On February 5, in Dhaka, a group of online activists and bloggers assembled to protest against the verdict of the 1971 war crime tribunal. They set up camp in Shahbag, an intersection at the heart of the capital, near the university campus, and staged a small sit-in. They collected small donations and word spread on Facebook and Twitter. The next day, a few news channels began covering their protest. By the end of the week, they had managed to put together the biggest mass demonstration the country has seen since the liberation.

“The Shahbagh movement – fuelled by music, art, blogging and the sheer spontaneity of youth – is teaching a new way of protest to a country ravaged by vengeance and violence for over four decades,” wrote the Times of India on March 13. This is unique because rarely has such carnival spirit consciously engineered a social change to anti-war activism and secularism, that too in a Muslim majority country and without a leader.

In 2009, the Bangladeshi population was estimated at 156 million. About 90% are Muslims and the remainder is mostly Hindus. Bangladesh has the highest population density in the world, excluding a handful of city-states and small countries with populations under 10m, such as Malta and Hong Kong. It is, with overwhelming representation of this populace, truly a people’s movement - of the people, for the people and by the people.

Peoples’ protest originated in a hoary past, before Christ; the Greek and Roman history provides us a few early examples. When the slaves united under the leadership of Spartacus, even the mighty Roman state felt jittery. Popular movements normally seem to demand democratic setup to sprout and grow, but people's will often found ways to assert itself even in non democratic setups. And they were not confined to Western history. Stray examples can be found from ancient India too. A Jataka story recounts how a king of Varanasi was forced to bow down to people's wish and revise his decisions.

Rajatarangini records similar instances in Kashmir.  Kaivartas had mounted up a truly popular revolt in Bengal against the misrule of the later Pala kings.
As popular movements the ones that we recall most are the French revolution, the Bolshevik uprising by the workers in Russia and the Chinese communist revolution. All these owed a huge debt to inspirations from leaders of thought like Rousseau, Voltaire, Diderot, Proudhon and Marx. In other words, these were driven by great philosophies and grand ideologies.

The pattern remarkably changed in the second half of the twentieth century when 'leaderless', 'sans-ideology', 'instant' movements started. First came the 1968 Paris student movement when Danny the Red swayed the students of European universities. Then Berlin Wall crumbled and USSR broke up.

Triumphant internet and electronic devises emerged as the medium of peoples’ protest. These were all spontaneous and needed no political leader.
Similar are the recent Occupy Wall Street movement in US and the Tahrir Square movement in Egypt. Even the Anna Hazare movement and more significantly, the Nirbhaya protests at India Gate have brought in a social churning of unimaginable dimension.

Shahbagh is unique on two important fronts. First is the prevalence and visibility of women, who are among the core organisers. Second is the movement's use of social networking on Facebook and Twitter, and dependence on the 24-hour satellite news channels that have been covering the protest since the first day.

The Shahbagh movement still continues as the longest peaceful people’s movement against war crimes and communalism. They demand for trials of war criminals of 1971 war and the ban on the Islamic party ‘Jamat-e-Islami’. Some sections of protesters have now therefore begun a fast unto death. But Jamat wants it to fail and they have started attacking Hindus and Hindu properties. Bangladesh foreign minister Dipu Moni told diplomats that Jamat and Shibir attacked Hindu temples and houses in a "pre-planned manner". Amnesty International has appealed to the government to better protect Hindus. The Red Cross said it had started providing aid to 113 families affected by the violence.

The movement has already achieved much. The government amended the War Crime Act enabling the war crime tribunal to try political organisations as well as individuals for war crime charges and also allowing the state to appeal against the verdicts, a right that was previously enjoyed only by the convicted.
The movement itself is growing and is not localised anymore. It has reached out to all the major cities in the country as well as the major cities of Europe, the US and Asia that have significant numbers of Bangladeshi populations. Bangladeshi students of many US universities have expressed solidarity with the movement. It is now going to suburb and rural areas. The Shahbagh movement in Bangladesh continues gaining momentum and has even been captured in music.

I quote the following CNN report in ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-938134: “In 1971, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman promised the people a free, sovereign, secular and democratic state ‘Golden Bangla’ - a dream that resonated all over the country. Till date people of Bangladesh refer to that idea as ‘the dream of golden Bangla’. I see this movement as an endorsement that that dream is still alive and that it resonates through the hearts of millions. I see this movement as a categorical rejection of religious violence.”

But Shahbag’s demands also unleashed an equally determined opposition. A reactionary movement to Shahbagh has formed with two allied political parties– the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and the Jamaat-e-Islami. The Jamaat is a crucial factor here, as some of their leaders are facing trials for alleged war crimes during the 1971 war. In the last few weeks, the country has experienced strikes, particularly violence between reactionary and state forces. These conflicts have spurred concern among Bangladeshis and people around the world, and have brought out many political questions that require theoretical and political responses. We urgently need to unravel these various dimensions of Shahbagh in all its complexity.