Bangladesh’s interim government must avoid Sheikh Hasina’s poor practices – Southasia Weekly #54

This week in Himal 

This week, Cyrus Naji unpacks newly released reports from the United Nations and Human Rights Watch, which critique the Awami League’s brutal crackdown on student protesters backed by law enforcement, but also pinpoint the interim government’s failure to stop abusive practices, including mob violence. 

For our next Podcast of the Week, host of the Southasia Review of Books podcast Shwetha Srikanthan talks to historian Manan Ahmed Asif on his recent book Disrupted City: Walking the Pathways of Memory and History in Lahore, which compares the city’s cosmopolitan past and its fractured present to challenge the grand narratives of the Pakistani nation-state. 

This week in Southasia

20-year-old student’s death sparks diplomatic tensions between India and Nepal

Over the past week, protests around the death of a 20-year-old Nepali student at the Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology in Odisha, eastern India have led to heightened diplomatic tensions between India and Nepal. The 20-year-old student took her own life on 16 February, with initial reports suggesting her death was the result of harassment from an Indian student, who was later detained. Nepali students began to protest in relation to the case. In response, the university directed an estimated 500 Nepali students to leave campus, leaving many of them stranded. A video widely circulated on social media showed university staff members in a heated exchange with the students, with a professor saying that the university was “feeding and teaching over 40,000 students for free”, which another staff member pointed out was “equivalent to your country’s budget”. 

The case drew the attention of Nepal’s prime minister, K P Sharma Oli, and Odisha’s higher education minister, Suryabanshi Suraj, among others, with lawmakers in both countries condemning the handling of the case. Under pressure, the university revoked the eviction order and the university staff members apologised for their comments. Three university officials and two security guards were arrested for manhandling student protesters. The student’s death has also sparked wider discussion about inaction on harassment in India’s college campuses, with students saying that a prior complaint lodged by the 20-year-old with the university’s International Relations Office did not result in formal action against her alleged harasser.