Naomi Hossain, SOAS

Bangladesh’s Monsoon Uprising

The student-led popular uprising that unseated Bangladesh’s prime minister Sheikh Hasina after 15 years of increasingly authoritarian rule in 2024 erupted out of nowhere. The international community, expert observers, and much of the Bangladeshi public – even many protestors themselves – were surprised by its success. Because it was so unexpected, it unleashed a tsunami of speculation, conspiracy theories, and misinformation. These have clouded understanding of the causes and mechanisms of the uprising, and obscured the lessons for the democratization effort that has been underway since. This lecture will review the main explanations of this political cataclysm in the world’s eighth largest nation, assessing the supporting evidence for the different claims. Drawing on explanations from political economy, political sociology and Bangladesh’s turbulent political history, it will show that the Monsoon Uprising is best understood as part of a larger international wave of popular anti-incumbent politics amid a protracted cost-of-living crisis. But while the main drivers of the Bangladesh uprising are rooted in a broader global failure to govern the economy for people instead of profit, the repertoires of protestors and the responses of public authorities must be understood in the context of Bangladesh’s specific political economy and its bloody political history.

The BASAS Annual Lecture 2025 will take place at the University of Leeds on 9th May 2025. Further details to follow.