If there is one unsettling thread running through Bangladesh's civic space in 2025, it is not confined to uncertain politics, mob outbursts or economic troubles. It runs—often violently—through our cultural scene. Through vandalised music stages, silenced folk singers, cancelled festivals, and burned institutions, audiences are learning—gradually—that culture, too, can become a site of violence and fear.

This did not happen all at once. It did not happen everywhere. But over the course of the year, a pattern has emerged that is difficult to ignore.

In 2025, Bangladesh witnessed a series of assaults on its cultural scene that went beyond disagreements or protests. The rage was raw and physical, and often justified in the language of morality rather than law. Baul singers bore the brunt of "hurting religious sentiment." Music concerts were called off for mob vandalism, including on the occasion of the Pahela Baishakh. Long-standing cultural institutions, such as Chhayanaut and Bangladesh Udichi Shilpigosthi, saw their archives and instruments reduced to ashes during moments of political volatility.

These incidents were not isolated, nor were they entirely spontaneous. They followed a pattern and resulted from a mindset that considers cultural expression as something negative, to be policed, corrected, or completely suppressed, rather than tolerated or even debated.

The perpetrators, in many cases, were not formal political actors. They were loosely organised vigilante groups or mobs mobilised through local networks. Their strength did not lie in structure or legitimacy, but in a sense of vindication, moral superiority, and confidence that these attacks would carry few consequences and that if any administrative action were taken at all, it would be, at best, sluggish.

What makes 2025 distinct is not merely the number of such incidents, but their nature. Earlier years also witnessed threats, intimidation, and sporadic disruption. This is not new in Bangladesh. However, what makes the difference in 2025 is the moral high ground on which such attacks were carried out. Cultural institutions were not just pressured; they were burned. Music was not merely criticised; it was forcibly stopped. Folk traditions were not debated; they were silenced.

Baul singers, for instance, represent one of Bangladesh's most syncretic traditions—rooted in music, spirituality, dissent, and a refusal to be easily categorised. Similarly, public concerts, student-organised programmes, and secular cultural festivals represent spaces where plurality and collective presence intersect. Attacks on these traditions are not isolated incidents. They are symbols of a society that is increasingly becoming intolerant of diversity and acceptance.

Cultural institutions carry symbolic weight. When archives burn, and instruments are vandalised, the damage is not limited to structures and objects. These are attacks on collective memory, continuity of national heritage and the idea of culture—something inherited and carried forward through generations, rather than dictated through force.

This is not an attempt to glorify all forms of artistic expression, or to deny that discomfort—often arising from diversity—is part of shared public life. But there is a fundamental difference between disagreement and violence.

The role of the state in this context cannot be ignored. In several instances, cultural events were delayed, restricted, or cancelled due to "security concerns." Permissions were withheld. Conditions were imposed. Law enforcement arrived too late or—in some cases—stood by as mobs unleashed mayhem. While often justified as caution, this pattern had a concerning effect: it shifted risk away from perpetrators, while putting the onus on artists and organisers.

This institutional failure was not limited to public events. In November, the Ministry of Primary and Mass Education revoked the posts for music and physical education teachers across the country's primary schools—positions that had only recently been created. While framed as a technical correction, the message it sent was clear: the administration has succumbed to pressures from religious groups.

Such decisions reflect, if anything, a failure to nurture an academic space where culture and faith can coexist, as they do in any society that values balance. And each of these moments, however minor they may seem, contributes to a climate of fear and inhibition. In such a climate, artists begin to self-censor. Organisers scale down. Audiences stay away. Cultural life contracts. And the space for culture grows thinner.

Amitav Ghosh once described cultural loss not as collapse, but as a thinning of the world—what once felt ordinary becomes precarious, and then it quietly disappears. Watching Bangladesh's cultural spaces shrink this year, that imagery feels uncomfortably closer to home. A concert that does not happen. A song that is not sung. A gathering that is dispersed before it begins. Culture does not always burn in flames; it simply stops feeling safe enough to indulge in.

There is also a generational cost that deserves attention. Young Bangladeshis are growing up in an environment where public expression of cultural heritage feels conditional. This matters because culture is not ornamental. It is how societies celebrate coexistence. It is how disagreement is expressed without violence. It is how memory survives outside textbooks and monuments. When cultural spaces shrink, socio-political polarisation hardens.

It would be very convenient to dismiss 2025 as an aberration—a year unsettled by political uncertainty. But that would be an intentional oversight of a real problem eating at the heart of our society. What this year reveals is a deeper vulnerability: the ease with which cultural expression can be framed as a threat, and the speed with which that narrative can translate into vandalism.

The question is not only who attacked our cultural spaces in 2025, but what kind of responses followed. Silence is not neutrality. And theabsence or insufficiency of administrative protections sends its own message.

Bangladesh does not lack cultural resilience. Our artists, musicians, and cultural workers have persisted through even harsher times. But resilience should not be mistaken for sustainability. A society that expects its culture to endure violence without consequence is, in a way, pushing it out of public life.

As the year closes, the challenge ahead is not to shield cultural freedom from all controversy. It is to recognise that cultural spaces are part of the democratic fabric. They require protection not because they are fragile, but because they matter.

If 2025 witnessed our cultural space shrinking, 2026 will test whether we have the restraint—and the will—to stop that thinning from becoming permanent.

Views expressed in this article are the author's own. 

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Tasneem Tayeb is a columnist for The Daily Star. Her X handle is @tasneem_tayeb.