Dr. Hasan Saimum Wahab
In the history of Bangladesh, July 2024 will not be remembered merely for political unrest or legal confusion, it will be remembered as the moment a generation broke its silence. The streets that erupted under the leadership of students and youth were not protesting just policies or power; they were rejecting the psychological chains that had bound them for years.
Bangladesh’s youth didn’t merely rise against a regime—they erupted from years of repression, identity crises, and silent despair. It’s time we listened to their subconscious scream.
This was not just an uprising. It was an eruption of the collective subconscious. We may investigate the matter through the lens of Psychoanalytical histography.
Repression Never Dies. It Festers.
For years, young people in Bangladesh have lived in the shadows of neglect, systemic disillusionment, and eroding self-worth. The education system, job market, and state apparatus offered little more than uncertainty. The dreams they were told to chase became nightmares of irrelevance.
But repressed emotions don’t disappear. As Freud taught us, what we suppress eventually returns, often violently. The protests of July were just that: a psychological backlash. The slogan “Hear our voice” was more than a demand; it was a primal cry for recognition, liberation, and dignity.
The Political “Godfathers” and Symbolic Patricide
Bangladesh’s political landscape has long been dominated by patriarchal, godfather-like figures—authoritarian, unaccountable, and emotionally distant from the very people they claim to serve. To the youth, these leaders represented more than political failure—they symbolized paternal domination, a force that stifled autonomy and crushed identity.
Through Freud’s lens, the movement resembled an act of symbolic patricide—not a literal rebellion against fathers, but a psychological severing from control. The message was clear: “We are no longer children. We have voices of our own.”
The Psychology of Blame and Rage
When people feel powerless, they search for a face to blame. The youth, in many ways, projected their pain onto political leaders, educators, and bureaucrats. Some of this frustration boiled over into aggression, even violence. But to dismiss that anger as irrational is to ignore years of humiliation, hopelessness, and the erosion of personal meaning.
This wasn’t senseless rage. It was grief in disguise.
Was It a Revolution—Or a Breakdown?
That question still lingers: Was this a political revolution or a collective psychological breakdown? The answer, uncomfortably, might be both. Freud warned us that when moral and social structures fail, our primitive instincts surge to the surface.
For too long, Bangladesh has lived under what can only be called an invisible regime of control, a manufactured sense of order that suppresses rather than inspires. Within that structure, a generation yearned for identity, for the right to exist as more than just statistics. What happened in July was not merely resistance. It was a psycho-social awakening.
We Need a National Psychological Dialogue
Yet today, the discourse around July 2024 remains limited to politics and legality. But this moment demands more—it calls for a national reckoning of our collective psyche.
We must ask ourselves:
- Have we ignored the emotional lives of our youth for too long?
- Why did a government turn so hostile toward its own children?
- Why are we so obsessed with material success while emotional and moral decay goes unchecked?
- Why do our political leaders refuse accountability—even now?
- Why can’t leadership coexist with creativity?
These are not questions for policymakers alone. These are questions for all of us—as a society, a people, and a nation.
If We Don’t Listen Now, We’ll Hear It Again—Louder
The streets of July were canvases where a silent generation painted its fear, anger, and hope. If we dismiss their voices as mere chaos or lawlessness, we are planting the seeds of a future eruption—one that may be even more destructive.
We cannot afford that.
If Bangladesh truly aspires to democracy and progress, we must begin to listen to the language of the unconscious. Politics is not just lawmaking. It is psychology, emotion, identity, and belief. To govern wisely, we must understand the minds—and hearts—of the governed.
Because in the end, every nation’s future is written in its people’s suppressed stories. July 2024 just turned the page.
Dr. Hasan Saimum Wahab is a writer and researcher. He can be reached at: saimum2011.iub@gmail.com