When Nahid Islam, a Bangladeshi student activist-turned-political-leader, declared in June that his party’s July Declaration would be unveiled in early August, there was countrywide apprehension on what it might contain. University and college students had, after all, played the leading role in unleashing a month-long agitation that toppled the Sheikh Hasina regime in August 2024 before an interim regime led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus assumed power.
Instead of ushering in political stability, a year after the cataclysmic events that marked Hasina’s departure, the interim authority floundered on several fronts. The last several months have been marked by violence, mob lynchings, targeting of minorities, political bickering, accusations of return to corrupt practices and economic instability. Elections have been set for February 2026, but there is neither a clear roadmap nor firm dates for this democratic process that has been elusive in Bangladesh for the last several years.
It is in this dismal backdrop that on August 5 Chief Adviser Muhammad Yunus read out the July Declaration at the South Plaza of parliament. The declaration was intended to set a new political direction. Instead, it sparked controversy for its selective and partial portrayal of Bangladesh’s history.
It reflected a political culture that has been at the core of Bangladesh’s history – denial of a political legacy and attempts to establish a new but fraught narrative. Where the 1971 proclamation preserved the nation’s collective history and legitimised governance during extraordinary times, the July Declaration appears aimed at creating a more partisan historical narrative.
If the motivation behind the July Declaration was to erase the 1971 Declaration of Independence, it failed to provide alternatives to Bangladesh’s founding principles of democracy, nationalism, secularism and nationalism. Rather than uniting the nation under shared democratic aspirations, the July document risks deepening political divides by omitting certain key events and contributions from the historical record.
Erasing Awami League’s contribution
The attempt was to not only erase the Awami League’s contribution to Bangladesh’s history but, by doing so, wipe out the liberation war’s icons, including Mujibur Rahman, and the physical symbols and representations associated with the four founding principles enshrined in the 1972 constitution.
Long before the July Declaration was read out on August 5, the process to wipe out Mujib was undertaken by demolishing his statues in Dhaka and other towns. This was quickly followed by razing other statues and murals that depicted the 1971 liberation struggle. But the most audacious and stunning move was the near-total destruction of one of the most important addresses in independent Bangladesh – Sheikh Mujib’s house in Dhaka’s Dhanmondi neighbourhood.
The July Declaration, however, recognised the “historic struggle against colonialism”, the people’s fight “against the deprivation and exploitation inflicted by the authoritarian Pakistani regime” and the establishment of the “state of Bangladesh” following the “Declaration of Independence” on March 26, 1971.
But it quickly turned into an anti-Awami League tirade, holding the party responsible for not being able to “materialise the people’s aspirations” which was an outcome of the “weaknesses” in the process followed in drafting and structuring the constitution. This ultimately paved the way for “a one-party government named BAKSAL (Bangladesh Krishak and Sramik Awami League)” in February 1975 which curtailed fundamental rights. The July Declaration attributed the assassination of Mujibur Rahman on August 15, 1975, to the BAKSAL regime’s policies.
A more insidious form of rewriting – and undermining – Bangladesh’s past by the Yunus-led interim regime was by overhauling history textbooks to “suit new orthodoxies”. While history was the most obvious victim in this endeavour, Mujib and the Awami League were prime targets. Poems, speeches and articles authored by Mujib do not find space in the new history textbooks. These have been replaced with “valorised” tracts on the hundreds of people who lost their lives in the protests that pushed Hasina out of power.
July Declaration’s shortcomings
What is starkly absent in the July Declaration is any reference to the progressive Islamisation of the constitution which began with the introduction of the fifth amendment of 1979 that struck off secularism and incorporated Bismillah-ar-Rahman-ar-Rahim (In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful). The July Declaration also ignored focusing on the eighth amendment to the constitution which declared Islam as the state religion.
It took 32 years for the word secularism to regain its place in Bangladesh’s constitution, although Islam remains the country’s state religion and Bismillah-ar-Rahman-ar-Rahim remains untouched.
By holding Sheikh Hasina responsible for establishing a one-party state following her electoral victory in 2008, the July Declaration sought to reiterate the “fascist, undemocratic and anti-people” governance system in the last 16 years.
In line with this approach, the interim regime established a commission which recommended earlier this year to replace three of the four constitutional principles with equality, human dignity, social justice and pluralism as fundamental principles of state policy. Only democracy may yet be retained.
While piecemeal attempts have been made post August 2024 to disturb some distinct syncretic cultural practices such as the celebration of pahela boisakhi – spring harvest festival – right-wing groups tried, unsuccessfully, to replace the flag and the national anthem, going so far as to question the pre-eminent position of Rabindranath Tagore.
In the higher education field, sweeping measures were taken to change the names of universities and colleges that previously bore Mujib’s name. While the Hasina regime did indeed commit excesses in naming educational institutions and other infrastructures of national importance after Mujib, a similar charge was recently made against the interim regime for naming a university hall after a 1971 alleged Pakistan army collaborator.
Bangladesh today is at a crossroad: political uncertainty looms large over a country in transition, and its ideological future is in question. The Awami League and its affiliate organisations remain banned. There are doubts that the promised elections in February 2026 will be a reality.
For much of its history, Bangladesh remained a polarised nation. In the past, governments have tried to use this polarisation to script history from their own narrow perspectives even as the liberation war history and the constitution are essential elements linked to Bangladeshi identity and destiny.
The July Declaration had the potential to be a defining document for Bangladesh’s next chapter – one that could have bridged political divides and charted a new path toward genuine democratic and political reform. Instead, by framing history through a partisan lens, it risks entrenching social and political binaries, eroding trust in the nation’s shared narrative.
As Bangladesh navigates its post-Hasina political landscape, the challenge will be in crafting a national vision that embraces all historical truths, not just the ones convenient to the current leadership.
Jarin Tasnim Urbi is a Lecturer at the Jindal Global Law School, O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat, Haryana.
Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.
