the oppressive past and imagine an anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, anti-heteropatriarchal future. We are currently going through a portal, which is a ‘gateway between one world and the next’ — as described by Roy. We have the option of being model neoliberal citizens and settling for some ‘feel-good’ treats from the power. Or, we can challenge the power and fight back, bleed, get up, and keep fighting for a better, egalitarian world.
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Nafisa Nipun Tanjeem is an educator, researcher, writer, and activist. Currently, she works as an Associate Professor in the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies at Worcester State University in Massachusetts, United States.
