There are seasons in politics when a single word acquires a life of its own, slipping from tongue to tongue until it becomes less an adjective and more an accusation.
In post-August 2024 Bangladesh, the word “gupto” has performed precisely that metamorphosis.
Once a neutral descriptor meaning hidden or covert, it now prowls the political lexicon -- heavy with insinuation and deployed with theatrical relish.
The word’s resurgence is not accidental happenstance.
It draws sustenance from a long and contested history, particularly in relation to Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami and its student wing, Islami Chhatra Shibir.
Their political trajectory -- marked by prohibition, prosecution, and re-emergence -- has lent them an enduring aura of mystery. In public perception, during challenging times, they have often been cast not as absent, but as unseen.
Here enters the first act of this linguistic drama: ideological camouflage.
Critics have long alleged that Jamaat, when operating within formal democratic structures, adopts the garb of procedural propriety while retaining a doctrinal core that is less easily discerned.
The allegation, fair or otherwise, is that the visible and the veritable do not quite coincide.
Concerns have stemmed from the spectre of undeclared designs. Political adversaries accuse the party of harbouring agendas that are not publicly articulated.
Then comes the long interlude of enforced invisibility. Following bans and the aftermath of war crimes trials, Jamaat and Shibir spent over a decade in a condition widely described as "underground". When they resurfaced, it only confirmed the mythos of their concealment.
The events of the Liberation War in 1971 and the role of auxiliary forces such as Razakar and Al-Badr have etched a darker connotation into the word. Here “gupto” carries the weight of ominous threat, the notion of an embedded enemy, always lurking.
Against this layered backdrop, yesterday’s clash at Chattogram Government City College acquires a significance that exceeds its immediate violence. The confrontation between Jatiyatabadi Chhatra Dal and Islami Chhatra Shibir was, on the surface, another episode in the weary cycle of campus politics.
Yet the graffiti tells a more revealing tale.
A slogan that once called for a “campus free of student politics and Chhatra League” was altered. The word “student” was excised and replaced with “gupto”.
It is a small edit with a large implication. The battlefield shifts from ideology to ontology. In effect, “gupto” becomes a category of suspicion, elastic enough to encompass an entire adversarial identity.
One cannot ignore this implication.
