THE win of the right-wing Islami Chhatra Shibir, the student front of the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami, in the elections to the Dhaka University Central Students’ Union, the yearly event that took place after a gap of six years on September 9, which were by and large free and fair, is a defeat of the centrist and left student political organisations. This needs to be recognised and accepted although the central students’ union of the University of Dhaka has almost always been an affair of liberal, democratic and progressive student forces. But in the changed political context, this has taken a turn for the right wing. This appears to have happened centring on the vacuum borne out of the legal ban on the fallen Awami League’s Chhatra League for its illegal activities, on the one hand, and the weakening of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party’s student wing Chhatra Dal’s organisational strength primarily because of the repression for the 15 years of the Awami League and, of course, the political marginalisation of the left forces for various reasons, on the other hand.
The Awami League, along with its student wing Bangladesh Chhatra League, has created disturbance in the ideological process on the campus with its authoritarianism for a long time. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party, another centrist political party, along with its student wing Jatiyatabadi Chhatra Dal, has, meanwhile, indulged itself in extortion, grabbing and other such crimes and vices, especially after the August 2024 political changeover, when it had some freedom. But, all that it did has harmed democratic aspirations that people expected of it. Whilst all this went on, Jamaat-e-Islami and its student wing Islami Chhatra Shibir have cautiously put on a centrist face, a pretence of a sort. And, during the authoritarian regime of the Awami League, leaders of the Islami Chhatra Shibir have hoodwinked students of the University of Dhaka by hiding themselves in the fold of the Chhatra League in a hypocritical manner. Many Islami Chhatra Shibir leaders have all these years worked in their political interests even by assuming office in the Chhatra League. The youth all over the world seek an ideology to embrace and even fight for it. Here in the University of Dhaka, both the left is marginalised and the Chhatra Dal and others hardly had an ideology to offer whilst the Islami Chhatra Shibir had a pretence of offering, and no matter how conservative it is, for the students to embrace. The victory of Islami Chhatra Shibir in the University of Dhaka is, therefore, not surprising, unwarranted though. Whilst this has been gleeful for the Islami Chhatra Shibir, it has, in effect, also been sad for centrists and the left political forces.
What has happened on the University of Dhaka campus should, therefore, serve as a wake-up call for democrats — centrists and the left. They should now work not only on the University of Dhaka campus but also elsewhere with clean politics, a better gesture and further dedication and commitment to progressive ideology. They should prioritise their interests above all else to take on the rise of the right wing that has come about in a political ideological vacuum.