Book Review | Political Thriller Set Amidst Dhaka's Descent Into Chaos

The message is sparse, but carries the full weight of a country collapsing in real time: “Run before it’s too late… there is no law left.” What follows is a flight through a country unmoored from itself, passing ambulances carrying dead bodies of policemen hacked to death on street corners, mobs swirling like weather systems, the state dissolving into a dark, viscous uncertainty.

It is a cinematic beginning, but the authors, veteran journalists Deep Halder and Jaideep Mazumdar from India, joined by Bangladeshi reporter, now a refugee in Kolkata, Sahidul Hasan Khokon, do not indulge in spectacle.

Their book is a political thriller, yes, but one filtered through the careful sensibility of journalists who have spent years listening to the subterranean rhythms of Bangladesh.

The story they tell is of the turbulence leading to and in the aftermath of the toppling of Sheikh Hasina’s government, by a so-called student revolt.

As the clock ticked, and mobs gathered, the generals who still rule Bangladesh from the shadows behind Grameen bank founder-turned politician Muhammad Yunus’ interim cabinet, implore the larger-than-life Bangladeshi leader to run.

Hasina, however, wants to stay on and face the mob. Her family is brought into the picture and fearing a re-run of 1975, when her father Sheikh Mujib and his family were killed in cold blood, they ultimately convince her to take the flight to safety.

Once, that has been achieved, those behind the mobs “turn back the clock”. It’s almost as if 1971 has been reversed. The memories of the liberation struggle, are wiped out — from bank notes, from museums, and from political discourse.

What would have happened if she had refused to board the helicopter to safety? What if she had retreated to Gopalganj, her ancestral stronghold? What if the Awami League cadres, so often caricatured as omnipresent, had actually shown up to defend her?

These are questions left hanging in the air as the book races ahead. Where Inshallah Bangladesh distinguishes itself is in its marriage of narrative urgency with political analysis.

The recounting of events is taut and propulsive, but threaded through the chase scenes and street battles is a clear-eyed examination of the conditions that produced the revolt: years of authoritarian consolidation, youth unemployment simmering into rage, dynastic politics that had calcified into inevitability.

The book’s most unsettling passages explore the rise of Islamist groups operating in the fissures of the state, asserting themselves with a sense of historic entitlement. Their “otherisation” and attacks on minorities, the “war” on liberal Islamic sects such as the followers of Lalan, a popular Sufi mystic, show which way they wish Bangladesh to walk.

Perhaps the most provocative chapter deals with the growing anti-India sentiment among sections of Bangladeshi youth.

The authors refuse simplistic explanations; instead, they trace a complex web of resentment, perception, and political opportunism. India, in their telling, becomes a mirror in which young Bangladeshis find both their frustrations and their imagined futures.

Despite its analytical heft, the book remains, at heart, a thriller. Lean, well-paced, and alive with the hum of urgency.

Inshallah Bangladesh: The Story of an Unfinished Revolution

By Deep Halder, Jaideep Mazumdar and Sahidul Hasan Khokon

Juggernaut

pp. 282; Rs 599