On the last Pahela Baishakh, when the NCP's event drew a smaller crowd, every media outlet highlighted it with great emphasis. Press photographers searched for the perfect angle—one that would show the audience at its sparsest.

Now, in the July march of the NCP, a tidal wave of people has surged through the streets. It looked like a real-life reenactment of Rang De Basanti, as July’s youth traveled by truck from one northern region to another, joining hands with thousands in a living procession of life. These NCP marches have turned into a journey toward a living, breathing Bangladesh. Their roadside gatherings have swelled into massive public assemblies. The mothers of July Revolution martyrs have found their lost children again in the faces of this new generation. And yet, these visions of a future Bangladesh remain absent from the mainstream media.

Instead, the media focuses on the final dance of hollow dancers—washed-up performers trying and failing to dazzle in a courtesan’s dance. As a new sun rises across 56,000 square miles, the media tries desperately to cover it with its hairy body, clinging to the decaying structure of the old feudal order. The sons, daughters, sons-in-law, and daughters-in-law of political landlords have returned from Britain as modern-day Prince Dwarkanaths. The plunder-hungry businessmen and their media now search for the face of youth in their sleek fashion parades, among plastic smiles and Instagram-polished appearances.

Just as Nawfel, Arafat, Palak, and Barrister Sumon once appeared, their glowing skin cleaned with purple facewash, so too have new versions of Nawfel-Arafat-Sukhan arrived—speaking in half-English, selling tales of democracy, economy, culture, and elite refinement. The same circus, with the same clowns doing the same flips.

The journalists who once called Hasina “bubu” (affectionate sister), the professors who got university positions through party ties, the cultural uncles and aunties who dressed like Kolkata’s intellectuals and played the part at soirées—many of them, seeing Hasina’s fall as inevitable by late July, quietly joined the August Brigade as India’s B-team. Now they appear on TV talk shows, singing “however” and “but” refrains, branding the July revolutionaries with various labels as part of a plan to repackage and rehabilitate a refined version of the Awami League. Crude influencers and midday-radio voices are now printing photocard slogans with snippets of their selectively refined opinions.

Last July, student wing members of the League declared they could wipe out the July revolutionaries in under seven minutes. This July, we saw the son of an old political feudal lord post on Facebook: "It won’t take more than thirty minutes." Such déjà vu is possible only in Bangladeshi society.

The Awami League, under Pranab Mukherjee’s meticulous design, laid the foundation of Hasina’s fascism. It was accused of involvement in the Pilkhana massacre with the help of Indian intelligence, staged the one-sided 2014 election with Sujata Singh’s mediation, and held the “Lailatul Election” by pretending a conjugal relationship with Modi. In staged anti-militancy operations, detainees testified they were interrogated in Hindi. Victims of the July revolution also reported that the police hurled insults in Hindi during attacks.

Because the League needed direct Indian assistance to attain and retain power, they remain ignorant of the internal strength of the Bangladeshi people. And now, having killed nearly 1,400 people and disabled thousands, the cannibalistic League is trying to trace American sponsorship behind the July revolution—just as students who cheat in exams assume no one can pass without cheating.

Salahuddin Ahmed, a BNP leader recently released from house arrest after Indian hospitality, has said there is no constitutional basis for incorporating the July uprising. “There’s no room for emotion in politics,” he stated.
Yet the media owned by profiteers of the old arrangement, the fallen Awami League, and the remnants of a political feudal order—now six months away from power—are branding the July revolutionaries with labels of “otherworldly ingratitude.” These people, eager for a permanent settlement of their interests, are growing restless.

This clash between the July revolutionaries and the beneficiaries of the old feudal arrangements is essentially a generational conflict: a battle between politics fueled by corruption, looting, black money, muscle power, extortion, and crossfire licenses—and the people’s politics. Between VIP culture and a pluralistic society rooted in egalitarianism. That’s why NCP leader Nahid Islam said: “We are not here to play an old game as new players.”

The rabid, drooling lust to trap Bangladesh in the cannibalistic culture of this old political game—the symbolic desire of an old man marrying a teenage girl before death, the dynastic politics of ruling the same seat for 54 years, leaving behind sons, daughters, in-laws—that is the old game. The original, crude, village politics.

But through the July revolution, a new and civil vision of Bangladesh has spread across 56,000 square miles. Now, the time of clinging to the barbaric system of Sahib-Bibi-Ghulam Kotwals in Dhaka is drawing to a close. The media’s eunuch-inserted dance of the ancients is nearly over.

"The old order changeth, yielding place to new."

• Maskwaith Ahsan: Journalist, Satirist, Author, Educator, Host of 'Chess With Maskwaith' @E-SouthAsia.