Early in 2024, I had met X, a lawyer from Bangladesh. Suave, articulate and glamorous, she was in Kolkata and planning to host with others a World Bengali Congress. She was despondent about how things were panning out politically in Bangladesh. Corruption, nepotism, and stagnation were what defined the days under Sheikh Hasina for her. We need change, she moaned. But even so, the Bangladesh National Party (BNP) was no alternative. Allied to the Jamaat-i-Islami Bangladesh, the BNP could not usher in the progressive change that Bangladesh needed, she said - it would be a regressive rule, anti-women and anti-minority. Moreover, X had other concerns - she had filed cases against members of the Jamaat for some of their anti-national, anti-women activities. Bangladesh, thus, she said, needed a third alternative. Though she was on Jamaat's hitlist, she continued to live and work in Dhaka.
A few months later, in August, a ‘third' alternative did emerge in the form of the interim government led by Nobel peace laureate Mohammed Yunus. This wasn't really what many had envisioned, but still, it brought hope for a new dawn in Bangladesh.
Just months later, fearing for her life, X quietly left Bangladesh for safer shores abroad.
X's flight is a good barometer to gauge the change ushered in by the "revolution" that brought down Hasina's government. The initial days of chaos and violence were a matter of course for any spontaneous uprising against a creaking authoritarianism. In the ensuing months, however, matters got only worse. The Yunus-led government didn't just allow the genie of religious radicalism out of the bottle - it actively abetted it.
Sheikh Hasina had at least kept the lid on groups like Jamaat so that those like X could challenge them legally; the Yunus government, on the other hand, has freed all criminals and violators connected to the Jamaat from Bangladesh's prisons. It has also lifted the ban on the outfit and allowed sundry radical groups to flock to Bangladesh from around the globe, fuelled by funds and logistical support from powerful countries. Worse, he has allowed the Jamaat to be listed as a political party, which is now set to contest the elections as Bangladesh's largest party in the absence of the Awami League.
Women have been one of the first casualties. Rokeya Prachi, a three-time National Award-winning actress, rues that Bangladesh is fast turning into what Afghanistan was earlier. Speaking over the phone from an undisclosed location, she tells me life has become unbearable for women there. Vigilant mobs roam the streets, enforcing dress codes upon women; those without a burqa or hijab are regularly targeted. Sexual violence against women, especially those even remotely connected to the Awami League, has become routine. Most concerning is the fact that such acts are now being video recorded and aired, she says.
An Awami League card-carrying member, Prachi herself was physically assaulted when she went to pay respects to the late Sheikh Mujibur Rehman, the country's founding father, on his martyrdom day on August 15, 2024. Other women there were also harassed. Prachi has since gone underground, as have many others associated with the Awami League. No cases have been filed against the assaulters, no arrests made, she says.
Such moral policing is not restricted to only women connected with the Awami League. Even civilians have started bearing the brunt of radicalism. In March this year, a female student at Dhaka University was harassed by a university employee for her "inappropriate" clothing. The employee was arrested but later released because of protests mounted by a group calling itself the ‘Towhidi Janata', an ally of the Jamaat.
In November, a university student was physically assaulted by a bus conductor after she protested his lewd comments about her attire during a fare dispute.
More recently, a video has gone viral where a man is heard telling a woman that she must wear a hijab because Bangladesh is a Muslim country.
A female journalist was raped in March this year.
According to Ain O Salish Kendra (ASK), a Bangladesh-based human rights organisation, as many as 96 cases of rape were reported across the country in just the two months of January and February last year. Among the victims were disabled girls and women, as well as women from minority communities.
While news of atrocities against Hindus and other minorities in Bangladesh has made headlines, not much has been said about what women in general are suffering there. A July 2025 report of Human Rights Watch found that the country has been facing “an alarming surge in mob violence, political violence, and harassment of journalists by political parties and other non-state groups, such as religious hardliners hostile to women's rights and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people”.
Bangladesh's streets are being emptied of women, says a female trade unionist who has sought temporary asylum in India. All the gains made over the past decade or so, mainly under the now reviled Hasina government, are being rolled back. Not so long ago, Bangladesh had been doing remarkably well on the gender front, with its performance on some indices such as female mortality, maternal mortality and women's participation in the workforce being higher than even neighbouring India's.
Now, moral policing by the radicals has given way to crude questions such as should a woman work outside the house, and if she must, then how much. Various members and clerics associated with the Jamaat have opposed women's work, even dictating that women can go out to work only if their husbands or male guardians consider it necessary. In any case, in the aftermath of the quota stir that had sparked the regime change in Bangladesh, all job quotas meant for women were scrapped. The interim government has also reportedly done away with women's quotas for elections, which had been in place in the country's polity till recently. The women's reforms bill, proposed by a committee it had itself instituted, has been set aside. The reason? Nationwide protests by Islamists, who claimed that it contradicted Sharia law.
Many feel that the Yunus government has willingly sanctioned and even upheld this collective backslide in a bid to appeal to its partners in the Jamaat and the NCP. The casualty is Bangladesh, its future, and its women. But the world seems to have shut its eyes to such uncomfortable questions.
(The author is a senior journalist)
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author
