First, the good news.

Thirty students who were at the heart of the 2024 ‘Gen Z revolution’, which toppled the Sheikh Hasina government, and who later became part of a political start-up called the National Citizen Party (NCP), have rebelled against their own. They have condemned efforts by the party leadership to ally with the fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami in the promised February elections in Bangladesh.

These students have written a signed letter to party chief Nahid Islam expressing anguish at the 8- or 12-party coalition of Islamist outfits being drawn up with Jamaat, of which reports say the NCP will be a part.

They expressed serious reservations about Jamaat and its student wing Shibir’s “divisive politics, spying and sabotage, false blame-fixing, disinformation campaigns, and religious fascism". But above all that, Jamaat’s heinous role and collaboration with the Pakistan forces in the 1971 genocide and Liberation War make it politically untouchable, the 30 students say. They fear that the whiff of an alliance with Jamaat has made centrist and neutral supporters of the ‘student revolution’ start abandoning the party in droves.

Fair, sensible points. But now, the bad news.

These 30 are overwhelmingly........

© News18