Bangladesh, Feb. 14 -- Nations rarely turn on a single speech, a single election, or a single personality. But there are moments when history seems to compress itself into a figure — when public longing, political fatigue, and institutional collapse converge around one name. In Bangladesh today, that name is Tarique Rahman. To understand his ascent is to understand the turbulence that preceded it.

The mass uprising of August 5, 2024 — driven by students and ordinary citizens — did not emerge from a vacuum. It was the culmination of years of resistance against what many perceived as authoritarian overreach under . The streets had grown restless. The young, particularly, felt trapped between shrinking civic space and narr...