Bangladesh is at its crossroads in politics today, and the situation is marked by chaos, doubt, and the revival of mass mobilization. This has sparked new waves of protests country-wide and exposed the weakness of interim governance in the country, with the assassination of Sharif Osman Hadi, a leading youth leader and activist, in December 2025, casting serious doubts on the credibility of the forthcoming February 2026 elections. It is not just the tragic loss of a young leader but a symbolic moment in which negative feelings between the state institutions, civil society, and foreign forces are bound together.

Protests that were held after the death of Hadi have also shown that unrest in Bangladesh has a multi-dimensional nature. On one hand, there is domestic dissatisfaction with the rules, corruption, and instability of the institution. Alternatively, they emphasize the local aspect of politics, and the anti-India slogans and diplomatic relationship conflicts stress how external forces are seen to shape the internal politics of Bangladesh. This article investigates the reasons, the symptoms, and the effects of the unrest within the framework of the broad historical and regional backgrounds.

The political history of Bangladesh is strongly connected with student-driven activism that has been perceived as the catalyst of change since the beginning. Political mobilization based on youth activism was founded by the Language Movement of 1952, under which students protested to maintain the state language, which was Bengali. This movement not only formed national identity but also evidenced the federal power of the students to question the state authority.

Student groups were instrumental in overthrowing military regimes and pushing electoral reforms in the future in the 1980s and 1990s in the so-called pro-democracy movements. The 2024 uprising was a continuation of this legacy. Protests against the government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina were held in the form of mass demonstrations by students and young activists that pointed the finger at the government because of authoritarian rule, corruption, and suppression of journalists. This mobilization eventually saw Hasina resign despite being in power for over a fifteen-year tenure, reinstating the importance of youth movements in politics in Bangladesh in both forming the identity of a nation and a democracy.

On December 12,........

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