While Bangladesh celebrates the gains of the “July Uprising,” with many hailing the movement participants as national heroes and branding the uprising as “monsoon revolution,” one must ask whether the uprising can really be called a revolution or not. In this article, I venture to make sense of various definitions of revolution and assess whether the July Uprising, as glorious and important as it is, was indeed a revolution or not.
Notable sociologist and political scientist Charles Tilly (2006) formulated the following definition of revolution: “A forcible transfer of power over a state in the course of which at least two distinct blocs of contenders make incompatible claims to control the state, and some significant portion of the population subject to the state's jurisdiction acquiesces in the claims of each bloc.”
Under this definition, we can say that the July Uprising definitely caused a forcible transfer of power, from the hands of the Awami League to the interim government and definitely created two distinct blocs of contenders for power: The AL bloc and the opposition bloc and a significant portion of the population acquiesced to the claim of each of the stated blocs. Following this, it seems that the July Uprising can be categorized as a revolution. However, Tilly goes on to further substantiate his formulation of the revolution by introducing two dynamics of the phenomenon. Those are: The revolutionary situation and the revolutionary outcome.
The revolutionary situation is characterized by the development of “contenders or coalitions of contenders advancing exclusive competing claims to control of the state or some segment of it, commitment to those claims by a significant segment of the citizenry and incapacity or unwillingness of rulers to suppress the alternative coalition.” This situation develops in many countries at various stages of history, not all situations come to fruition and constitute a full-fledged revolution. To measure the fruition of revolutions, Tilly also proposes the idea of revolutionary outcomes which an episode of upheavals must meet in order to fully be recognized as a revolution. They are:
- Defections of regime members;
- Acquisition of armed force by revolutionary coalitions;
- Neutralization or defection of the regime's armed force;
- Acquisition of control over the state apparatus by members of the revolutionary.
From this framework, it can be deduced that the July Uprising in Bangladesh is but a partial revolution, consisting of a revolutionary situation in complete but revolutionary outcome which was only partial. For example, the state apparatus was not completely taken control over by the young movement participants but power was transferred to senior civil society members with only two members from the movement participants joining in as advisors to the interim government.
Also, regime members did not defect but were defeated and deposed in total. Armed forces defected and joined the side of the movement. But because total control did not come to the movement participants and because a revolutionary government was not formed, it cannot be said that the July Uprising was a complete revolution.
The July Uprising is not a complete revolution, but it still has an opportunity to become a full-fledged revolution if it leads to a radical change
There are other considerable factors of the uprising which prevent it from being characterized as a full-fledged revolution. Scholars like Jeffery Paige (2003) for example proposed a stricter definition of revolutions than Tilly, and said that a revolution necessarily constitutes “a rapid and fundamental transformation in the categories of social life and consciousness, the metaphysical assumptions on which these categories are based, and the power relations in which they are expressed as a result of widespread popular acceptance of a utopian alternative to the current social order.”
The July Uprising fulfills almost none of these requirements as there has so far not been a complete fundamental transformation of anything and we are yet to see any substantial reforms or reformulations. Therefore, this definition of revolution would also seem not to fit the July Uprising.
So is the case with Parsa’s (2000) definition of revolution as well which claims that a revolution requires “rapid, basic transformations of a society's state and class structures that are carried through class-based revolts from below.” While many people from the lower economic classes did indeed join the July Uprising and even gave their lives, they were not in the leading position and their liberation has not taken place as a result of the uprising. In fact, in the first few months of the new interim government taking power, a worker was shot dead by the police for joining a labour protest.
But suppose we follow the most basic definitions of revolution which proclaim that a revolutionary outcome only shifts control over a state to a new set of rulers and includes defection or neutralization of those coercive means as well as acquisition of coercive means by the new rulers. In that case, we can call the July Uprising a revolution as it certainly changed the rulers. But if we want to find a radical or organic change in the constitution or government, as American Historian Joseph Clark, writing in 1882, defined revolution as, the July Uprising has yet to deliver on that.
Also, if we follow the definition of revolution stated by sociologist Theda Skocpol in her 1979 book States and Social Revolutions, we would expect a basic transformation of a society’s state and class structures. The uprising has a lot left to do if it wants to fulfill these requirements. As such, the July Uprising is not a complete revolution, but it still has an opportunity to become a full-fledged revolution if it leads to a radical change in the Constitution, the liberation of the lower classes, and change in the philosophy and metaphysics of the state.
Anupam Debashis Roy is a PhD student in the sociology department at the University of Oxford. He can be reached at [email protected]
