JULY of 2024 was a happening month, in national sphere, in the newsroom and in my personal life. It did begin as other months do, but, for me, three events happened — two, in fact, did and one did not. I did not anticipate the two that happened and I was eagerly looking forward to the one that did not happen. I stepped into the University of Dhaka in July 1989 and 34 years later, my daughter was to follow in my footsteps. But there were uncertainties about whether classes in the university would begin.
The teachers had already decided to abstain from work, beginning on July 1, in protest at a universal pension scheme that the government introduced and teachers in public universities were opposed to. And, students, primarily university students, mostly of public universities, were to hold protests on the campus, demanding, initially, the abolition of civil service job reservations after a similar protest in 2018 had failed to resolve the issue.
The work abstention of the teachers of public universities, 35 of them that have teachers’ associations, made the headlines for paralysing all the 55 public universities for July 1 whilst the students held protests chiefly in three universities — the University of Dhaka, Jahangirnagar University and the University of Rajshahi. The office of the dean of the fine arts in the University of Dhaka notified my daughter the night before that classes had been suspended for unavoidable reasons. The student protests on the day were meant to demand that the government circular of October 4, 2018 should be reinstated. The demand came forth after the High Court on June 5, 2024 had asked the government to reinstate the reservation of 30 per cent of the civil service jobs for the children and grandchildren of freedom fighters.
The government on October 4, 2018 abolished the reservations of all 56 per cent of civil service jobs that had until then been reserved for people in certain categories. Thirty per cent of the jobs were reserved for the children and grandchildren of freedom fighters, 10 per cent for women, 10 per cent for people of under-represented districts, 5 per cent for national minorities and 1 per cent for people with disabilities.
It all began with an executive order of the government in 1972 that introduced the job reservations system, setting aside 30 per cent for liberation war veterans or freedom fighters, 10 per cent for women raped during the war and 40 per cent for inhabitants of under-represented districts, keeping open 20 per cent of the civil service jobs to merit. The government in 1976 reduced the reservation for under-represented districts by a half, down to 20 per cent, keeping open 40 per cent of the jobs to merit.
The government in 1985 made noticeable changes in the scheme. As the category for the women raped during the war had gone unclaimed, the government used the reservations for all women, further halved the reservations for under-represented districts and freshly set aside 5 per cent of the jobs for national minorities, keeping 45 per cent of the jobs to merit. The government in 1997 extended the freedom fighters’ job reservations to their children because of a declining number of applications from freedom fighters.
In 2010, the government even further extended it to freedom fighters’ grandchildren. But it has been reported that not more than a third of the 30 per cent in the category could ever be claimed since 1997. The government also freshly reserved 1 per cent of the jobs for people with disabilities, which finally kept 44 per cent of the jobs open to merit. This scheme had been in force until 2018, when the government did away with the reservations. The reservations were, in fact, a legacy of the Pakistan days when in 1970, only 7.5 per cent of civil service jobs were open to merit.
The demand of the students sought the cancellation of any reservation of civil service jobs. The students announced a boycott of classes until July 5 and said that they would announce further programmes if the appeals court did not comply with the demand on July 4.
The students on protest, having held the first day’s event at the Raju Memorial Sculpture, or the Anti-Terrorism Raju Memorial Sculpture as it is formally called, and the second day’s event at the Central Shahid Minar on the university campus, were still being referred to as students of the University of Dhaka, Rajshahi, Chittagong or Jahangirnagar University, or students of public universities. They had from the first day carried banners for the protests as Baishamyabirodhi Chhatra Andolan in Bangla and the Students Against Discrimination in English. But newspapers coming out in English were late to catch on to the name and many translated it from Bangla into English as the ‘anti-discrimination student movement’ or the ‘student movement against discrimination’, which had continued for long, even, in some cases, long after the uprising.
The protests started intensifying on July 4, with thousands of students in Dhaka and outlying areas, having joined in. Allegations came up that the Chhatra League, the students’ affiliate of the Awami League, had intimidated the protesters. The protests spilt over to the University of Chittagong on July 5. And, the piece of protest news started receiving a noticeable treatment in the next days’ newspaper although newspapers had published photographs of the protests almost every day. With each passing day, the protests kept spreading, with the students running online and in-person campaigns among their fellows. Public university teachers, in the meanwhile. continued abstaining from work and other members on public university staff on July 6 threatened to paralyse university administration as they pushed for the demand that the teachers had rallied for.
Chhatra League people attacked the protests on July 11, hitting the headlines. Protesters were heavily attacked on July 15; several hundred were hurt. It was, then, a day after the ides of July, also in a Shakespearean undertone, when six protesters died in police fire. Whilst the education ministry closed all schools and colleges in the evening to stop the protests from spreading further, the University Grants Commission, which ordered the closure of all private universities at night, asked the public universities to close down. The next day, July 17, was a public holiday on account of Ashura. And, university syndicates sat to make decisions. The University of Dhaka, which was expected to drag on the matter, fell fast. The government ordered a curfew at midnight past July 19 and called out the army in aid to civil power. The death figure kept rising.
A quarter of a hundred people were killed in the first day of the curfew on July 20. The Appellate Division on July 21, however, revised the civil service job reservations scheme, setting aside 5 per cent for the children and grand-children of freedom fighters, 1 per cent for national minorities and 1 per cent for people with disabilities and the third gender, keeping open 93 per cent of the jobs open to merit. Protests spilt over to diverse communities beginning on July 30, with the event having already flared up into a mass uprising. Amidst a call for ‘march to Dhaka’ for August 5, the Awami League government was toppled on the day and the deposed prime minister Sheikh Hasina fled to India soon after the noon, leaving a trail of destruction in all senses.
An interim government was installed three days later. But, the civil service job reservation scheme has still been caught in the warp of the court’s July 21, 2024 verdict. The interim government on January 15, 2025 notified a list of 834 people having been killed in police fire during the uprising. Another notification on a list of 10 on July 1 took the total figure to 844. The liberation war affairs ministry, however, on August 3 issued a notification, cancelling the recognition of eight martyrs, taking the total to 836.
To be continued.
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Abu Jar M Akkas is deputy editor at ¶¶Òõ¾«Æ·.
