Nothing visibly collapsed. Streets stayed crowded, offices opened, buses ran. Yet people paused a little longer before stepping out at night, before posting online, before trusting what once felt routine. The country looked the same. It simply felt different.
For many families, the year began with quiet adjustments. Parents rang earlier than usual. Families cut evenings short. Women adjusted their routes, their clothing, their pace. The country did not suddenly feel broken. It felt unfamiliar.
Dhaka has never been gentle. But for decades, its disorder came with a strange assurance. It was loud and crowded, yes, but navigable.
In 2025, that assurance began to fray. Reported street crime in metropolitan areas rose by an estimated 20- 25% compared with the previous year, according to police statistics cited in local media.
In Dhaka alone, more than 1,200 cases of robbery and mugging were recorded in the first nine months of the year, with neighbourhoods such as Uttara, Mohammadpur, Mirpur and Jatrabari repeatedly cited in police briefings and news reports.
Yet the real story was not only in the numbers. The deeper shift showed in behaviour.
People started planning their movements around risk, often assumed and rarely confirmed. Public spaces emptied earlier. Conversations increasingly began with warnings, where not to go, which road to avoid, what time to return home.
Videos circulated online containing grainy clips of vehicles attacked, passengers dragged out, headlights flashing uselessly into darkness. Not every incident resulted in a police case. But each one lodged itself in the public imagination, reshaping how people moved through their own city.
This unease was articulated by economist Debapriya Bhattacharya just days ago, when he warned that repeated attacks on political figures had created serious security concerns. Citizens across the country, he said, were now living with acute insecurity. What once felt episodic now appeared structural.
Women’s safety and restricted movement: Shrinking the radius
For women, this insecurity was neither abstract nor new. But in 2025, it deepened in ways both visible and ordinary.
Eve teasing, something that has been long normalised and rarely punished became harder to ignore. Women spoke of being followed, stared at, filmed without consent and verbally harassed in public spaces, from buses and footpaths to university areas and markets.
Rights groups noted an increase in complaints related to harassment that did not meet the legal threshold for assault but nonetheless restricted women’s freedom of movement. Many adjusted routines accordingly by avoiding certain roads, travelling only in groups, or returning home well before evening. The threat was not always violent, but it was persistent. People learned to live around it.
This unfolded alongside a rise in more serious crimes. According to the rights organisation Ain o Salish Kendra (ASK), reported rape cases rose from around 1,400 in 2023 to nearly 2,000 in 2024, with early data from 2025 showing no meaningful decline. Gang rape cases increased sharply, while sexual violence continued to be underreported. ASK and other groups stressed that the figures represented only reported cases and likely understated the scale of the problem.
Beyond physical safety, a quieter shift took place. It was harder to measure, but easier to feel. Women’s public presence began to contract.
Institutional backsliding for women
Earlier this year, Bangladesh Bank proposed a dress code for female employees — a move withdrawn only after a public backlash on social media. The proposal itself was revealing. Rather than addressing harassment or workplace safety, it suggested once again that women should adapt themselves to unsafe environments.
There were also reports of women being discouraged from inaugurating shops, from appearing at public events, from taking visible roles in community life.
Female labour force participation remained stalled at around 36%, according to Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics data, erasing gains made over the previous decade. Women’s rights advocates spoke of a creeping message: safety would not be guaranteed, but compliance might be expected.
In parliament, women’s representation continued to reflect familiar limitations. Bangladesh’s reserved seats for women, allocated to political parties rather than elected directly, remained unchanged despite renewed calls for reform. Proposals to increase the number of reserved seats or introduce direct elections resurfaced during reform discussions this year, but none were adopted. The National Women’s Commission, mandated to advance gender equality, remained largely absent from public debate, under-resourced and politically sidelined at a moment when its voice was urgently needed.
The rise of the ‘pressure groups’
As confidence in institutions weakened, people began looking elsewhere. Another force grew more visible.
Mob action, often framed as spontaneous or sentiment-driven, intensified. Between mid-2024 and late 2025, national newspapers documented more than 150 incidents involving mob-led vandalism, intimidation or public humiliation. In many cases, no formal charges followed. Officials sometimes referred to those involved as “pressure groups”, a term critics argue blurs the line between grievance and criminality.
On December 18, 2025, violence was concentrated around Dhaka’s symbolic and communicative centres, places that shape public opinion and collective memory. Karwan Bazar became the epicentre, where mobs attacked and set fire to the offices of Prothom Alo and The Daily Star, forcing journalists to flee and halting news production.
These locations were not chosen at random. They represent independent voices, cultural identity and dissent. The attacks reflected anger triggered by recent political developments, but also a deeper intolerance toward institutions that question, document or remember. What unfolded was not just street violence. It was a message about who is now considered unsafe to speak or exist openly.
1971: The corrosive silence of intimidation
In 1971, during the liberation war, the offices of Daily Ittefaq and Sangbad was burnt down on March 26 and March 28 respectively by the Pakistani military junta to silence dissent, control narrative and prevent information about war from leaking out. The People, another daily was known for its strong anti-military stance, was razed to the ground with mortar shells and bombs on the night of March 25.
Since then, it is the first time in our history of Bangladesh that the same blaze erupted again.
For ordinary citizens, the effect was quietly corrosive. When mobs act without consequence, the law feels optional. When intimidation is reframed as expression, fear becomes rational.
Polarisation reached a point where neutrality itself felt suspect. Political disagreement increasingly took the form of moral judgment. To disagree was to be labelled; to question was to invite suspicion. Online and offline, conversations hardened into camps. Nuance became a liability. Silence, for many, felt safer than speech.
The exhaustion of politics and youth disillusionment
There was a time in Bangladesh when slogans carried risk and meaning. They were shouted in defiance, not for effect. In 2025, that inheritance has thinned. Chants that once articulated demands increasingly trade in insult, targeting individuals rather than ideas, humiliation rather than power. When political language collapses into abuse, it signals not strength or courage, but exhaustion. It is the sound of a politics that has run out of arguments.
This erosion of confidence was particularly evident among the young. The controversy surrounding the quota system reignited frustrations that had been simmering for years. Students raised on promises of meritocracy confronted a system they believed rewarded connection over competence. Protests and counter-protests exposed not merely policy disagreement, but a deeper rupture between expectation and reality.
What unsettled many was not simply the quota debate itself, but the response to dissent. Demonstrations were contained, voices disciplined, and criticism monitored with a familiarity that felt uncomfortably close to the past.
That sense of repetition surfaced again in the legal landscape.
The persistence of legal control
For years, civil society groups, journalists and political actors had opposed laws they described as draconian — vague in language, sweeping in scope and prone to misuse. These laws were criticised for stifling free expression, criminalising dissent and enabling selective enforcement. In 2025, many of those same legal instruments remained firmly in place.
Officials spoke of reform and restraint, but on the ground, little felt different.
Journalists were arrested, activists questioned, and online speech scrutinised. Press freedom monitors reported that more than 50 journalists faced arrest or legal action over the past year, including several under security and cyber legislation. High-profile cases reinforced a familiar lesson: speaking freely still carries risk.
For many, the disappointment ran deeper because this moment was meant to represent a break from the past. Instead, the machinery of control appeared largely intact, repackaged in new political language. What had once been condemned as repression was now described as regulation. To critics, it felt like old wine in a new bottle.
These social and legal shifts unfolded alongside political changes that felt both gradual and disorienting.
Shifting diplomatic winds
Bangladesh’s foreign posture appeared to undergo a subtle recalibration. Engagement with Pakistan increased modestly through diplomatic contacts and cultural signals, while momentum in relations with India slowed. Analysts cautioned that such shifts are not unusual in transitional periods, yet the symbolic messaging accompanying them drew attention. For a country whose post-1971 identity has been closely tied to its liberation history, even modest adjustments carried outsized resonance.
Debate: Muktijoddhas vs July joddhas
At home, that resonance collided with a deeper contest over memory.
For decades, Bangladesh’s moral vocabulary revolved around the Liberation War and the sacrifices of the muktijoddhas. In recent years, a new language emerged — one that elevated the “July joddhas” of contemporary movements as the defining moral force of the present. While many viewed this as recognition of youthful resistance and political awakening, others worried it risked sidelining the foundational struggle of 1971, turning remembrance into competition rather than continuity.
Even the Liberation War, once treated as settled ground, became increasingly contested. Online debates questioned settled history. Media commentary blurred distinctions once considered non-negotiable. In some instances, figures historically associated with collaboration during the war were openly defended.
The unease crystallised on December 14, Martyred Intellectuals Day, when a group publicly described Ghulam Azam and Motiur Rahman Nizami as “bright sons of the soil”. While many condemned the statement, the fact that such words were spoken publicly on a National Day of Mourning unsettled a society long anchored by consensus about 1971.
The past was debated. In some cases, it was damaged.
Over the past 18 months, media reports documented the vandalism or defacement of at least two dozen statues and murals commemorating freedom fighters. Two Liberation War museums reported damage. A muktijoddha’s grave was vandalised. In another incident, surviving freedom fighters were publicly humiliated.
The pattern continued on 16 December, Victory Day itself, when media reports said the grave of a freedom fighter in Shariatpur district was set on fire. Local authorities said an investigation was underway. For many, the timing made the act especially painful since it was an attack not just on a person’s resting place, but on the meaning of the day itself.
Growing intolerance
Alongside these developments, tensions within the Muslim community itself became more visible. Reports of vandalised mazaars – shrines long associated with South Asian Islamic traditions, sparked concern among religious scholars and devotees. Critics warned that such incidents reflected a narrowing interpretation of faith and a growing intolerance for plural religious practice, challenging Bangladesh’s historically syncretic religious culture.
The absence of state ceremony
Even state rituals changed. For two consecutive years, Bangladesh held no formal military parade or ceremonial observance on Victory Day, citing administrative and protocol concerns. Critics questioned these explanations, noting that the president cited in the controversy had administered the oath to the interim leadership.
Officials offered no clarity on whether such ceremonies would return.
The ideological shift in universities
Universities mirrored the broader uncertainty. The 2025 DUCSU elections marked an unprecedented victory for Jamaat-backed student leaders, bringing them into open prominence for the first time in Bangladesh’s history. Supporters described the outcome as democratic inclusion. Critics saw it as ideological rehabilitation. Either way, campuses that once shaped resistance now reflected national ambiguity.
The economic safety net
Economic strain deepened the sense of unease. Several welfare schemes, including old-age allowances, widow pensions and subsidised food distribution through the Trading Corporation of Bangladesh, experienced delays or suspensions at different points during the year. Government figures indicate that more than five million people depend on these programmes. Beneficiary groups said hundreds of thousands were affected. For many, these schemes make the difference between coping and crisis.
Disinformation and the branding of dissent
Online, the atmosphere hardened further. A 2025 study by a Dhaka-based research group estimated that nearly one-third of widely shared political content contained false or misleading information. Fake news travelled faster than correction.
Outrage outpaced verification. Being branded a “doshore” became a way to silence rather than engage. Women and journalists were frequent targets. Harassment was often coordinated, public and relentless.
Bangladesh has endured darker chapters. It has survived coups, assassinations, famine and repression. History offers no shortage of proof that the country is resilient.
Conclusion
What feels different about 2025 is not collapse, but drift. It is slow enough to be denied, yet steady enough to be felt. Institutions still stand, elections are promised, and laws remain on the books. Yet something more fragile has weakened: the shared understanding of safety, memory and belonging. When people hesitate before speaking, before moving, before remembering, democracy erodes not through force, but through fatigue.
The changes of this year were not imposed overnight. They accumulated quietly through unanswered crimes, recycled laws, contested memory and shrinking space for women and dissenting voices. None of these developments alone defines a rupture. Together, they describe a society learning to lower its expectations.
Bangladesh now stands at a familiar crossroads. The question is not whether it can endure uncertainty. It already has. The question is whether it will recognise erosion as danger before it hardens into permanence. What is lost gradually is often the hardest to reclaim, and what slips away quietly is rarely noticed until the silence becomes too loud to ignore.
