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When Law Absolves Violence: Transitional Justice and the Manufacture of Innocence

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This essay critically examines the Interim Government’s proposed indemnity for so-called “July fighters,” challenging its legal, moral, and philosophical foundations. It argues that the invocation of constitutional immunity, historical precedent, and “transitional justice” functions less as a framework for accountability than as a mechanism for pre-emptive absolution. By exposing the false equivalence drawn between the violence of July and the Liberation War of 1971, the misapplication of Article 46 of the Constitution, and the selective appropriation of Arab Spring and South African precedents, the piece demonstrates how legality is being moralised to shield violence from scrutiny. Ultimately, it contends that justice in periods of transition cannot be secured through indemnity that silences victims, forecloses investigation, and rewrites memory, but only through an honest confrontation with wrongdoing, even when committed in the name of resistance.

Law as Moral Architecture in Times of Political Rupture This intervention does not proceed from the standpoint of legal practice or doctrinal arbitration. It approaches law as a normative and political instrument, one that distributes moral recognition, assigns legitimacy, and shapes collective memory. The concern here is not whether indemnity can be technically enacted, but what kind of moral order it constructs when enacted. This piece is prompted by a public statement issued by the Law Adviser to Bangladesh’s Interim Government, Asif Nazrul, in which he announced the preparation of an indemnity ordinance granting immunity to those described as “July fighters.” In the statement, disseminated through his official Facebook account and subsequently reproduced across national media, the proposed indemnity is justified on constitutional grounds, specifically Article 46, and framed as a legitimate instrument of transitional justice, with references to the 1971 Liberation War and post–Arab Spring precedents. [1,2,3,4] Taken together, these claims do not merely describe an impending legal measure;

they advance a normative reclassification of political violence itself. It is this reclassification, its assumptions, implications, and dangers, that the present critique seeks to interrogate. The proposal to grant indemnity to so-called [5] “July fighters” is being advanced as a measure of transitional justice, grounded in constitutional authority and comparative precedent. Yet upon closer examination, the proposal rests on a series of category errors, legal, historical, and moral, which together amount to a dangerous transformation of law into a mechanism of political absolution. This critique argues that the proposed indemnity framework does not merely risk injustice in individual cases; it reconfigures accountability itself, producing a hierarchy of legal subjects and institutionalising impunity under the guise of transition. References are used here not as appeals to authority, but as illustrations of recurring patterns in how societies attempt, and often fail, to reconcile power with justice. From Exception to Erasure: How Immunity Becomes Impunity Immunity in law is not a moral reward;…

Mythology, Philosophy, Politics

When Mahishasura Reigns: The Philosophical Return of Durga

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When Mahishasura reigns, society is not merely misgoverned - it is unbalanced, hollowed, dragged backwards into the inertia of dependency. The gods stand powerless, their weapons broken, their pride undone. Yet history whispers: Shakti cannot be suppressed forever. Durga is not a miracle but a principle - vitality returning against sterility, sovereignty against tutelage, balance against distortion. Her arrival is inevitable when the night grows too dark, for the buffalo-demon always falls, and Shakti always rises.

I. The Darkness Before the Awakening The myth begins in collapse. The gods, once radiant, find themselves stripped of power. Mahishasura, buffalo-headed and unrelenting, has seized the heavens. His reign is not one of wisdom or balance, but of brute force, arrogance, and the stubborn insistence of chaos against order. The gods wander, dispossessed, their weapons shattered, their authority mocked. Such is the texture of certain moments in history: the sense of a collective falling backwards, of progress reversed, of justice dismembered before our eyes. A society that once dreamt of light finds itself dragged back into a regressive night, ruled not by luminous sovereignty but by those who thrive on imbalance, who wear the mask of benevolence while feeding on dependency and distortion. The Puranic imagination teaches us to see such moments not merely as political accidents but as metaphysical ruptures. For when Mahishasura reigns, the world is not simply under poor administration - it is under siege by

forces that undermine the very principle of order, justice, and vitality. In such times, the question is not “who will win the next contest of power?” but rather: will Durga awaken? II. Durga as Shakti: The Ontology of Power When the gods admit their helplessness, Durga is born - not as a concession, but as the very force of life itself. The story is clear: the gods’ powers are insufficient; they must pool their energies, and out of their surrender emerges a new potency, radiant and terrible, beautiful and fierce. Durga is not simply another warrior in the field - she is Shakti, the animating energy without which the universe is inert. Philosophically, Shakti reveals that sovereignty is not an arrangement of offices, nor a set of technocratic instruments. It is vitality, the pulse of collective will, the raw, breathing energy of a people. Without Shakti, governance becomes a corpse animated by external wires, hollow and mechanical. When regressive orders…

Bangladesh, Democracy, Dr Yunus, Islamism, Opinion, Secularism

Bangladesh at the UNGA: Stagecraft for an Islamist-Nationalist Regime

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Muhammad Yunus’s reformist rhetoric masks an exclusionary coalition that sidelines secular forces while seeking international legitimacy.

1. UNGA: Stagecraft and Legitimacy The United Nations General Assembly is where states strive not just to be heard but to be recognised as legitimate actors on the world stage. Against this backdrop, Bangladesh’s interim regime has chosen Muhammad Yunus as its emissary, projecting an image of “national unity” and “reform.” The symbolism is calculated: a Nobel laureate with global stature fronting a fragile, contested coalition. This choice is less about representation and more about stagecraft. For Western ears, Yunus’s polished rhetoric about democracy and renewal is reassuring; for the regime at home, it serves as a shield against scrutiny. Yet this diplomatic theatre conceals a harsher reality, one in which the UNGA is being weaponised not to advance Bangladesh’s democratic aspirations, but to launder the legitimacy of a project that is deeply exclusionary and regressive. 2. The Regime’s Composition: A Coalition Built on Exclusion Behind the international façade lies a coalition defined less by inclusivity than by exclusion. Its

core is a marriage of convenience between the centre-right Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), the far-right Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami (rehabilitated into politics in 1979 when BNP opened the doors to Islamist participation), and the pseudo-centrist National Citizen Party (NCP). The NCP, born from the 2024 uprising’s Islamist-infiltrated student movement, cloaks its rejection of 1971’s secular Bengali nationalism in a “Muslim-Bengali” identity, softening theocratic leanings for broader appeal. Liberal, secular-nationalist, and progressive forces – AL, CPB, JSD, BSD – which collectively commanded roughly 40-45% of votes in past elections (2001 estimates) and hold deep roots in the liberation struggle – have been conspicuously sidelined. The gravitational pull within this alliance is unmistakably toward an Islamist-nationalist axis. Jamaat has reemerged not only as a political actor but as a dominant force, its cadres intimidating opponents and seizing local power in the post-August 5 chaos while extending its reach into institutions like the judiciary and the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT-BD). The ICT-BD, once tasked with…

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Defending History: The Authentic Voice of Bongobondhu in The Unfinished Memoirs

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Conspiracy theories alleging The Unfinished Memoirs was ghostwritten by 123 officials are baseless, confusing it with a separate archival project. Bongobondhu's 1967-69 jail notebooks, verified by facsimiles and corroborated by media, confirm his authorship. These claims lack evidence and aim to undermine a vital historical text chronicling Bengal's fight against oppression. Mujib's legacy remains authentic and unassailable.

Claims that Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s The Unfinished Memoirs was ghostwritten by 123 officials are baseless. The text is rooted in Mujib’s 1967–69 jail notebooks, preserved in facsimile, corroborated by contemporaneous media, and consistent with his nationalist politics. The conspiracy confuses Mujib’s autobiography with an entirely different archival project. Such disinformation is not an innocent mistake—it is a calculated attempt to weaken Bengal’s memory of its liberation struggle. Did Sheikh Mujibur Rahman really need 123 ghostwriters to tell the story of his childhood, his activism, and his dream of a free Bengal? The very idea borders on the absurd. Yet in the turbulent wake of Bangladesh’s recent political upheavals, a wave of conspiracy theories has emerged claiming that The Unfinished Memoirs—a cornerstone of Bengali nationalist history—was fabricated by former IGP Mohammad Javed Patwary and a team of officials. These claims, amplified by sensationalist media and echo chambers online, are not harmless speculation. They are disinformation designed to erode the foundations of

Bongobondhu’s legacy. As someone committed to historical truth, I argue that these accusations crumble under scrutiny. They rest on a deliberate conflation of two entirely separate bodies of work, lack any substantive evidence, and collapse in the face of overwhelming documentary, textual, and historical proof that the memoirs are indeed Mujib’s own words. The Source of the Rumors The allegations originated from documents allegedly uncovered by Bangladesh’s Special Branch of police in August 2025, suggesting Patwary and his team were rewarded with cash and apartments for ghostwriting Mujib’s autobiography. A legal notice has even demanded an official probe into whether Mujib wrote the text at all. But this narrative unravels upon closer inspection. The supposed “evidence” confuses The Unfinished Memoirs with a very different project: the 14-volume Secret Documents of the Intelligence Branch on Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. That series—published under Sheikh Hasina’s oversight—compiles 48,000 pages of declassified Pakistani intelligence files. Patwary and his officers played a technical role: scanning, transcribing,…

Analysis, Bangladesh, Current Affairs, Myanmar, United Nations, USA

Corridor Nation: How the OHCHR MoU and US NDA Threaten Bangladesh’s Sovereignty

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The OHCHR MoU and the US NDA aren’t isolated events—they’re interlocking tools in a new strategy to turn Bangladesh into a geopolitical corridor. Under the guise of rights and trade, they erode sovereignty, silence resistance, and open the floodgates to foreign control. This isn’t partnership. It’s prelude to possession—with a handshake, not a hammer.

Introduction: Sovereignty by Stealth In July 2025, two international agreements quietly positioned themselves at the heart of Bangladesh’s geopolitical destiny. One was a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed between Bangladesh and the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), granting the UN body a permanent presence in Dhaka. The other was a leaked draft of a proposed Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) between Bangladesh and the United States, setting the terms for deepened bilateral cooperation—on Washington’s terms. Individually, these instruments might seem routine. Together, they chart the contours of a new and dangerous architecture: Bangladesh as a "corridor nation"—a strategic conduit for Western security and economic interests, locked in from within by humanitarian oversight and from without by asymmetrical trade and security arrangements. This is a story not of occupation by force, but by framework. I. The OHCHR MoU: Human Rights or Hegemony? At first glance, the OHCHR’s new Dhaka office appears to be a benign institutional step—an

extension of international support for Bangladesh’s human rights obligations. Yet this MoU arrives in the aftermath of a political transition shaped by foreign pressure and domestic unrest. Its timing is more than symbolic; it is strategic. The OHCHR’s February 2025 report on protest-related violence conspicuously sidestepped key facts, including attacks on law enforcement and public property. Notably absent were the deaths of police officers and the documented instigation of violence by opposition-aligned groups. By legitimizing a one-sided narrative, the OHCHR's presence becomes more than observational—it becomes constitutive. It reframes political violence as civilian resistance and erases the culpability of coordinated agitators. What’s more troubling is the legal immunity granted under the MoU. UN officials enjoy broad protections under international conventions, often beyond the reach of local judicial oversight. In effect, the OHCHR becomes an untouchable actor within Bangladesh's borders, with privileged access to state institutions, data, and civil society—and no local accountability. While the MoU’s full text has not been…

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