ceremony

The student activism roots of Sheikh Mujib, who was assassinated by renegade soldiers in 1975, are tinged with grim irony given the chaos currently engulfing the South Asian nation of over 170 million. Earlier this month, peaceful protests broke out across campuses in response to the Bangladesh High Court’s decision to reinstate quotas that reserved some 30% of government jobs for descendants of “freedom fighters” who participated in the 1971 war of independence from Pakistan—a policy Sheikh Mujib personally introduced the year following that victory. But with some 18 million young Bangladeshis without jobs today, according to government figures, the quota reintroduction enraged students facing an unemployment crisis. Amid this economic anxiety, government jobs remained highly coveted, though reports that entrance exams had been leaked had already galvanized a perception that civil service posts were reserved for progeny of the elite. (Descendants of freedom fighters, overwhelmingly backers of Hasina’s Awami League party, make up only 0.12% to 0.2% of Bangladesh’s population today, according to the local newspaper Prothom Alo.)