Dhaka, July 4 -- It all began so inauspiciously.

Going into July 2024, there was no indication of what was to come, of what was brewing underneath the surface, of the seething anger amongst all the victims of Sheikh Hasina's rule. Even the 'quota andolon' was essentially a renewal of the movement that had culminated rather prematurely in 2018 with Hasina's short-tempered outburst in Parliament that abolished the entire system of quotas, when Nurul Huq Nur and the movement he had led against it asked for reform. It was possibly the most authoritarian act of her entire tenure, barring the caretaker abolition. Even that was the outcome of a sinister design, a plot to manipulate the system, though it was discouraged by members of her own par...