As the Monsoon Revolution marked its first anniversary, its place in the history of South Asia seems secure even as Bangladesh’s own future looks beset with uncertainties. The region is not a stranger to sudden, even dramatic, changes of government. Yet a civic insurrection, which overthrew not just a government but an architecture of power and governance, is about as close to a revolution as we have witnessed in South Asia. Perhaps the closest we came to it was the Sri Lankan Aragalaya of July 2022 which overthrew the government of Gotabaya Rajapaksa.
Yet the Sri Lankan case, notwithstanding the striking similarities of mass civic action leading to direct political results, ended differently — with the constitutional process reasserting itself and being accepted as such. In Bangladesh, we are still groping in the dark about the trajectory that the country will finally settle on. Although elections have been announced for early 2026, what constitutional framework these will take place under remains an open question. Similarly, it is not clear how much of Bangladesh’s secular fabric will survive, or how strong a role Islamists will play in governance in the future.
Between Sri Lanka’s Aragalya and Bangladesh’s Monsoon Revolution was a failed Pakistani insurrection in May 2023. The arrest of the former prime minister, Imran Khan, ignited protests and saw his followers going on a rampage across several cities, concentrating on iconic military sites as targets. The protests were a failure and did not change the prevailing status quo. But the fact that the military could be so targeted did shake up both civil society and the State in Pakistan. Even when the Pakistan military had demonstrably let the country down — as during the East Pakistan crisis of 1971 — it had not faced mass protests of such intensity. The protests and their aftermath also further dented the image of the military and only some two years later, after Operation Sindoor, can the Pakistani generals be reassured that their image has improved.
There have been multiple divergences between Pakistan and Bangladesh since the 1980s. Most evident is how far the trajectories of the two economies and demographic structures have diverged. The divergence with Pakistan from the 1980s began with the demographic transition in Bangladesh to much lower fertility and lower birth rates. The contrast then became evident in Bangladesh’s better social and economic indicators — from per capita income to literacy, especially women’s literacy, children in school, mortality rates and so on; the contrast kept growing through the last 25 years. To those in Pakistan critical of the country’s security-minded elite, the Bangladesh story provided the vindication that Pakistan’s obsessive securitisation had led to its regression.
The Monsoon Revolution also illustrated the difference in political cultures of the two countries. Students had been at the vanguard of the events of July-August 2024 which transformed Bangladesh’s polity. They now have formed a new political party of their own and this remains a major force in the demand for a new Constitution, in effect a ‘second republic’.
Student politics in Pakistan by contrast has remained quiescent at least for the past half a century. The agitation, which led to the ouster of the former president, Ayub Khan, had prominent student participation and was perhaps the last time that this happened in any significant way in Pakistan. A subsequent military dictator, Zia-ul-Haq, banned student unions and, to a very great extent, campus politics has rarely intervened effectively in national political issues since.
Despite no government ever completing its full tenure uninterrupted and numerous military interventions, Pakistan has never been close to a civic insurrection that seriously challenged the architecture of power and governance in the country. So the contrast with Bangladesh stands out quite clearly. Possibly, the reason has to do with how much more strongly the Pakistan military is rooted within the country’s political and social structures.
Notwithstanding these divergences, amongst the many consequences of the Monsoon Revolution is Bangladesh’s new proximity with its former twin. The Pakistan foreign secretary visited Dhaka in April — a visit after a gap of a decade and a half. There have been other high-level meetings at the margins of international conferences alongside positive statements and decisions on trade and defence cooperation. There is an emergent Pakistan-China-Bangladesh axis of cooperation which is watched with great concern by many in India.
The mutual dependencies between India and Bangladesh are immense. An enormous border dominates the geopolitical vision of both. In many ways, Bangladesh is India locked — 90% of its international border is with India. Its access to the Bay of Bengal will always remain mediated by India. India’s Northeast is dominated by Bangladesh on two sides. This political geography implies both potential for cooperation but also enormous grounds for strategic suspicion and distrust. Securitised mindsets at both ends will naturally gravitate to worst- case scenarios and, then, inevitably to self-fulfilling prophecies. How to resist these is the challenge Indian diplomacy confronts, perhaps to an even greater extent than in Pakistan’s case.
It is important to understand the enormity of the change that Bangladesh’s Monsoon Revolution represents. Certainly, there may have been some role for external players — various actors, including the United States of America, China and Pakistan are being mentioned. But the domestic dynamic that brought together students, Islamists and a host of others alienated by perceived corruption and misgovernance had a predominant impact and its agency should not be denied.
Bangladesh is today less monochromatic than it ever has been. The spirit of 1947 based on religion had always coexisted uneasily with the spirit of 1971 based on language. It is no longer enough that we recognise and deal with a split personality — of religious versus linguistic nationalism, each with multiple and independent layers of history. There is now also a very evident new Spirit of 2024. This requires a much keener effort on our part to understand and deal with it than the more familiar tropes of 1947 and 1971 we have been accustomed to. If we want to strengthen the Spirit of 1971, then, clearly, accommodation of at least some elements in the Spirit of 2024 will also be necessary.
T.C.A. Raghavan is a former High Commissioner to Pakistan and Singapore