Mahfuj Alam, a key voice of the pro-democracy student movement, has sharply criticized recent attempts to portray the July Uprising as mob violence, calling such narratives a distortion aimed at delegitimizing a historic struggle.
In a strongly worded statement posted on social media, Mahfuj wrote:
“The revolutionary students and people of July were not a mob. To prevent mob violence, what we need is not repression, but the abolition of fascist structures, rule of law, and a functioning and accountable democracy.”
He argued that Bangladesh’s political history is marked by state-backed mob violence, beginning with attacks on the Bihari community, followed by violence against student and youth opposition figures, and decades of communal assaults often incited by major political parties. According to him, if the definition of a mob is stretched, then even events like the ‘Janatar Adalat’, ‘Janatar Mancha’ of 1996, October 28, or Shahbagh could fall under the same category.
Mahfuj stressed that social fascism, a term he uses to describe popularized reactionary tendencies, is in fact the outcome of Sheikh Hasina’s state fascism over the last 16 years. Without addressing this root, he says, no social solution to mob violence can be achieved. Simply blaming ‘Islamofascism’ won’t suffice.
“July created space for cross-ideological dialogue. That opportunity must be used to dismantle both social fascism and the culture of authoritarian rule,” he wrote.
In a direct rebuttal to the narrative linking post-July incidents to the uprising itself, he said,
“Had any form of mobocracy existed, the student-youth of July wouldn’t have kept a police-Ansar-free country safe for nearly a month. Even Obaidul Quader was spared—not because of any script, but because the movement wasn’t vengeful.”
Mahfuj warned that mischaracterizing the movement as aimless mob action is part of a broader cultural and ideological smear campaign by pro-AL factions and Mujibist leftists, who are now linking the breakdown in law and order to the uprising itself.
“The July movement respected democracy and human rights. If any violence occurs—communal or political—the answer is not repression but legal accountability. And July’s revolutionary students must continue to uphold that responsibility.”
He concluded with a stark reminder:
We haven’t yet crossed our Karbala.
July and struggle are now synonymous.
