Global Watch | Can Bangladesh’s Oldest Political Force Awami League Stage A Comeback? 

With local elections likely to happen in September-October, anticipation is on the rise of Awami League’s resurgence

Once a name synonymous with Bangladesh’s liberation, the Awami League has been on a tumultuous trajectory since the 2024 July Uprising. The political developments since not only brought an end to Sheikh Hasina’s 15-year rule but also a de facto demise of the party’s legacy in the present political culture. With top leadership detained or exiled, grassroots League activists and workers, specifically, were left to fend for themselves, facing a steep, unchecked mob violence that engulfed Bangladesh immediately after Hasina’s ouster. Awami League’s party offices, including its headquarters in Dhaka, were vandalised and set ablaze, leaving them abandoned. The anti-Mujib rhetoric and targeted vandalism on his legacy that continued simultaneously need no elaboration.

The forces behind the Uprising—Students Against Discrimination (SAD), whose leaders later formed National Citizen Party (NCP)—made the official ban on Awami League and its student wing one of their central political demands. In the political discourse, Awami League came to be labelled as a “fascist party" by its opponents. It was not Sheikh Hasina’s rule alone that was claimed as despotic/authoritarian; Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s legacy, too, came under scrutiny. NCP leaders, particularly, called for burying “Mujibism" altogether, demanding a complete scrapping of the 1972 Constitution.

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