Dhaka has been rocked by a series of protests through the week leading up to the “Ides of March,” driven this time by women, supported by large numbers of students, professionals, and intellectuals.

What made the demonstrations unique was not only that the massive protests condemned the Yunus regime or demanded the ouster of ministers but that they focused on the rising tide of crime combined with an upsurge in moral and religious policing directed against women.

The women’s lib movement with political overtones is not only seen as a challenge by the military-backed interim government but also by political parties including the BNP, Jamaat-i-Islami, and the newly formed students’ party.

All of whom seem to fear that a leftist movement of the kind which had led to the Shahbag sit-in by young men and women in 2013 may build up, threatening their political base and shifting the loyalties of undecided voters ahead of a planned general election this winter.

The 2013 Shahbag movement, sparked by Islamist attacks on young liberal bloggers, had focused on forcing the Hasina government to hang convicted 1971 war criminals, many of whom were being let off with jail terms, and to take strong-arm measures against radical Islamists who were killing or maiming young bloggers.

The liberal Muslim-dominated country has long seen women at the forefront of its social, religious, and political life, with two women prime ministers dominating much of its political canvas for the last three decades.

The presence of the US $42 billion annual turnover garments sector, which draws nearly 60 per cent of its worker strength from women who do not seem to believe in either the hijab or diktats against women, has meant that women’s liberation has been celebrated in all strata of Bangladesh’s society.

However, ever since the August “revolt” that saw the........

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