Making sense of Bangladesh’s ‘Hadi effect’ shaping the vote

After the sidesplitting of Sharif Osman Hadi successful December and the ceremonial that drew hundreds of thousands of radical into the bosom of Dhaka, the federation concisely convulsed with grief.

Then, arsenic it astir ever does, the emotion receded. Even martyrdom has a support beingness successful nationalist memory. Ordinary people, burdened by survival, bash not grieve indefinitely. Mourning fades and beingness intrudes.

Bangladesh has seen this before. Take Abu Sayeed, the archetypal martyr of the July uprising of 2024 that led to then-Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s ouster. The representation of him lasting with outstretched arms, absorbing constabulary [rubber] bullets arsenic if to apprehension past itself, has already entered the country’s ocular canon. It is painted connected walls, reproduced successful murals, stylised successful creation and embalmed successful textbooks. Sayeed’s representation is immortal. His grief is not.

Today, the sorrow surrounding his decease apt lives connected lone wrong his household and a tiny ellipse of intimates. For everyone else, it has been crowded retired by the regular grind — by inflation, insecurity, and the numbing demands of beingness successful a harshly transactional satellite that steadily drains radical of the luxury of sustained emotion.

There is besides a harsher truth. Abu Sayeed’s death, successful each grimly applicable sense, achieved closure. His martyrdom sparked the wide uprising that yet toppled Hasina’s dictatorial regime, which had ruled for much than a decennary and a fractional done force, and the systematic stripping of governmental and quality agency. Sayeed’s sacrifice served a utilitarian purpose. History moved. His chapter, nevertheless tragic, is complete.

Hadi’s decease is not.

More than a period aft helium was killed, his martyrdom remains unfinished, unresolved—and that is precisely wherefore the nationalist effect has been truthful fervent, truthful emotionally unspent. The honours conferred upon him, the strength of the mourning, and the astir unprocessed grief constituent to thing deeper than the catalytic relation of yet different fallen hero. To recognize it, 1 indispensable archetypal recognize what mightiness present beryllium called the “Hadi effect”.

People respond arsenic they be the ceremonial supplication for Sharif Osman Hadi, a pupil person who died aft being changeable successful the head, astatine Manik Mia Avenue, successful Dhaka, Bangladesh, connected December 20, 2025 [Stringer/Reuters]

Hadi entered nationalist consciousness done societal media clips and tv speech shows, successful which helium was successful viral confrontations with immoderate known societal and governmental stalwarts. He was physically unassuming: abbreviated with dishevelled hairsbreadth and beard, but sharp-eyed. His powerfulness laic successful language. He spoke successful an unapologetically plebeian Bangla, tinged with the agrarian cadences of confederate Bangladesh, acold removed from the polished, patrician diction of Dhaka’s municipality elite. It was a dependable that sounded familiar, adjacent intimate, to millions.

With a humble madrasa education, clip astatine Dhaka University, and roots successful a lower-middle-class family, Hadi embodied a volatile combination: the subaltern with conscionable capable entree to endanger established hierarchies. He was neither afloat wrong the strategy nor wholly extracurricular it. His religiosity – unapologetic and profoundly Islamic – resonated powerfully successful a state wherever astir 90 percent of the colonisation is Muslim and wherever religion remains 1 of the fewer enduring sources of corporate identity.

After the 2024 uprising, Hadi began to pull sustained attraction from mainstream media. As remnants of the Awami League’s taste and governmental constitution cautiously tested the waters for a comeback, helium confronted them head-on. His connection was blunt, often abrasive, and deliberately so. Again and again, Hadi warned of the information of allowing the enactment backmost into nationalist beingness done its taste and societal networks, agelong earlier it could re-enter ceremonial politics.

People mourn arsenic they articulation the ceremonial supplication for Sharif Osman Hadi, a pupil person who died aft being changeable successful the head, astatine the parliament gathering country of Manik Mia Avenue, successful Dhaka, Bangladesh, connected December 20, 2025 [Mohammad Ponir Hossain/Reuters]

This was not a accepted governmental battle. Hadi’s combat – if it tin beryllium called that – was aimed squarely astatine culture. For decades, Hasina’s Awami League had exercised near-hegemonic power implicit Bangladesh’s taste sphere, saturating media, academia and the arts with its preferred narratives. In principle, this was unsurprising. As a centre-left enactment that led the 1971 liberation war, the Awami League rooted its legitimacy successful language, identity, civilization and a peculiar imaginativeness of Bengali nationalism. Much of the country’s intelligence people recovered that imaginativeness some acquainted and institutionally rewarding.

But nether Hasina’s 4 consecutive presumption – 3 of them secured done elections wide regarded arsenic rigged oregon non-participatory – that taste task metastasised. What had erstwhile been advocacy hardened into dogma. Bengali nationalism was narrowed, past was revised and the liberation warfare was progressively reframed to elevate Sheikh Mujibur Rahman – Hasina’s begetter and the person of the independency conflict – into a near-mythic figure. Cultural accumulation ceased to beryllium pluralistic. It became devotional.

The consequences were profound. Dominant media outlets and influential intellectuals did much than amplify this narrative. They enforced it. In the process, they marginalised the worldview of a ample bulk of Bangladeshis, galore of whom are religiously mean Muslims who could not recognise themselves successful the imposed mentation of “secular” nationalism. Over time, reverence for Mujib, arsenic Rahman is wide remembered, crossed from respect into ritual, leaving small country for dissent without societal oregon nonrecreational penalty.

That resentment did not disappear. It waited.

After the 2024 uprising, it erupted, astir visibly successful the demolition of Mujib’s statues and murals crossed the country. It is simply a mistake to represent these acts simply arsenic vandalism oregon iconoclasm; they were an attempt, nevertheless raw, to reclaim taste bureau from a state-sanctioned orthodoxy. At their halfway was a request to reassert a sociopolitical individuality grounded successful spiritual moderation alternatively than enforced secular symbolism.

No fig came to embody that rupture much intelligibly than Sharif Osman Hadi.

Hadi’s emergence successful the corporate consciousness followed a wide arc. Without evident calculation, helium archetypal emerged connected societal media and past broke into mainstream platforms, methodically exposing the hypocrisy of a media-intellectual analyzable that had enabled Hasina’s authoritarianism portion cloaking itself successful motivation superiority. His refusal to temper his critique, his insistence connected naming collaborators alternatively than abstractions, struck a nerve.

For galore Bangladeshis successful the contiguous aftermath of July 2024, Hadi sounded similar the dependable they aspired to hear. He said aloud what others had whispered oregon forced themselves to suppress entirely. He appeared sincere – possibly adjacent recklessly so. And successful a governmental civilization exhausted by doublespeak, that honesty proved magnetic.

Hadi did not halt astatine critique. With nationalist funding, helium went connected to found the Inqilab Cultural Center, an explicit effort to physique an alternate taste infrastructure. Its ngo was clear: to beforehand a Bangladesh-rooted taste idiom grounded successful Islamic values, 1 that resonated with the societal instincts of the bulk alternatively than the narrow, urban, secular aesthetic agelong amplified by elite institutions. For galore Bangladeshis who had viewed the ascendant mentation of Bengali taste look arsenic exclusionary oregon imposed, the Inqilab Center felt little similar a provocation than a correction.

Yet post-uprising Bangladesh was not a laboratory for taste experimentation alone. Under an interim government, the state lurched from economical anxiousness to governmental uncertainty, and the nationalist temper progressively gravitated towards 1 demand: stableness done elections. Hadi grasped this quickly. Cultural resistance, helium concluded, would stay susceptible unless it was anchored successful ceremonial governmental power. Parliament was wherever lasting leverage lay.

His determination to contention a spot successful the bosom of Dhaka, successful the upcoming elections, elevated him astir overnight. Running without the backing of immoderate large governmental machine, Hadi positioned himself against a seasoned, well-financed campaigner from a enactment wide expected to instrumentality to power. The asymmetry was stark. It was a David and Goliath contention successful a metropolis – and a state – bare for rupture. Attention was inevitable.

What followed was not a media strategy truthful overmuch arsenic a studied refusal to person one. Hadi allowed the symbolism of the contention to turn organically. His run was conspicuously bare-boned: leaflets alternatively of billboards, handshakes alternatively of motorcades. He prayed Fajr with voters, walked done working-class neighbourhoods, and spoke successful the aforesaid unpolished vernacular that had archetypal made him recognisable. Social media did the rest, amplifying what appeared unscripted and truthful credible.

A convoy carrying the assemblage of Sharif Osman Hadi, a pupil leader, who died aft being changeable successful the head, moves done a assemblage aft his funeral, successful Dhaka, Bangladesh, connected December 20, 2025 [Mohammad Ponir Hossain/Reuters]

At the halfway of Hadi’s entreaty was a azygous condemnation astir him that took clasp with astonishing speed: that helium was incorruptible. After 16 years of Hasina’s regularisation – sustained by alliances with crony capitalists, a compliant bureaucracy, and selective patronage – corruption had go 1 of the regime’s defining signatures. Hadi offered himself arsenic its antithesis. He did not committedness technocratic betterment oregon organization overhauls. He promised thing simpler and, for many, much persuasive: that helium would beryllium brave capable to face powerfulness without flinching.

In the aboriginal days aft the July uprising, that aforesaid religion had concisely been invested successful pupil leaders who had ignited the 21-day wide question against systemic discrimination. They, too, were seen arsenic untainted and fearless. But that assurance eroded rapidly arsenic authorities reasserted its aged habits. Almost by default, the load of preserving that belief, of proving that integrity could past proximity to power, shifted to Hadi.

Interestingly, Hadi, by nary measure, had been the designer of the July uprising. Yet successful its aftermath, helium became 1 of its astir consequential inheritors. The Hadi of tv debates occupied minds but the Hadi of the run way reached determination deeper.

That explains wherefore his sidesplitting produced a palpable consciousness of loss, wherefore truthful galore mean Bangladeshis felt, without irony, that thing indispensable had been taken from them.

In death, Hadi has grown larger — but whether helium has grown stronger remains unresolved. History offers nary guarantees. His sidesplitting has already created opportunities for others to talk successful his name, to commercialized connected his image, to person sacrifice into governmental currency. Martyrdom has ever been an easy appropriated asset.

Still, it would beryllium a mistake to presume that fading grief volition render Hadi irrelevant successful time. Public emotion inevitably ebbs but unfinished struggles bash not. The thought helium carried – the insistence connected reclaiming taste agency, connected confronting corruption without accommodation, connected refusing elite support – has not been settled, fto unsocial defeated.

Hadi’s task remains incomplete. That is the existent root of his persistence successful the nationalist imagination. And anyone who believes different misunderstands some the infinitesimal and the man.

The views expressed successful this nonfiction are the author’s ain and bash not needfully bespeak Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.