The anti-quota student protests in Bangladesh constitute a strangely intimate moment in my life. The moment is unfamiliar because I am not a member of the Bangladeshi diaspora; I am not a student or otherwise young; and I harbour a visceral suspicion of popular movements which are hijacked by vested interests. Even from a distance, here in Singapore, it is clear to me that what began as a largely peaceful (although coordinated) series of demonstrations against the quota policy morphed into acts of violence against state property, including Bangladesh TV.

All this is true. Yet, watching videos of students telling - in fact, yelling - their side of the story on YouTube compelled me to transfer my settled sense of self from the peaceful precincts of Singapore to the restive roads of Bangladesh. Why? It is because the protesters (and the authorities as well) spoke in Bangla, the mother tongue of the Bengali people, whether its scattered children live in Dhaka or Kolkata, London or New York, or Sydney or Singapore. As a diasporic Bengali, I cannot but relate to Bangladeshis, whether they are in power or protesting against it. I relate to them as a vicarious yet genuine participant in their unhappy lives at the moment.

Let me turn to Bangladeshi youth. At my age, I am nearing my biological end, but they are young, with their lives and loves and hopes and dreams as green as Sonar Bangla. The Bengali language, whether it is celebrated in song or lamented in pain, carries their thoughts forward. It must never end.

And Bangla will not die so long as there is a writer such as Rabiul, whose Internet post on his first-year university friend Mughdo took my heart by a Baisakhi storm, although this is the month of Sraban.

Rabiul spoke of how he had met his room-mate Mughdo on a rain-swept morning on his first day at Khulna University, how they had gone to their dorm, and how, in spite of Mughdo's laughing protests, Rabiul had dried his new friend's hair with his own gamcha. Over the phone, Mughdo's Amma had asked Rabiul to take care of her carefree and careless son. Hearing this, the son had told his friend that he was too old for such nurturing. One day, nevertheless, Rabiul had spread out Mughdo's shirt on the verandah to dry. That was the bloodstained shirt in which Mughdo was found during the protests, felled by a passing bullet.

According to a newspaper report, Mir Mahfuzur Rahman Mugdho, who was pursuing an MBA at the Bangladesh University of Professionals after having graduated, had no political affiliations or involvement with the protests, but he had gone to the Azampur intersection in Uttara to provide biscuits and water to the demonstrators. (He had served in the Bangladesh Scouts.) He was hit by a bullet in his forehead while resting by the roadside, and was brought dead to hospital. He leaves behind his parents, his twin brother Snigdho and another brother, Dipto.

Hear in the silence of your grieving hearts the sound of these words: Mughdo, Snigdho and Dipto. These are soil-born Bengali names. Think of what these names mean, think of what Mughdo could have meant had that young man not died by the roadside in the country of his Bengali birth. Think of the irreparable harm done to the imaginative fabric of Bengal by the untimely passing of a young man who had been named to be in awe of the world and to share that sense of wonder with his fellow-Bengalis. He is no more. Think.

Women

Women empower men. This is because every existential step that women take towards gaining and securing their rights in a gendered world, which is structured against them by patriarchy, tells men that what is possible for dissenting women cannot possibly lie outside the grasp of progressive males, who are beneficiaries of the patriarchal order after all. Women have to fight for their genuine rights: Men simply have to give up their unfounded rights.

During the protests, the elemental ferocity with which young women students talked about their role in the political passage of Bengali time showed why Bangladeshi men are so vehemently, insistently and unforgettably loving. Who would not be a Bangladeshi man with such Bangladeshi women around? Who would not be a love with so much to love?

Correct me if I am wrong, but I have not heard of a single female protester being killed during the protests. (However, the death of six-year-old Riya Gope in Narayanganj reveals what happens to the most innocent of humans when children are caught up in adult violence.) So, who protected the young women, vociferous on videos as in real life, and others like them? Who else could it have been but Bangladeshi males who ensured that Bengali women would continue the history of the Bengali race even when they, the men, were gone?

Gosh, what a country, Bangladesh!

What now? The situation is still fluid. The arsonists and other conspirators who attacked the very fabric of free Bangladesh must be punished. Equally, however, the young men and women who had assembled peacefully to seek change within Constitutional parameters deserve a second chance.

Now is the time for healing. Now is the time for the government to say that Bangladesh belongs to all those who believe in it.

I am not a Bangladeshi but, as a Bengali, I, too, believe in Bangladesh.

The writer is Principal Research Fellow at the Cosmos Foundation. He can be reached at epaaropaar@gmail.com