Zadhid Powell 
Translator’s note: After the brutal state violence (through Awami Chatra League, Bangladesh Police, Rapid Action Battalion, and Bangladesh Army) against student protesters in Bangladesh led to over 200 deaths, the state machinery and state-loyal media went into overdrive to present a new narrative. As the death toll climbed toward 300 plus and thousands were arrested, a new state narrative began to emerge, marked by the Prime Minister crying at the sites of arson. The narrative had a few key highlights: The student protests had been “infiltrated by opposition BNP and Jamaat E Islami,” the shootings of students were not by state actors but by “infiltrators” wearing purloined uniforms, the internet outage was a result of arson, the army was only called in because country’s “sovereignty was endangered,” and so on.
One familiar element of the state-managed narrative was the abduction by police of seven student movement leaders from hospitals for their “safety,” followed by television footage of these leaders “happily sharing a meal” with DB Harun, the notoriously violent head of Detective Branch, and finally, a coerced statement read out at a press conference by the student leaders “calling off the movement.”
The student protesters immediately rejected this stage-managed drama, and by evening, twenty-five student groups at private and public universities had issued near-identical press releases denouncing the coerced statement and rejecting this “calling off.”
Within 24 hours, a leaked video claimed to show the DB head engaged in a naked video call, and the next morning the head was transferred as a “punishment.” One popular meme on Tik Tok stated, “This generation grew up on Christopher Nolan, and you’re trying to feed us the same old Delwar Jahan Jhantu cinema?” Jhantu was a Bangladeshi commercial film director who produced box office action hits of the 1980s, such as Hathi Amar Sathi / Elephant is My Companion (1987) and Ruper Rani Ganer Raja / Queen of Beauty King of Song (1992) – all marked by amateurish and cartoonish special effects and absurd plot twists. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer (2023) was released on iMax in Bangladesh theatres and ran for many months to local box office success. Zadhid Powell explains why Generation Z of Bangladesh doesn’t accept shop-worn strategies and narratives.
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For centuries, a key reason mega institutions, businesses, empires or civilisations have fallen has been their inability to transition power, authority and learnings from one generation to the next. I have had to research and learn a lot about Generation Z or Gen-Zs (born 1997–2010), as they are the target audience of my products and writing. They grew up in completely different ways than any past generations of Bangladesh. Their life revolves around social media and the internet. They are global citizens, not bound by geographical borders.
Our state can televise whatever drama about the protests they wish on TV channels, but it would barely reach them – as they seldom watch TV. They are independent-minded and mostly self-taught. Their learning sources are predominantly chosen by themselves. They usually learn from their peers by sharing information; they are usually very loyal to each other and most likely to support and defend their fellow cohorts. This is why educational institutions such as Ten Minutes School are so popular. Gen Zs want to learn in their ways, from someone like themselves (e.g., their peers) and very fast – in a few minutes, so to speak.
Students in an anti-quota rally in Bangladesh. Photo: X/@dhruv_rathee
We brag so much about our country’s IT sector, but who are its lifelines? The Gen Zs. Do our educational sectors and institutions, especially the public sector institutions, teach such IT skills and technologies? No. Then how have our Gen Zs learned and mastered these skills? They learned them by themselves, earning lakhs of takas per month through their self-education, which was unimaginable to older generations such as mine. Yet, we still boast so much about prehistoric educational institutions of past generations – an ill-practiced generational inertia.
I have just looked up the Fiverr freelancer profile of Mir Mugdho, a student of Mathematics from Khulna University who was killed by a bullet to his forehead in Bangladesh’s quota protests last week: undoubtedly, he has been earning much, much more than the highest salary scales offered in the Bangladesh Public Service. Why did he participate in the quota (for the public service jobs) protests? He volunteered to join the protests as he had seen his friends and peers struggling in a tough and unjust job market that has been rife with cronyism and nepotism, where merit-based selections are almost non-existent. He was buying water with his own (earned) money. He was shot to death as he was merely distributing drinking water to the protesters.
One of the victims is Jahiduzzaman Tanvin, a student at the private university IUT (Islamic University of Technology). He had innovated a type of drone that could land parallelly, which would go for about ৳12,00,000 BDT (or about $10,000 USD). How did this student learn to innovate such high-tech gear, not seen before in Bangladesh? He taught himself from internet tutorials. If one tries to look for and find out about the rest of the protestors, one would surely discover that most bear a similar trait: the Gen-Zs of our country are self-motivated and self-educated students who cannot and would not tolerate injustice or wrong.
Their self-reliance and self-esteem have made them highly sensitive. They feel aggrieved and insulted when they are faced with ridicule and mockery the state has dished out to previous generations. One of the most notable characteristics of Gen Zs is that they are very direct. They say and do what they want in a very direct manner without much diplomacy or tact. In fact, they get frustrated and irritated with spin-doctored diplomacy and insincere statements. They are of the Google generation, with real facts and information at their fingertips all the time, which enables them to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Therefore, it did not take them a moment to dismiss a partisan intellectual and science-fiction writer like Dr. Muhammad Zafar Iqbal – beloved to an earlier generation but less relevant to Gen-Z. To my knowledge, few intellectuals have suffered such a public humiliation so quickly in the history of Bangladesh. This is because Dr. Iqbal is not direct, nor is he forthright or sincere – and he fatally failed to understand the sarcastic, ironic slogans of Gen Z. As a result, in the public eye, it took just a day for him to be transformed from an ‘intellectual’ to an ‘out of date person.’
If one surveyed the millennials (born 1981-1996), they would likely find that maybe one in 20 are keeping up with the current world outside of their own lives, whereas five out of ten Gen-Zs keep up to date with news and events, in real-time, round the clock. That’s Gen Z’s instinctive nature. The state, however, did not understand their psychology at all, nor has it ever tried to. Because the policymakers of this administration do not have any knowledge or awareness of this generation, their attempts to suppress them using that prehistoric ‘divide and rule approach’ have instead poured fuel on the fire of prolonged discontent, steaming out of long-suffering and injustice.
There was only a sole theme in protests of the last six or seven years (i.e., twice involving removing quota systems from public service jobs, improvement of road safety and COVID-related protests). Their message has been consistent and clear: PLEASE CHANGE THIS CORRUPT SYSTEM; IF UNABLE, PLEASE ALLOW OTHERS WHO CAN. They have not been asking for a change of government but rather its attitudes. With hindsight, one can now realise that as the government refused to change, the students’ demands also changed to: ‘LET’S CHANGE THIS GOVERNMENT.’
They do not appreciate the heavy-handed approach of the police during the protests. So they exclaimed, “Police Chudi na” (‘We do not give a f**k about the Police’). While many, especially of the older generations, wring their hands about “abusive” or “bad language,” the Gen-Zs were, in fact, trying to say that ‘we do not care about the police.’ To older generations, this would sound like a vulgar outburst, but to the Gen-Zs, not so.
As they perhaps hear, ‘I don’t give a f**k (I don’t care)’ daily, and it is a mere Bengali translation (‘c**di na’) that makes it sound crude. It is the way this generation curses. This is the language of their anger. We can refuse to accept this language, but there is no way to deny Gen-z’s expressions. Thus, even after the initial crackdown and barrage of bullets, they were prepared to come out in numbers and sacrifice their lives. As though they were saying, ‘Banduk C**di Na’ (‘do not try to intimidate us with guns, you cannot’).
Also read: Bangladesh’s Battle Between Democracy and Autocracy
Long history of students’ protests
Think about the students’ pivotal roles in our nation’s history: 1952 (protests against Jiannah’s speech to declare that Urdu would be the only national language of both Pakistans); 1969 (revolutionary protests against the military junta); 1971 (protests and culminating liberation war); 1990 (protests against the military ruler Ershad). We could go on. In short, we have a long history of student protests denying the rulers and oppressors to bring about change. This Gen-Z generation is no different. They are not scared of threats of violent (and state-sponsored) suppression or losing their lives. As the state unleashed its terror, killing the protestors indiscriminately, they remained defiant. They extended their chests in pride and offered to be shot. They were not afraid to die.
Why? As the state has insulted and affronted them. As they know that the state was wrong to do so and should apologise for its mistakes and correct itself. The Prime Minister had slandered them. They had come to the streets to protest. The Chhatra League (the student arm of the ruling party) had beaten them, they were humiliated more, and the protests intensified. And finally, shooting at them (all of them were unarmed) was like throwing a stone at a hornet’s nest.
Sheikh Hasina. In the background is a video screengrab showing protesters in Bangladesh.
Facing the open, indiscriminate firing, they got more agitated and busted out, ‘sons of whores, why have you shot at us?’ As this generation is much more direct in their expressions, they do not hesitate to break any traditional or cultural hierarchy or taboos. If we allow ourselves to contemplate calmly, we will soon realise that in the past, families had prevented their children from participating in protests and agitations, whereas this generation has had the full support of their families – many of whom came out the streets to join the students. Their strange directness has brought about a unique leadership to the protests. They make decisions very quickly and fast. The information needed to make reasonable decisions is already in their possession (in their minds), enabling them to be decisive. That is also why their families value and prioritise their opinions.
Consider another scenario. Let’s suppose that a manager (boss) at work does not appreciate Gen Z’s work or is less forthright in valuing their contribution. Unlike the generations of yesteryear, Gen Zs would simply circumvent the hindering manager and approach higher management with their views, for example, via emails or using social media platforms such as LinkedIn. If their views still remain unheard and unaddressed, they would simply quit and work freelance on the internet. They are harder to manage (placate) by indirect, diplomatic, and conciliatory approaches as they prefer simple, straightforward approaches – not twisted analyses or explanations. This is because, since birth, they have grown up in a world of many options.
When watching movies, if they do not like one, they would shut it and flick to another. Due to the availability of platforms like Netflix, they have endless options. They use the same approach to listening to music, reading books, and choosing their politics, leaders or love. They do not sit and sulk in burdens of emotions if they do not think it is worth their while. They just quit and move on. Only yesterday, I learned that they watch YouTube, Netflix or Twitter videos at 1.5x speed. Meaning at one and a half times the speed at which the videos were shot. This generation does not like anything slow. Almost all major studies have shown that Gen Z’s online attention span is about seven (7) seconds. One would have to catch their attention within this time; if not, they just move on to the next thing.
This is our next generation. They don’t want a bourgeois diplomat as a leader. They want clean, fair and precise people as their leaders who speak less, work more and take actions based on needs and priorities. Similarly, they do not want myriads of chicanery, skulduggery or tricks in policymaking.
Therefore, our leaders of past generations are facing a very gloomy and challenging future, especially those of the Boomers (born 1946–1964) or Gen X (born 1965–1980) generations. These leaders are likely to be left with nothing if they treat this generation as badly as the generations before 2000. As the proverbial Bengali expresses, neither the mango nor its sack would remain.
Or, as the popular social media meme goes: ‘This generation grew up on movies made by Christopher Nolan, and the state is trying to feed them movies by Delwar Jahan Jhantu!’
Zadhid Powell (auth.powell@gmail.com), a veteran technology enthusiast and professional writer, specialises in crafting thought leadership content. Katatare Prajapati Collective translated this essay from Bangla.