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........

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