Muhammad Ali Jinnah died in 1948. Bangladesh was born 23 years later, after a war fought against the country he founded. For most of Bangladesh’s independent history, this chronology appeared sufficient to settle Jinnah’s place in its national memory. He belonged to the prehistory of a state Bangladesh had rejected.
That settlement is now being reopened.
The latest argument began in the museum of the Dhaka University Central Students’ Union, or DUCSU, at the country’s largest higher-education institution. After a renovation, the museum reopened this month with three displays involving Jinnah: a 1970 newspaper clipping, a photograph from the 1940 Lahore session of the All-India Muslim League, and an image of Jinnah speaking at Dhaka’s Racecourse Maidan in March 1948, when he insisted that Urdu should be Pakistan’s state language.
DUCSU is currently dominated by candidates backed by Islami Chhatra Shibir, the student wing of Jamaat-e-Islami. Shibir-backed candidates swept the 2025 election, winning 23 of 28 central posts. The Jamaat itself is now the largest single opposition party in Parliament, having won 68 seats in the February election; its wider electoral alliance secured 77.
On Monday, Abu Tayeb Habildar, a former Dhaka University Urdu student, entered the museum and tore down the Jinnah displays. Habildar said displaying the...
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