‘Another kind of beating’

Abstract

Violence in Bangladesh’s student politics is complex and closely connected to political party contestations and shifting power relations. When Tarikul Islam Tarek, a non-partisan student from Rajshahi University and joint convener of the quota reform movement, was severely beaten by the ruling party’s student wing, in what is known as the ‘hammer incident’, the equilibrium that spared non-partisan students from becoming victims of political violence was broken. This ‘another kind of beating’ led to a shift in the ‘geographies of violence’, producing an autocratic social order marred by an atmosphere of fear. In the past, student politics in Bangladesh were mostly deployed in the struggle for self-determination (i.e. the partition from India in 1947 and independence in 1971) and to open democratic spaces in 1991. Since then, student politics have increasingly shifted to protect political party stakes. The violence between political party student wings has emerged as part of a new social order—a trend also observed in other parts of South Asia (e.g. Pakistan, India, and Nepal). The ‘hammer incident’ serves as a marker of how violence in student politics transforms and integrates into a well-performing, autocratic party machine to enforce societal control within and beyond university campus confines.