Militant Centrism in Bangladesh after the Uprisings
Despite its ostensibly revolutionary origins, Bangladesh's student-led party finds itself in questionable company in the new political landscape. What does its trajectory tell us about "post ideological" politics?
Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt from Nijjor Manush’s recent book “Inquilab Zindabad? A socialist analysis of Bangladesh after the uprisings.” The book can be purchased directly from Nijjor Manush. The text has been lightly edited.
Illustration from Nijjor Manush’s Inquilab Zindabad? A socialist analysis of Bangladesh after the uprisings
The National Citizen Party (NCP), or Jatiya Nagorik Party in Bangla, launched on 28th February 2025. It is the most significant of the new political parties emerging on the scene in Bangladesh post-uprisings. NCP emerged jointly out of the Students Against Discrimination (SAD) platform, which had served as the most prominent organ of the student-led movement, and its civic counterpart the JNC (Jatiya Nagorik Committee) drawing from a larger section of the Bangladeshi citizenry.
The NCP is headed by SAD leader and former Interim Government (IG) adviser Nahid Islam, who was among the most visible faces of the student movement in 2024, alongside other central figures in SAD and JNC. Many individuals who developed a profile during the uprising have secured commanding positions in the NCP, including Hasnat Abdullah, Sarjis Alam and Abdul Hannan Masud - though some, such as prominent uprising spokesperson Umama Fatema, decided against joining the party. Two of the SAD leaders currently serving as advisers in the IG, Mahfuj Alam and Asif Mahmud, have yet to state their intentions on whether or not to join the NCP in future though rumours swirl about their expected involvement.
“the NCP’s politics can be described as militant centrism: invoking the aesthetic of revolution with the programme of liberal, democratic capitalism.”
Ideologically, the party’s leadership bodies comprise figures associated with student formations from the Right, centre as well as some from the Left. Seemingly attempting to sidestep the inevitable political contradictions of such a formation, however, the party has continually described itself as a big-tent, centrist and “post-ideological” party, which is ‘neither right-wing nor left-wing,’ nor ‘dominated by any specific individual, group, class, region, or ideology’ and ‘neither secular nor theocratic’. Rather, the NCP’s politics can be described as militant centrism: invoking the aesthetic of revolution with the programme of liberal, democratic capitalism. It is characterised by liberal ideas of civic politics centred on anti-corruption and anti-discrimination and hazily-defined notions of equality, while positioning itself as a pro-sovereignty party vis-a-vis Bangladesh’s neighbours, stating that there is “no room for pro-India or pro-Pakistan politics” in the country.
This big tent approach, however, has not stopped the party facing splits: mere days before the party was officially launched, an influential faction of the JNC comprising members associated with Chhatra Shibir, Jamaat-e Islami’s student wing, broke away from the NCP initiative, later founding the United People’s Bangladesh platform to act as a ‘pressure group’. The Gono Odhikar Parishad (GOP), a centrist party which emerged out of an earlier wave of the quota reform movement, was also involved in the core SAD-JNC faction of the NCP. However, the relationship between GOP leadership and the NCP quickly frayed, with the GOP-affiliated joint chief coordinator resigning from the NCP days after the party’s launch.
There are also indications that the present party leadership of the NCP is prepared to make strategic alliances with sections of the Bangladeshi Right to advance their political objectives. While the NCP has not declared any electoral alliance, it has increasingly found itself in opposition to the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) - the expected heir to government after elections. Meanwhile, its calls for abolishing the post-Liberation War constitution and settlement have alienated Left parties too. However, those same demands, as well as its preoccupation with securing a government ban on the Awami League, has seen it fall increasingly within the orbit of Islamist parties: groups like Jamaat-e-Islami and Hefazat-e-Islam have provided vocal and physical support for its public campaigns, while NCP chief coordinator Nasiruddin Patwary has spoken of the NCP’s intention to ‘unite pro-Islam and pro-Bangladesh parties’ into an alliance, centred at this point on a defence of the IG.
The party has also proved its willingness to indulge in social conservatism in its own right. Days after the party’s initial committee was announced, an LGBTQ activist was unceremoniously dropped from the list in response to public backlash from some Muslim groups. Central party figures also voiced their opposition, with chief organisers Hasnat Abdullah and Sarjis Alam declaring that ‘nothing against religious values will ever have a place in our politics’; elsewhere, Alam has referred to LGBTQ identities as a “cancer”.
It is not clear at this stage what electoral prospects the party faces. One significant opinion poll placed them at just 5% of declared votes, though this poll took place days before the party was officially launched, and is likely to change over the coming months. A later poll of Bangladeshi youth saw them expecting the party to achieve around 16% of votes. The party leadership is also reportedly looking towards electoral seats in Dhaka as the most viable constituencies for them to contest, owing to the more transient and fluid nature of the electorate in the capital, and the relative weakness of entrenched party strongholds there.
Leaders of the National Citizen Party at the inauguration on February 28, 2025. Image: Syed Zakir Hossain, The Business Standard
Why did the NCP form?
With the formation of the Muhammad Yunus-led Interim Government at their behest, the SAD had been afforded an influential role in the administration, with 2 (later 3) SAD leaders serving as advisers in the IG. The significant leverage of the SAD and its advisers in decisions made by the IG quickly fostered resentment among other student groups and political parties, unhappy with the clientelist relationship between the IG and SAD.
By the close of 2024, relations between SAD and other student groupings and formations had deteriorated seriously. The Jatiotabadi Chhatra Dal (JCD), the BNP’s student wing, had begun to organise separately from the SAD while the Democratic Students’ Alliance - an alliance of numerous socialist and Marxist student groups - had also boycotted initiatives spearheaded by SAD and condemned the platform as undemocratic. Revolutionary Student Unity, a member of the Democratic Students’ Alliance, went as far as to call for the dissolution of the SAD as early as September 2024, arguing that it had become a vehicle for corruption and criminality under the auspices of the IG.
However, matters truly came to a head once the SAD’s post-uprising demands upon the IG grew more iconoclastic and ultimately proved divisive. In particular, moves such as the call to abolish the post-Liberation War 1972 constitution, the demand to dismiss the country’s President, thereby risking a constitutional crisis, and finally the aborted move by SAD to unilaterally issue a ‘July Declaration’ on behalf of the mass movement on 31st December 2024 stoked controversy.
“the NCP has essentially played the role of a critical friend to the IG, while facing accusations of being a ‘King’s Party’.”
The backlash sparked by these moves from various political parties forced the IG to shift towards a more deliberative model of reform, whereby cross-party consensus took precedence over street demands from SAD-JNC and their allies. Therefore while initially dismissing the idea of forming themselves into a political party, in December 2024 the SAD and JNC announced their intention to create a party in the new year.
Since forming, the NCP has essentially played the role of a critical friend to the IG, while facing accusations of being a ‘King’s Party’. It simultaneously criticises and demonstrates against the government for its slow pace in securing reforms, while mobilising in defence of the IG when, for example, Muhammad Yunus confided in NCP leaders that he was considering his resignation in May.
With the NCP’s rise, SAD has descended into a string of scandals and accusations of extortion, factionalism, and moves to subordinate it to the NCP. In June 2025, Umama Fatema dramatically quit the platform, revealing that she had suffered personal attacks and smears from within SAD, and alleging that she had witnessed how ‘opportunists had eaten [SAD] away from the inside like termites’, and that ‘The future of [SAD] is now dark’.
Pitfalls of a ‘Non-ideological’ political party
NCP appears to be banking on the memory of July, especially among students and youth, in order to claim authority as custodians of the uprisings. Their assumption is this will in turn carry them forward as a viable political and electoral project. Meanwhile the suspension of political contradictions through their big-tent, cross-class and non-ideological approach to politics is intended to maintain the ‘unity’ of July to create a new political settlement in Bangladeshi society beyond the existing binaries established since 1971.
However, it is not clear that either of these assumptions or claims still hold.
Firstly, the NCP are presently having to confront the fact that the students and youth that they consciously champion do not constitute a stable polity, much less a constituency. Many of those that they marched alongside in July 2024 will have had their own political or partisan inclinations or affiliations that they have since returned to. This, coupled with the fragmentation of students themselves into various formations, is complicating the NCP’s claim to singularly represent the legacy of the uprising.
Meanwhile, their attempt to extend the legacy of July to claim as the basis of their own legitimacy has pitted the NCP against many well-established parties. This includes parties of the Left, who resist their iconoclastic approach to post-1971 history. As such, the NCP leadership have been seen forging some deeply unscrupulous alliances, by leaning on the Islamist Right as a mobilisational force - thereby helping create an enabling environment for the Right.
While eschewing ideology, the NCP have constructed a politics of what they term ‘anti-fascism.’ By NCP definitions, ‘fascism’ is located in the Awami League as a party, as well as the practices of ‘Mujibism’ that they introduced which have shaped the country since the establishment of its constitution in 1972. With this ‘anti-fascism’ emerging as their guiding political principle, alongside their call for a ‘second republic’ as a political reset for the country, their intention is to grant the 2024 uprising parity with 1971 in Bangladeshi history.
“This emphasis on ‘anti-fascism’, as well as their big-tent approach, has enabled NCP leaders to rationalise their proximity with groups of the hard-Right in Bangladesh as part of effectively a popular front strategy to cleanse Awami League influence from the country.”
This emphasis on ‘anti-fascism’, as well as their big-tent approach, has enabled NCP leaders to rationalise their proximity with groups of the hard-Right in Bangladesh as part of effectively a popular front strategy to cleanse Awami League influence from the country. This has extended from joint mobilisations against the Awami League to the NCP’s effort to build a centrist-Islamist bloc of parties to support the Yunus administration in the face of criticism. In turn, preliminary reports are also circulating that the Islamist parties within this bloc may be considering drawing the NCP into their own electoral alliance or understanding, too. However, it remains unclear whether the NCP will be receptive to this, at this stage.
This all came to a head in May 2025 with the NCP’s ultimately successful campaign of direct action to obtain a government ban on the Awami League. This ban was secured through direct collaboration with the likes of Jamaat-e-Islami and Hefazat-e-Islam, who comprised a large segment of the mobilisation force at their mass demonstrations. Pointedly, this action saw groups - supposedly Shibir - disrupt the singing of the Bangladeshi national anthem, with videos widely circulating of participants chanting “No place for Awami League in Ghulam Azam’s Bangladesh” - referring to the Jamaat leader who collaborated with the West Pakistan army during 1971. In response to the subsequent backlash against the NCP, the party issued a face-saving exercise on their part claiming that ‘recognising and honouring the pivotal moments in Bangladesh’s historical struggle in 1947, 1971, and 2024 is a “prerequisite for participating in politics.”’ Despite this, the NCP’s strategic alliance with Islamist parties, Jamaat included, has continued to solidify.
Protestors demanding a ban on Bangladesh Awami League on May 9, 2025. Image: Muhammad Yahya, Wikimedia Commons
On the other hand, if the aforementioned major opinion poll can be taken as authoritative then the concerns of the Bangladeshi public at large appear to be primarily concerned with pressing, day-to-day material issues like managing price hikes and increasing employment, as well as the pervasive sense of deteriorating public safety, rather than the questions of the constitution and the notion of a ‘second republic’ that the NCP have made defining features of their agenda. As such the party has to grapple with demands which it has neither has a track record of addressing, nor any clear political framework through which to generate meaningful solutions.
While the NCP’s stated concern with wealth inequality and ending economic discrimination could potentially bend towards some form of social democratic policies, it could just as easily become a matter reconciled through mainstream neoliberal orthodoxy, or the supposedly compassionate capitalism promoted by Muhammad Yunus. The character of the NCP’s economic programme can be found in their ‘Vision 2035’ programme launched at the Bangladesh Investment Summit in April 2025. In this document they pledged to turn Bangladesh into an ‘investment paradise’ for foreign capital, promised to always ‘ensure a business-friendly environment’ and evinced a hope for high-tech digital advances to modernise business and combat inefficiency and corruption - while offering nothing to differentiate itself from the neoliberal platitudes of their political competitors, much less any structural critique of Bangladesh’s place in the global economy. This was the overarching economic thrust of their manifesto outlined in August 2025 also. Meanwhile they, along with the IG, have sought to remove ‘Socialism’ as a pillar from the constitution, associating this as an artifact of ‘Mujibism’.
NCP’s emphasis on ‘political inclusivity’ and technocratic middle-ground politics may work for a single-issue campaign, a protest movement or an NGO. However it does not inspire confidence as the sustainable basis for a political party, outside of potentially attracting some of Bangladesh’s politically disengaged youth. Instead, its anti-ideological politics can shade into indecisiveness and, ultimately, into a lack of political conviction. The problems facing Bangladesh cannot be resolved by another actor entering its already crowded array of centrist parties.
“NCP’s emphasis on ‘political inclusivity’ and technocratic middle-ground politics may work for a single-issue campaign, a protest movement or an NGO. However it does not inspire confidence as the sustainable basis for a political party”
Moreover this attempt at evading ideological contestation enables the party’s political positions to become overdetermined by its loudest voices - an issue has already provoked discontent within the NCP. Chief organisers Sarjis Alam and Hasnat Abdullah’s public personas have often been seen as abrasive, arrogant and attention-seeking, while these figures have also been visibly courting the Muslim Right by fraternising with Jamaat-Shibir and Hefazat. Their actions have triggered public disagreements with other party figures as well as leading to internal criticism, and a commitment by the party to improve internal accountability processes to prevent a drift towards personality-driven politics.
However, as the de facto leaders of the party they continue to command an inordinate degree of control over the party in its nascent form and are best placed to convert visibility into votes during the election. If elected, figures such as Alam and Abdullah may well have the leverage to project their own politics as the path to which the party should bend.
Is the NCP the true heir of July?
While the new party was quickly subject to splits and breakways, the direct lineage of the NCP to the SAD-JNC platforms nonetheless makes it the most readily identifiable representative of the uprisings at this time. Any attempt by the party to present itself as holding a monopoly on the political aspirations of the uprisings, however, is a far more contentious matter.
Yet in this respect, it is telling that neither the NCP nor any of its rival post-uprising formations consciously speak of themselves in terms of a clearly defined political ideology. United People’s Bangladesh, comprising the JNC’s former Shibir faction, describe themselves as a ‘pressure group’ to ‘uphold the spirit and demands of July.’ A further platform consisting of Dhaka University students/alumni, Inquilab Mancha (Revolutionary Platform), characterises itself as a ‘non-political cultural organisation’, albeit with a seeming tilt towards the BNP while being more vocally critical of NCP for allegedly ‘co-opting July’ and ‘destroying unity.’
Therefore, the character of the post-July political formations, including the NCP and its rivals, speaks to the deeper contradictions of the movement that toppled Hasina: which while certainly being righteous, was ideologically undernourished. This lack of political definition within the movement and its leadership has in subsequent months created space either for the growth of Right-wing forces to reassert themselves, or seen the more high-minded ideals of the uprising moment retreat from the public consciousness towards more prosaic concerns of survival in Bangladesh.
The initial demand for quota reforms and ‘meritocracy’ in the civil service too were worthy and valid. However, on their face, they spoke to a petit bourgeois aspirational politics - albeit being a demand which resonated widely in light of the employment crisis facing Bangladeshi youth. The student-led movement that coalesced around the demand itself was therefore mixed in class composition, and its ultimate success on August 5th was made possible by it linking up with the Bangladeshi labouring classes to generate a truly mass movement. But while it is clear that the working class was present as a force in July, it is much less clear whether the aspirations of the working class are reflected in the NCP’s programme and orientation beyond rhetorical gestures.
While there is certain to be political contestation within the NCP and between its various factions, it remains to be seen whether any measure of ideological clarity will emerge from the party, what orientation that will take - or whether it will become ossified into the trappings of bourgeois electoralism, and continue its early tilt towards courting conservatism.
Nijjor Manush is a socialist organisation for Bengalis in Britain, founded in 2018. Its book Inquilab Zindabad? A socialist analysis of Bangladesh after the uprisings was produced alongside the Nijjor Manush Bangladesh Solidarity Group, set up following the 2024 uprisings. Follow them on Instagram: @nijjormanush.