In August 2026, Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasrin returned to West Bengal under the new Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government. She has criticised the role of the Islamic right in Bangladesh but has been conspicuously silent on other right-wing forces despite being questioned. She analysed the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) protests in Delhi, saying that they were similar to the 2024 Bangladesh uprising, adding that Indians should learn from what followed in her home country after the student-led movement, which led to the ouster of former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in 2024. The post-uprising trajectory in Bangladesh has undoubtedly been complicated. Nonetheless, the 2024 uprising reinstated freedom of speech, lifted the fear of censorship – though there are new censorships and mob violence today – and restored free and fair elections in Bangladesh, a first since 2008. Feminist Bangladeshi friends and those on the left are trying hard to push back against the surge of right-wing dynamics.Responding to Nasrin, CJP leader Abhijit Dipke said that the protests in India should not be defamed by comparing them to Bangladesh and Nepal.Congress leader Kanhaiya Kumar also criticised the Union government’s security policies by referring to Bangladeshis and saying the ‘ghuspetiya’ (infiltrators) have not been downloaded via tiktok or bluetooth but have entered through the borders. Given that Bangladesh has become such a ‘bogeyman’ in Indian politics, it is not surprising that it is a blind spot even among some left-liberal Indians. Dipke’s comments are a missed opportunity to build on the positive and common synergies with other youth movements in South Asia.Exams, employment and the mobility that can arise from them have become a flashpoint for struggles among the youth in both Bangladesh and India and was evident in the uprisings of 2024 and 2026. Having a deep insight into India and Bangladesh, it is timely for me to think through the synergies and future possibilities of these uprisings. Synergies of 2024 and 2026India has registered 8% growth in GDP but its unemployment figures are hovering near 40%. The employed, degreed youth are paid badly. The labelling by a Supreme Court Judge of the young and unemployed as parasitic cockroaches reminds one that during the Rwandan genocide, ‘cockroach’ was used to refer to those who should be killed. Dipke, a young Dalit man based in the US, suggested that cockroaches should come together and formed the CJP as a joke. Choosing the cockroach is a nod to its resilience.This is resonant of Sheikh Hasina’s Razakar comments in July 2024. Students in Bangladesh were protesting against the reservation of jobs for a third generation of 1971’s liberation fighters’ family members. They feared that these jobs were going to Hasina’s party cadres. In response, Hasina remarked if the jobs should go instead to the grandchildren of Razakars. While the original meaning of Razakars in Persian means volunteers, in Bangladesh it came to stand in for East Pakistani collaborators of the Pakistani army who killed and raped East Pakistani men and women in 1971. The students all claimed to be Razakars and joined the protests in response to the 15-year authoritarian rule of Sheikh Hasina’s government. They chanted: cheyechilam odhikar, hoye gelam razakar (We wanted our rights but were made into razakars). This appropriation defies the historical connotation of the collaboration in 1971.In India, the formation of CJP and the hunger strikes by leading figures and left-wing students garnered huge support, including massive Dalit participation, leading to the resignation of the education minister. Protesters also reminded that (like in Nepal) the education minister’s daughter was studying abroad while he jeopardised the futures of youths through paper leaks. The movement in Bangladesh included a similar diversity of protesters, critical of the ruling party and their families siphoning off funds abroad from the state coffers. Like the 2024 uprising in Bangladesh, the internet was suspended in parts of Delhi and surveillance devices were omnipresent. For the first time in Delhi and Bihar, AK 47 guns and pellet guns were used on protesters, causing grievous injuries. In 2024, these same pellets caused serious eye injuries to nearly 500 protesters in Bangladesh. Censorship has also been prevalent in both countries. Like the Digital Security Act in Bangladesh, various censorship laws exist in India to frame one as an anti-national if one is deemed to be provoking the breach of peace, publicly supporting provocative conduct and defamation. Humour has transgressed the dominant, long-term censorships in both countries during these protests. Time for Pan-South Asian solidarities?While the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) has not been fully operational since 2014, in the protests among the young and practices of statecraft a different form of cross-referencing exists today. Like in India, Bangladesh could spearhead the release of still incarcerated journalists and human rights activists who were imprisoned after the July protests with charges which many consider having little basis. Pakistani youth have expressed solidarities towards Indian protests. According to my students, this has also been expressed as FOMO (Fear of Missing out) in GenZ parlance. Pakistani scholars have however pointed out that Pakistani youth are censored about the innumerable protests about the disappearances in Balochistan carried out by the Pakistani state, similar to 1971.The absence of remorse by the Awami League for the 2024 killings and Sheikh Hasina taking sanctuary in New Delhi has generated strong anti-India feelings in Dhaka. Bangladesh has complained about the different speeches made by Hasina from India and refused to join meetings in the country. Illustrations of positive cross referencing across India and Bangladesh are however evident among the youth in the images of Nusrat Jahan from 2024 in Bangladesh and Rhiya Ahir in 2026 in India. Both women stood in front of a police van full of arrested protesters and got them released. As mentioned before, feminists and left activists in Bangladesh have been challenging the various dynamics of the right that have emerged in Bangladesh today. Similarly, the Jantar Mantar protests and continuing youth protests across India have disrupted so many stereotypes and lifted the fear of censorship in many ways. This could be a chance to have a much wider dialogue among left-liberal South Asian youth. One can only hope for at least imagined communities of friendships and neighbourliness across South Asia in the years to come. Given the overlaps in the machinations of South Asian statecraft – be it digital surveillance, the creation of the anti-national, the restriction of freedom of speech, incarceration of activists without trial – the youth movements in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal and India has been a force of inspiration for each other, despite their differences. The Indian youth movement could also learn lessons from the post-uprising trajectory from across South Asia and avoid its pitfalls. Given the lifting of the atmosphere of fear and censorship that the continuing youth movements in India have engendered, it could also interrogate the stereotype of the bogeyman of Bangladesh, to draw out positive lessons from the ongoing struggles among left-liberal Bangladeshis. In light of the division and tension between the interconnected states and communities in South Asia, the creation of new relations, connections, solidarities and dialogues could provide a means of creating new pathways through the uncertain regional and global futures ahead. Confronted with the uncertainty of climate change, the emergence of AI and global tensions in times of ‘great power’ transformation, solidarity and dialogue might be needed more than in the past to respond to the uncertainties of the present and future. Whether it is the impact of AI on the job opportunities for young people or new border policies around the planet in response to climate emergencies, citizens of all ages will need to explore the new tools – tools that might also be transforming the job market- in order to develop new solutions and approaches to the insecurity and uncertainty that is on the horizon, accelerating toward us.Nayanika Mookherjee is a professor of political anthropology in Durham University, UK and Co-Director of Institute of Advanced Study. She is author of Spectral Wound: Sexual Violence, Public Memories and the Bangladesh War of 1971 (2015), Birangona (2018, Irreconciliation (2022) and has worked in Bangladesh for nearly three decades. She has also co-written on digital vigilantes (2020), digital surveillance (2022) and information bombs (2026). She was awarded the 2025 Rivers Memorial Medal by Royal Anthropological Institute.