August 15th: A Wound This Party Has Never Stopped Carrying

Every year on this day I think about the same thing: a father, a mother, their sons, killed in their own home in 1975, along with almost their entire family, in a coup that also took nearly everyone who could have carried on Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's legacy directly. Only two daughters survived because they happened to be abroad at the time. One of them has led this party and this country for most of my adult life.

I don't think people outside Bangladesh always understand how personal this history is for people who support this party. This isn't abstract political branding. Sheikh Hasina built a political career and a government while carrying that grief her entire life, and I think that context matters when people try to reduce everything this government has done to simple headlines.

I'm not asking anyone to agree with every decision this party has made over the decades. But I do think a party founded by the man who led the Liberation War, and led for so long by his daughter who survived his assassination, deserves to have its history remembered honestly, especially on a day like today.