Our sentimental state

by Nadine Shaanta Murshid

DURING the three-week period of the 2024 student movement that culminated in the fall of Sheikh Hasina’s regime, a realisation hit me when, even amidst the bloodshed, people — Awami supporting liberals and cultural elites — defended the state’s (mis)use of power to kill its citizens: states legitimise and garner consent for the use of violence by instrumentalising affect. In this case, fear was mobilised as a cover for vulnerability and inequality, as it became a utilitarian tool/excuse that the government used to explain its actions. In this essay, I am interested in the work of affect. To that end, I argue, instrumentalisation of affect is particularly effective in a sentimental state.

I use the term ‘sentimental state’ to refer to the conditions in which a political entity can use emotions — such as empathy, moral responsibility and fear — to shape public opinion, policies and governance. In such a state, policies and (in)actions are often justified through emotional appeals rather than rational, economic or legal reasoning. In other words, the sentimental state is constructed as a terrain in which affective politics can be used to achieve certain outcomes.

For instance, Elizabeth G Masarik (2024, 2) in her work has shown that ‘women reformers harnessed sentimentality to create political action in the formation of the American welfare state in the 19^th and 20^th century’ by appealing to ‘human emotional responses and the public’s capacity to feel sympathy to establish morally based truth.’ The sentimental state that allowed for such inroads to be made is the condition of women and children: high rates of child mortality that produced deep maternal grief. As Masarik, pointed out, 230,000 infant deaths per year, or a death rate of 100 out of every 1000 births produced the sentimental state in which affect could be instrumentalised to demand protections for infants and their mothers.

In the same way that social welfare can be produced through affective politics, so can social ill. In the 21^st century, it is global racial capitalism that produces a sentimental state in which affect can be exploited to build support for security and surveillance. It is under this sentimental state that Black and Brown bodies become ‘terrorists,’ in the global war on terror, exemplifying that in a sentimental state, affect, like fear, can be exploited to justify state surveillance, forced disappearances and social control in the name of safety and security. Indeed, the intended outcome determines the choice of affect to be weaponised.

It is that same kind of rhetoric of fear that the Bangladesh state used to clamp down on the quota movement in July 2024. The sentimental state in Bangladesh was not just produced by the ‘war on terror’ logic but also by muktijhudhher chetona, or the official narrative of the 1971 War of Liberation. The official narrative, which emphasises the sacrifices of freedom fighters and the horrors of the Pakistani military’s atrocities, combined with ‘national security threat’ that undergirds the war on terror, to produce the sentimental state in which affective politics of treason, trauma and terrorism were used to inspire fear of an Islamist takeover. It is in this sentimental state that Hasina’s government could weaponise fear by framing protesters as anti-national/Shibir/Islamist to justify state violence against them.

(While I focus on the past regime’s actions during the July Biplob, I’d be remiss if I did not point out that it was not only the Awami League that produced the sentimental state in which they can justify their actions. The Grand Alliance of 2009 passed the Antiterrorism Act and general Ershad in his time enacted the Bangla Language Act using similar kinds of affective politics that relied on terrorism, trauma and treason).

The use of affective politics centring treason, trauma and terrorism during the July Uprising became evident when the term rajakar came into play on July 14.

As students protested the quota for government sector jobs for freedom fighters’ grandchildren, Hasina used the term rajakar to describe them, invoking the fear of a Pakistan-aligned Islamist state to delegitimise the student movement’s critique of the economy that leaves them without jobs upon graduation from university, which is what the quota movement was essentially in response to. Who should have quota? Grandchildren of rajakars (traitors)? Hasina barked during a public press conference in July 2024, using the language of treason to rebuke students. The use of the term rajakar was her go-to trump card, a variation of which the Awami League and their supporters had successfully used before.

For instance, during the Shahbag movement, chhagu was used to invoke the image of a seditious citizen — an image of a loose-bearded Muslim male, the word a derivative of the Bangla word for goat, chhagol. By tagging activists who pushed back against the death penalty or raised questions, about due process or definitions or statistics, as chhagu during the International Crimes Tribunal for war criminals in 2013, they implicitly accused them of supporting Jamaat-e-Islam and war criminals, an accusation that produced self-censorship and conflict. The inherent Islamophobia in that terminology was not a coincidence either. Hasina’s regime worked both ends of the spectrum, fanning both Islamist groups — such as the creation of Hefazat-e-Islam as an alternative for Jamaat — and Islamophobia to keep itself relevant as the only political entity that can save Bangladesh from ‘becoming Afghanistan.’

In 2013, much like 2024, critique of the state was seen as seditious, unless it somehow benefitted the regime in power. For example, the Shahbag movement was a response to the life sentence that was handed to Quader Mollah, tried as a war criminal under the International Crimes Tribunal that the AL regime set up, an election mandate that they portended to fulfil. Protesters took to the streets when Mollah, having evaded the death penalty, the highest sentence that the state allows, came out of court flashing a victory sign. The demand of the protest was for capital punishment. Phashi Chai. In a quick twist, the courts responded to the demands and accordingly changed the sentence to death. Indeed, that is what the regime had wanted, but given the legitimacy concerns related to the Tribunal that emerged for not following due process — something that was in the interest of all citizens who wanted justice — the regime relied on the movement to carry out its agenda, which later led to conspiracy theories about the state’s role in the making of the movement to begin with.

It is in response to critiques of the Tribunal that the term chhagu worked to silence some people. The rest were silenced by the blogger killings that were attributed to Islamist groups. In fact, the blog that I was an editorial board member of, AlalODulal, decided to shut down amidst fear of state repression. The murders reeked of state complicity through inaction at the very least, given they never found those who were responsible. As the killings continued, the movement was dismantled. Key leaders of the movement were assumed to have been co-opted by the Awami League’s regime, marking the end of a movement that had started with hopes for justice for war crimes. What the nation was met with, instead, was a controversial Tribunal that failed to keep witnesses safe and follow due process, both of which were essential to ensure that war criminals were truly brought to justice.

In 2024, when the stakes were clearly higher for the Hasina regime, dissidents became rajakar. It was a desperate measure for a desperate time, as they say — chhagu would be too weak a response. But this time it did not work, as students owned the term rajakar at a midnight procession the same day that Sheikh Hasina used the term, to pinpoint the shairachar, fascist, who called them that. Tumi ke, Ami ke, Rajakar Rakakar; Ke bolechhe, Ke bolechhe, Shairachar Shairachar.

And just like blogger Rajib was suddenly murdered in 2013 to produce a ‘turn of events,’ Abu Sayed, a student protester, was killed in broad daylight on July 16. While Rajib’s murder was shrouded in mystery, Sayed’s was televised on national television and on handheld devices everywhere. The murderer was a police officer. There was no question about culpability. And just like 2013, the violence escalated. But this time, protesters stayed the course. More than a thousand protesters were killed by August 3, estimates indicate. But the movement would not die — it merely changed course as the demands shifted from quota to state apology and resignations to regime change.

That day after Abu Sayed’s public execution, Sheikh Hasina appeared on television in a black shari. It was the holy day of Ashura. Her shari symbolically indicated the darkness of the moment. But that is where the show of empathy ended. We watched as she read out a statement in an out-of-character display of affect-free statesmanship. She passively denounced the violence, as if it happened spontaneously, without her regime’s involvement and then invoked her trauma instead of the collective trauma that the nation experienced as they watched Abu Sayed’s murder in a viral video that was captured by a local news station. She said, ‘Shojon haranor koshto ami bujhi.’ — ‘I understand the pain of losing a close relative’, as if her pain explains the killings.

Indeed, in that moment, she had reached back to the affective politics of 1971, which under the Awami League regime found legitimacy through muktijudhher chetona, but this time by invoking her trauma to shift attention to treasonous citizens. In doing so, she implicitly connected the student movement leaders to Jamaat-Shibir, the political entity and its student faction that opposed the creation of Bangladesh by actively supporting Pakistan during the War of Liberation — a rhetoric that she had already used directly — and terrorism. She expected the movement to fall apart. Indeed, she expected citizens would buy her divisive rhetoric. Her use of trauma is significant, as she created a hierarchy between her trauma and the trauma of citizens, indicating, implicitly, that her trauma was worth more, making clear that she represented no one but herself. Perhaps, that is why it would be the first time that she would be unable to divide and conquer a protest movement by using the trope of rajakar — a term that inscribes the affective politics of terrorism, treason and trauma — in the same way that this would be the first time that overt state violence and murder did not dispel the masses on the streets.

In that moment, by referencing her own trauma of losing her entire family in an army-led assassination that she had escaped, she also produced a rationale for her own actions. In other words, she used affective politics to justify the violence that her regime unleashed. And in that moment, the work of violence was to reduce trauma to an immutable characteristic that can be used to explain away the perpetration of violence to let the producers of violence off the hook.

It became clear that those in positions of power have the privilege to make disproportionate claims to trauma which allows them to use it as an explanatory variable for their actions in a way that their powerless/disempowered counterparts cannot. Moreover, that invocation of trauma comes with the expectation to be forgiven for their actions. Indeed, when Sheikh Hasina invoked her trauma, she expected that she would be let off the hook. After all, her invocation of trauma was provided in lieu of an apology. That was ostensibly why she had appeared on television to address the nation that night.

It is perhaps because she did not provide one that evening that an apology from the prime minister was one of the nine-point demands, an apology for the death toll that was on an upward trend. But that apology never came. And that alone was reason enough to trigger a people for whom an apology is a historically contingent political construct in a sentimental state in which 1971 looms large.

Indeed, citizens of Bangladesh are still waiting for Pakistan and their collaborators to apologise for atrocities committed in 1971. When those atrocities seemed to be repeating themselves in independent Bangladesh, the apology became crucial to students, as were resignations of the leaders who ostensibly ordered the killing spree. It is when the government refused to be held accountable that the one-point demand for regime change was floated.

Indeed, the students made clear that invocation of treason, trauma and terrorism cannot be selectively used to pardon the powerful. In doing so, they resisted the global war on terror machinations and rhetoric that Sheikh Hasina’s regime had aligned itself with to inculcate Islamophobia within Muslim-majority Bangladesh, while also supporting the creation of Islamist groups such as Hefazat-e-Islam, ostensibly to keep that scare tactic of Islamist terror alive. That that scare tactic would fail one day is perhaps what Sheikh Hasina did not count on. What is instructive, however, is that among Awami League supporters, that tactic lives on without critical engagement with the idea that Hasina’s government played an important role in keeping an Islamist threat alive to keep themselves relevant.

At the height of the violence, a journalist associated with the previous regime remarked, ‘Marchhe apnara dekhchhen, kake marchhe dekhchhen na?’ (You see the killings, do you not see who they are killing?). The implication of this statement is perhaps self-evident, but it is worth explicating. The underlying subtext was the tacit endorsement of the killing of Shibir members. The fact that Shibir persists as an anti-nationalist entity even 50 years after independence underscores a deep failure, not only of the regime in power but also of the nation. And so, the justification for killing young citizens, born three decades after independence, solely on the grounds of their alleged affiliation with Shibir, is a manifestation of a manufactured politics driven and justified by sentimentality. By invoking the ethos of Bangladesh’s Liberation War and framing protesters as anti-liberation by terming them Shibir, the journalist mimicked the state’s intent to dismantle the ‘ek dofa ek dabi’ (one point, one demand) movement through rhetoric and what they framed as justified use of violence. What is crucial is that the expansion of Jamaat-Shibir in independent Bangladesh is what allowed for the sentimental state to reproduce itself over and over again. It makes it important to ask: how and why did Jamaat-Shibir expand under the aegis of Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League? There are perhaps many answers but the one that I keep thinking about is its usefulness in the production of a narrative campaign in which the Awami League emerges as the nation’s saviour.

It was during this narrative campaign that played out on local television channels that the state’s deployment of lethal violence intensified significantly. Those of us in Dhaka bore direct witness to the brutality unfolding on the streets, enduring the relentless sounds of gunfire and other munitions for over 50 consecutive hours. Communication with the outside world was severed entirely when an internet blackout was imposed alongside a curfew, which was accompanied by ‘shoot on sight’ directives issued by the home minister. Yet, the Hasina regime sought to propagate the notion that the killing of Shibir members was not a crime but rather an act in the national interest of Bangladesh — a stance that parallels the United States’ war-on-terror logic. While it is possible that Shibir members were present among the protesters, so too were countless others, including many of us, who were not affiliated with such groups. We just wanted the state to stop killing its citizens.

In this post-uprising phase, the old sentimental state remains while a new one is being constructed producing grounds for new affective politics. I wonder what the new affective instruments will be: revenge and retribution for the alleged killing of madrassah students at Shapla Chattar in 2013? Or will it be ‘daay o doroder Bangladesh’ that centres accountability/responsibility and compassion/empathy, words that the student movement had centred in their articulations during the movement? Would these produce a welfare state in the way that Marakin argues it did in the US in the 19^th century given that the markets did not produce social welfare? Or would it enact a flipped version of the ‘Shahbag-Shapla’ binary in which the Awami League is the new Shibir?

Those remain to be seen. But what is evident is that 1971 remains at the centre of the new sentimental state, but with a focus on re-assessing the role of the Awami League in 1972–1975 as well as the construction of the muktijudhho itself. The trope of terrorism is turning as well within Bangladesh, no longer as useful a category while ‘Islamo-fascism’ in the form of the self-proclaimed ‘touhidi janata’ seems to have made some gains. A small but powerful minority have brought back regressive ideas about clothing, not men, as the producer of rape, while ‘byatagiri’ seems to be on the rise. The new political entities appear dogmatic; a familiar rhetoric of ‘my way or the highway’ has quickly displaced hopes of a new, equity focused Bangladesh. Global racial capitalism remains, as does the global war on terror, under which female factory workers of the global south (still) have certain kinds of purchase. It remains to be seen whether the new(ish) Bangladesh, increasingly framed as anti-women amidst rhetoric of new political actors that, for instance, refuse to directly answer questions about gender equality, will attract the US or other interventionist states to ‘save’ Muslim women from Muslim men — again, to use Spivak’s argument, or will they try to save Islam? As the new sentimental state is constructed, we will do well to not be driven by affect and (misplaced) loyalty as much as about what is right, humane and just.

Nadine Shaanta Murshid is associate professor at the School of Social Work, University at Buffalo. She is the author of Intimacies of Violence: Reading Transnational Middle-Class Women in Bangladeshi America.