In the complex social fabric of Bangladesh, there exist what I consider to be its "first provinces"—a group of affluent enclaves where a veneer of order and civility is almost always maintained.

These are Gulshan, Banani, Baridhara, and the cantonments scattered across the country.

While violence, including sexual violence, is not entirely absent in these areas, it tends to stay concealed within a broader, self-regulating system.

When a major incident does occur, it is typically handled quietly—often behind closed doors—without disturbing the well-oiled machinery of everyday life.

These zones operate with an unspoken understanding: any disruption, no matter how significant, must be swiftly quelled to ensure the uninterrupted flow of their residents' jubilant, carefree existence.

Outside this insulated sphere lies what I would call the "second province," which encompasses the middle-class neighborhoods of Dhaka, with the exception of the first province, along with several divisional and district cities.

The dynamics here are more nuanced, and the situation is harder to parse. In his reflections on urban society, David Graeber once offered a revealing definition of the middle class: these are the people who feel a sense of comfort, a fragile security, when they see police officers patrolling the streets.

The rich, living behind the high walls of automated security, interpret police presence as a disruption—an intrusion into their sanctum, signaling a breach in their otherwise inviolable safety.

For the poor, the police are nothing more than agents of the powerful, aligned with the wealthy and enemies of the disenfranchised; their "poor man’s sixth sense" tells them that danger is near whenever they spot the authorities.

But for the middle class, the police represent a comforting illusion—a belief that they are there to safeguard the rule of law.

Yet, this myth of safety and order often works in the service of a much darker reality, one that permeates urban and suburban spaces in the form of mafia-like syndicates—extortion rackets, organized crime, and unspoken deals.

It's only when individuals fall victim to violent crime or when these underground systems break down that the illusion of lawfulness is shattered, exposing the naked violence that lurks just beneath the surface.

Even in the best of times, this myth falters, revealing the fragility of the social order.

The mass unraveling of this illusion during the traumatic events of July and August left a deep scar on the middle class, a wound from which they are still trying to recover.

They attempt to restore their sense of security, not through any tangible improvement in safety, but by doubling down on their faith in the police—an overcompensation for the loss of their previously held beliefs in order and law.

The myth of safety and the machinery of oppression

It’s easy to single out the police as the primary force upholding the system, but that would be a misreading of their true function.

The police, by design, are tasked with maintaining the status quo. And when that status quo is oppressive, their role is simply to perpetuate it.

In moments of power struggle—like those witnessed in the tumultuous months of July and August 2024—the uncomfortable truth emerges: the lives of Bangladesh’s educated middle class are just as expendable as those of the garment workers, the tea plantation laborers, or the indigenous Chakma and Marma communities.

This realization was a bitter pill to swallow in 2024, and remains a haunting memory as we enter 2025.

The challenge now facing the current and future governments is how to restore the comforting myth of safety while continuing to uphold the underlying mechanisms of structural injustice and economic exploitation that define Bangladesh’s reality.

Meanwhile, outside the refined world of first provinces and the middle-class enclaves lies a vast, mythical expanse—rural Bengal—a place where faith in the old myths has all but evaporated.

This land is home to figures like Uncle Majid and his cousins, whose primary ambition is to raise their kin for remittances, send their daughters to the garment factories, and keep commodity prices low for the benefit of the urban middle class.

They are the residents of the country’s largest vacuum—caught between exploitation and invisibility. In this vacuum, power operates with brutal clarity.

Garment workers commute from villages to city factories, remittance earners travel to airports, and agricultural goods—cauliflower, gourds, tomatoes—flow to urban markets. But nothing ever flows back.

No development, no resources, no systemic improvements reach these villages. The only thing that returns is the purchase price of their labor.

In this void of uncertainty, rural communities continue to farm because there is no other option.

The largest source of income is the prospect of working abroad, but the only path out is through one's uncle’s land—a system built on a fragile, unregulated foundation.

Here, the police and local power brokers wield extraordinary influence, capable of turning gods into ghosts in a heartbeat.

Land disputes are endless, often fueled by a lack of legal recourse or property rights, creating a climate where violence becomes a normalized part of everyday life.

This violence extends beyond land—the elderly, women, children, and minorities are all subjected to a de facto license for abuse. In this brutal environment, all forms of exploitation find fertile ground.

This is what Antonio Gramsci described as the moment when the old world dies, and the new one struggles to emerge.

In the interim, "monsters" thrive. The struggle for a just future is one that will not come easily.

Understanding Bangladesh’s structural dehumanization

While working in the periphery, I was struck by the condition of a hospital, and it reminded me of Karl Polanyi’s powerful phrase: “a society which has forgotten the shape of man.”

This encapsulates the idea of dehumanization as a process—a condition where a society, or a country, disconnects from the core of human dignity, reducing people to their most base desires.

In these spaces, violence is legitimized, and you can begin to grasp its true extent by working as a doctor, lawyer, or police officer in Bangladesh’s periphery.

While the more affluent “first provinces” or middle-class areas of Bangladesh still maintain a semblance of myth and order, the rural villages at the upazila and union levels seem to have become free-for-alls after decades of systemic exploitation and structural breakdown.

There is an attempt to impose some form of normativity, often through religious myths, but where the foundational economic structure is rooted in oppression, injustice, and chaos, these myths are insufficient to create a functional society.

If you ever witness firsthand the brutal realities of rural Bengal—the sexual assaults that make their way to hospitals or police stations, or the violence of domestic weapons and hacking, you will understand what it means to witness the absolute degradation of the human spirit.

The idea of "asfala safilin," the lowest of the low, in Surah At-Tin, becomes tangible when you see the human body merge with the animal body in these places, when you work with people who have been referred to Dhaka from these areas.

Across all three provinces of Bangladesh, a river of violence flows beneath the surface. The only difference is the "veil" that covers each region's citizens, creating divergent life experiences.

This veil is thinner for marginalized classes, minority communities, and women, and even within the same area, it is drawn differently depending on social status.

The structural mechanism that dehumanizes people and allows them to endure endless injustice remains entrenched both beneath the soil of the country—within the power structures that define it—and above the sky, within the global power dynamics that influence it. At the heart of this system is the calculation of profit and loss from the human meat factories that sustain the economy.

We, the middle class, occasionally catch glimpses of these unveiled violences, become disturbed, suffer, and protest—only to forget, as we shift back to building our own myths, clinging to hope even for ourselves.

The violence persists, in varying forms, but unless we can bring the mechanisms of dehumanization—both local and global—into full view, unless we understand what must be done to dismantle it, we will continue to watch this cycle unfold.

We will watch as the veils flutter in the southern breeze, and we will witness our Asias slip away, silent and helpless.

—-

Mikail Hossain is a researcher and analyst