Voices Pushpesh Pant Sumeet Bhasin Ravi Shankar Balaji Vittal Shampa Dhar-Kamath mata amritanandamayi MAGAZINE Buffet People Wellness Books Food Art & Culture Entertainment NEW DELHI AUGUST 11 2024 SUNDAY PAGES 12 Anti-reservation Protests Bangladesh The Bangladesh Student Protests ended in Sheikh Hasina’s flight from the country. Its consequences go beyond the protests. The aftermath could upend geopolitical stability and see the China-Pakistan Axis mounting a challenge to Indian authority in the region. This has serious implications for the power balance between the West and Russia P h o t o e ss a y Children of Rage Student uprisings have brought down despots or failed fatally. The common factor is idealism and betrayal Mandal Riots Vietnam War Protests The Mandal Commission protest was a watershed moment in Indian caste politics. It legitimised youth anger in India as a political weapon The anti-Vietnam war protests in America marked the arrival of a new generation of youth, which was the harbinger of modern liberalism in the West America India The Arab Spring was a beacon of hope to youth in despot-ridden West Asia. Instead it became a nightmare of terrorism, pogroms and unleashed the dogs of war in Syria By Ravi Shankar “Like Saturn, the Revolution devours its children,” French Revolution leader Georges Jacques Danton quoting Jacques Mallet du Pan during his trial. T Arab Spring West Asia he flaming flower of youth is anger. It blossoms bright and red with blood in the gardens of injustice, despotism and repression, while the evil of fanaticism hides like a Biblical serpent. What happened in Bangladesh is a Gen Z revolution reminiscent of other student revolts in other countries against corruption, police brutality and nepotism coming from a once-beloved leader. It happened in Germany in the early 1940s: the White Rose movement. It happened in Mexico on October 2, 1968 at Tlatelolco. The anti-Vietnam War protests in Washington memorialised in the image of a young girl with a flower. The Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. The Arab Spring across the Middle East. The anti-CAA protests that divided minds and drawing rooms in India. It happened to Sheikh Hasina last week. Usually it is an incidental or even unrelated event that culminates in a youth revolution. This time, , student protests spread through Bangladesh initially as a quota rebellion. The serpent in this flaming eastern orchard could easily be China and Pakistan, since both see Bangladesh as the eastern gateway to India’s downfall. Revolutions have a mind of their own. December 17, 2010. A young Tunisian vegetable seller immolates himself to protest police harassment. This act of defiance started the Arab Spring that would topple tyrants such as Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia—all once thought invincible. History is indulgent towards youth, with devastating consequences. In the 1970s, Iranian students and youth—many of them Communists—rebelled against the autocratic Shah Pahlavi, paving the way for Ayatollah Khomeini and his radical Islamic regime to Turn to page 2
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