SEVENTY-THREE years ago, Ernest Hemingway published ‘The Old Man and the Sea,’ a story of quiet defiance and enduring dignity. Santiago, the old fisherman, had not caught a fish in 84 days. His apprentice had left him. Yet, undeterred, he sailed deep into the Gulf Stream and fought a giant marlin for three days, using little more than his bare hands and worn tools. He finally caught the fish, a catch no one in his village had managed, but on the journey back, sharks tore it apart. He returned with nothing but its skeleton. And yet, Santiago was honoured, not for what he brought back, but for the magnitude of his struggle.
There is something hauntingly familiar in that story for anyone who has followed the trajectory of Bangladesh’s 2018 Quota Reform Movement and the more recent July Uprising, which culminated on August 5 with the fall of the old regime. If the Quota Reform struggle was Santiago’s 84 days at sea, then July was the marlin — caught, fought over, and ultimately torn by opportunism. In both stories, the victory was real, but the aftermath was fraught.
The youth who rose in July sought a different Bangladesh. Their resistance was principled, their fight courageous, their resolve immense. They ventured far beyond safe shores. They shook the regime to its core. But just as Santiago’s marlin was devoured before it reached shore, the promises of the uprising have since been consumed by opportunists, political turncoats and the cultural debris of the ancien régime. The carcass may still bear the outline of a great victory, but much of its substance has been lost along the way.
Even so, just as Santiago earned the respect of his fishing village despite returning empty-handed, the young frontliners and student organisers of the uprising have earned the admiration of the people. No one can deny their sacrifice. No one can erase the memory of what they confronted, or the raw energy they unleashed. The question now is whether their legacy will be defined by that one moment of triumph, or whether they will move beyond the skeleton to offer something more lasting, more nourishing.
The National Citizen Party, born in the aftermath, carried the promise of that nourishment. It stood, at least in its founding ethos, for something new: a political culture shaped by merit, transparency and civic dignity. Yet a year on, the movement’s political wing finds itself increasingly entangled in the very machinery it sought to transcend. Power, in Bangladesh, is not easily displaced. Institutions remain beholden to old networks. The media, ever cautious, continues to amplify missteps. Within the NCP itself, the contradiction between idealism and realpolitik is becoming difficult to ignore.
Organisationally, the party has suffered. Coordination is weak, leadership often absent. As it expanded, it encountered the familiar rot of patronage and short-termism. Well-meaning but politically untrained individuals entered the fold, some fell into corruption, others were possibly co-opted by rival interests determined to fracture the party from within. Extortion allegations, factionalism and ill-timed public missteps have all served to erode trust. It is a tragic, if predictable, pattern. The cultural capital of the old regime, though defeated electorally, remains culturally and institutionally entrenched, ready to delegitimise any alternative that rises from the people.
There is precedent for this trajectory. In Egypt, the revolution in Tahrir Square was a moment of mass awakening, only to give way to a far more brutal regime under Sisi. In 1980, the citizens of Gwangju in South Korea rose against military repression, only to be met with mass killings and decades of silencing. Many of the participants were painted as subversives or criminals. Yet, in time, the Gwangju Uprising planted seeds that would grow into South Korea’s June Democratic Movement in 1987, a turning point in the country’s path to democracy.
For the NCP, the lesson is clear. Political transformation is not secured by a single moment, nor even by a successful regime change. It must be cultivated — slowly, imperfectly, and often painfully. Recent months show glimmers of that long cultivation. The party has begun visiting districts, reconnecting with grassroots communities, and hosting public gatherings. More than 30 districts have been covered. It is a modest start, but one that matters. The delay — caused by weak leadership, internal discord, and the fantasy of shortcuts — was costly. But the effort to rebuild is underway.
The NCP now stands at a crucial threshold. Will it prove capable of resisting co-option and reasserting its founding ideals? Can it structure itself as a political force rooted in accountability, transparency and participatory governance — or will it remain in the shadow of the July Uprising, a footnote to a moment that promised much but delivered little?
There are miles to go. The path forward will require clarity of vision, discipline and an unwavering resistance to the temptations of power for its own sake. The party must urgently professionalise its leadership, decentralise its operations and inoculate itself against the cultural habits of dynastic, winner-takes-all politics. If it fails to do so, it risks becoming what it once opposed. If it succeeds, it might just offer the country a rare thing: a political vessel both clean and capable of navigating the storm.
Santiago caught the marlin. He fought hard. But he could not protect it from the sharks. The students caught theirs too — the moment, the momentum, the marlin. The question now is whether they can return again to sea, wiser this time, better prepared, and bring back not just the skeleton but the substance of what they once imagined.
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Mohin Uddin Mizan is a publication and communication professional at the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies, Ministry of Planning.
