A student at a protest in Dhaka demanding road safety and justice for the killing of two students in a road accident. Image: Md Rafayat Haque Khan/Zuma Press/PA Images
In early August, the prime minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina found herself in the unusual position of having to publicly urge thousands of protesting children to return to school. A fatal but common traffic accident, in which two teenagers were killed by a speeding bus near Dhaka’s international airport on 29 July, spurred over a week of demonstrations. Hasina’s appeal, which was duly ignored, belongs to a tradition of political thought that usually reserves the serious business of politics for “fully developed” adults. Pedagogical institutions like the school and the home are considered the rightful places for children – not the streets of Dhaka.
