SOAS University of London will remain a beacon for the global study of Bangladesh, the region and the diaspora, a place where we speak and research and write freely and with a passion for knowledge.
The unhinged rage with which a tiny group of Awami League supporters failed to disrupt a talk by student leader and interim government advisor Mahfuj Alam at SOAS University of London last Friday speaks volumes about the need for independent scholarship and free speech regarding Bangladesh.
Every government of Bangladesh has tried to restrict ideas and debate. Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League was only the latest, the longest, and the most systematic of efforts to silence serious discussion about Bangladeshi history, politics, and culture.
Intellectuals, scholars, students, artists, diaspora community members, and activists regularly attend SOAS film screenings, book launches, panel discussions, and lectures about Bangladesh and the wider region. I know our regulars. So I was interested to see new faces at the event with Mahfuj Alam last Friday.
I greeted one woman I had not seen before and introduced myself, as I do. She was flustered but told me her name. ‘Yes’, I said, recognising the name. ‘You wrote a letter to my boss to complain about this event. But you are very welcome, anyway’. She looked appropriately embarrassed. During the Q&A she was one of the people I permitted to ask a question, which Mahfuj answered with great seriousness and due respect.
Our civility was not reciprocated. After the event, I saw her among the abusive crowd throwing eggs at an empty car. My favourite ankle boots were the only casualty (a little egg on the toe), unless you count the self-esteem of the London branch of the Awami League, visibly humiliated by their failure to disrupt the talk.
The bigger problem this effort to silence politically inconvenient voices reveals is that Bangladeshis have never had good access to serious independent scholarship about their nation. The politicization of Bangladesh’s universities is no secret. Journalists, academics, writers, and creatives have always had to self-censor or risk abuse, threats, or worse.
The ferocious competition to control the narrative impoverishes Bangladesh and its place in the world. I am chairing this year’s British Association of South Asian Studies book prize, and am on the editorial board of the Journal of Contemporary South Asia.
I read a lot of South Asian studies. And when I consider the academic output from India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, I am struck by how much richer and more varied it is; how ‘sensitive’ topics are tackled with intellectual courage and rigour; how partisanship and political division are subjects of study, not ideological frameworks for analysis.
I am also struck by how many more South Asians from these other countries we find working at the highest levels of international excellence in the critical disciplines of history, cultural studies, political science and political sociology. Our small band of Bangladeshi and Bangladesh-focused arts, humanities and social science scholars working in institutions outside of Bangladesh can fit into a small conference room.
Why are there fewer Bangladeshis researching and writing at an international standard about their own history and society than other South Asians? It is partly due to the political stranglehold on national narratives. In the past 15 years, only a very brave scholar would have tried to take on any of the historical shibboleths enforced by the dominant Awami League.
My own experience of trying to study the 1974 famine was one of censorship and veiled threats. Nobody wanted to talk about the famine, although or because it was one of the darkest and most unexplored moments in the country’s history.
For scholars planning to return to Bangladesh with their freshly-minted world-class PhDs, many key moments in Bangladesh’s history and critical questions about its political and economic present remained verboten. Why invest in the long training needed to produce rigorous, excellent research when it might mean you can never go home?
The losses to Bangladesh of independent world-class excellence in Bangladesh studies are many and profound. One is that we lack a reasonable range of thoroughly researched, properly theorized and factually-based analyses that can be returned to in the face of chronic partisan politicization.
Until 2024, we were forced to treat Sheikh Mujib as a god-like figure of political perfection. We are already seeing how in the post-uprising era, the opposite is now being forced upon us, with efforts to undermine the significance of Sheikh Mujib’s leadership in the national liberation struggle. Where will the serious, balanced analysis come from?
It is not that independent historical, political or economic analysis is some permanent and immoveable truth, but that we lack a sufficient body of critical rigorous sources on which to draw during such heated national debates. I was reflecting on this when listening to Mahfuj Alam last Friday.
If there were any brains behind the 2024 uprising, they belong to Mahfuj. In conversation with Professor Mushtaq Khan, Mahfuj reflected on how he and his study circle mates had decided on a strategy to unite disaffected student groups more usually kept apart by ideology, religion or party affiliation – to cross the Shapla-Shahbag divide, in particular.
He saw that a deliberate effort at divide-and-rule had succeeded in preventing both shared ideas about a democratic future or a shared platform for a democratic movement from emerging.
Mahfuj also spoke about the need to critique the narrow idea of Bengali nationalism and the dominant narratives of liberation, and the real challenges of reforming a state still staffed by supporters of the past regime. It was a fascinating and thoughtful set of reflections.
His main interest seems to be in history and its role in political narrative rather than the dirty business of actual politics. I was not joking when I advised him to give up politics for a history PhD. His ideas are novel and he is a deep thinker and wide reader.
Yet the narrow political confines of intellectual life in Bangladesh, it seemed to me, had forced him into an oppositional pose to ‘Mujibism’ – the supposedly secularist and socialist principles of the first Bangladesh republic – which felt kneejerk and reductive.
Mahfuj is among the most prominent of the many brilliant young Bangladeshi students whose intellectual lives have been stymied and stillborn by the rigid political control of ideas and the institutions that should generate them.
Perhaps because academia has been so destroyed with politicization, we also lack the funding and support for Bangladesh Studies. If you are a talented Indian or Pakistani student, there are many sources of funding you can apply for, including from domestic and diaspora philanthropists.
You have a much better chance as an Indian or Pakistani in getting a prized PhD or Masters scholarship than if you are Bangladeshi, because the home institutions from which you graduate will rank far higher and be better-known than Bangladesh’s universities. Where are the Bangladeshi philanthropists investing in rigorous, world-class excellence in the social sciences, arts and humanities? (Seriously, where are you?)
A further reason we need independent world-class Bangladesh Studies is that the intellectual and creative fields are of vital importance in how well a nation is understood beyond its own borders. That, in turn, creates a national ‘brand’ which attracts – or deters – foreign direct investment.
Recent research into the effects of nation-branding has shown that investors are drawn to countries with rich cultural and creative industries for the excellent reason that they signal innovation, openness, independence of institutions, and stability.
Let me say this again: artistic and academic excellence, not just tech or finance or cheap labour, are vital ingredients of nation-branding. These are the qualities that will improve Bangladesh’s international reputation.
Will the next government stop the self-harming restrictions on what it will no doubt deem unpalatable scholarship and unflattering cultural expression? Will it encourage philanthropists to invest in independent and internationally excellent research (perhaps as a way of cleansing their untaxed wealth)?
Will Bangladeshis ever have the freedom and support to speak and write and research and create? Of the many firsthand testimonies I have read from the young protestors of the 2024 uprising, a consistent theme was the desire for free expression.
That genie will not be returning to its lamp, whichever government takes power in 2026. And whatever happens, SOAS University of London will remain a beacon for the global study of Bangladesh, the region and the diaspora, a place where we speak and research and write freely and with a passion for knowledge.
* Naomi Hossain, Professor of Development Studies, SOAS University of London