Marxist scholar Nagesh Rao, who teaches English and Modern Languages at Independent University, Bangladesh, discusses in an interview with Saydia Gulrukh of New Age the possibilities of building Palestine solidarity beyond symbolic action in the context of Bangladesh.
New Age: As Palestinians mark 78 years of the Nakba, and as the world witnesses 946 days of Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza since October 7, 2023, are we entering a moment where genocide itself is being normalised — not despite global institutions, mainstream media and powerful states, but through their active complicity, silence and selective outrage?
Nagesh Rao: We are living in a time when genocide is becoming normalized, and it is deeply distressing to witness. In late April, yet again, the European Union rejected a proposal to partially suspend the EU-Israel Association Agreement despite mounting pressure from activists, human rights groups, and over one million signatures gathered through a European Citizens’ Initiative campaign. Ireland, Spain, and Slovenia pushed for tougher action, but Germany and Italy opposed suspension, preventing the necessary majority. Spain and Ireland are an exception; the rest of the EU is still firmly behind Israel. The marginalization of the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice, and the United Nations, and the Special Rapporteur being sanctioned by Donald Trump, confirms their naked support for Israel. However, I must mention, the normalization of genocide began under the Joe Biden regime and accelerated under Donald Trump. That normalization has created a very difficult climate for Palestine solidarity activism.
New Age: Living with the fear of genocide becoming normalised, and the weight of being unheard, is crippling. It is particularly unsettling for people in countries like Bangladesh, where the assumption is often that countries like ours do not possess the geopolitical leverage to exert pressure on the Israel-US-European Union axis backing the genocide. How, then, do we make room for hope?
Nagesh Rao: I think we have to ask: for whom has it been normalized? It has been normalized for corporate media, for many of these institutions and NGOs that may have been advocates for human rights, but when it comes to Palestine, they have exposed themselves as complicit, in one way or another, with this process of normalization. But on the other hand, I think for ordinary people around the world, what has become normalized is a kind of cynicism about the motives of the US and Israel. People have come to see the hypocrisy of these institutions, the hollowness of UN, ICC, and ICJ verdicts — the fact that these are institutions without teeth, and unless you have the ability to stand against the world superpower, there is nothing you can do about it. I think people around the world are coming to understand that we are living in abnormal times.
While the system has normalized genocide, for ordinary people, the mask of liberal institutions has come undone. So there is a disconnect between the official channels of communication in public discourse and mass consciousness, mass sentiment. Once we recognize that disconnect, there is reason to hope, otherwise it’s a very despairing situation. Even in the United States, where repression of the Palestine solidarity movement has been really extreme, even there, the pushback against Zionism, against AIPAC, against what Israel is doing, and now against the Iran war, has been a tremendous site of courage, especially among young people. And that should give us cause for hope.
New Age: What would that site of hope be in the context of Bangladesh, in your view?
Nagesh Rao: In the context of Bangladesh, the pro-Palestinian sentiment is undeniable. There is critique of Israel’s settler colonial policies; people have a conception of that, but for the most part, there is generalized sympathy and solidarity because of religion. In some cases, that then translates into a kind of antisemitism. There are certain ways that religious argument has taken shape to imply that this is primarily a battle against Jews. For most people, however, it is a matter of solidarity with fellow Muslims who are being oppressed.
My sense is that the left in Bangladesh, such as it is, has to reclaim internationalism and take it back from the right. I think, the right has dominated discourses of international politics and international relations for all sorts of reasons and in all sorts of ways. Working-class Bangladeshi sentiment turns outward in particular ways. Looking beyond the border — and what do you see? Muslims being persecuted here and there and everywhere — you see solidarity with certain forms of struggle and you construct a particular kind of narrative. I think the left has to reclaim that narrative of internationalism by building a Palestine solidarity movement and ethos, and through strategic decisions, it can reignite ideas of cross-border class solidarity.
New Age: Can the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement inform our strategic decisions in this regard? Could it facilitate a process of going beyond symbolic solidarity with Palestine, for both the government and the people of Bangladesh, beyond measures such as walkouts at United Nations sessions or occasional solidarity marches?
Nagesh Rao: The BDS movement is often reduced to just boycott. The divestment and sanctions are about institutional and state responsibilities, and it’s about pressuring the state and institutions to do something, whereas the boycott can just be put at a consumer and individual level. It’s sort of the path of least resistance and an easy way out. It’s a simplification and reduction of what BDS stands for.
So, if we are thinking of divestment and sanctions, of course, there are things that the government could do: signing on to calls for sanctioning Israel and joining the academic and cultural boycott. Many of these calls are already part of the ethos of Bangladeshi political life, but are not actually institutionalized or formalized. And the process of institutionalizing can have a politicizing effect on the people involved in any sort of Palestine solidarity campaign.
At the same time, we need to also think about how BDS activism can help the Bangladeshi left. The left right now is weak or non-existent in all practical terms. So, what do we do? One thing that we can think about is how to connect up with the BDS movement in India. Because it is not just Coca-Cola. There are Indian companies that are being held accountable by Indian activists — Reliance has investments in Israel. And Reliance is here as well; it has investments and involvement in the energy and telecom-related sectors. How about joining BDS activists in India who are trying to pressure Reliance to divest, and building a campaign against Reliance here as well? A couple of other things that such a campaign would do: it will create room to connect with other issues such as energy and trade concerns. With the US-Israel war in Iran and the blockade in the Hormuz Strait, everyone is asking: where is the fuel going to come from? Where is the oil going to come from? And there is very little discourse about how this is an opportunity to shift to renewables, to shift away from fossil fuels. No one is talking about that. Targeting something like Reliance and the Reliance Bangladesh LNG & Power Project, which is a group of companies that has investments in Israel, talking about that in a way that connects climate change, fossil fuels, workers’ conditions, and internationalism — helps draw tangible connections with the war economy and also helps build solidarity between Bangladeshis and Indians, at a time when that polarization has become really sharp. This kind of thinking can help us break through the impasse of nationalism that left political culture finds difficult to break from, especially in Bangladesh, where nationalism is such a powerful force.
The moment we begin to take on the real issues of divesting from Israel and sanctioning Israel, you make it a regional or even a national issue, going beyond the singular focus on Coke. Taking on Reliance, like I said, you touch upon other fault lines of the system — climate change, militarism, settler colonialism.
The BDS movement has been making that global chain of oppression visible, while calling for cross-border alliances and building an ethos of solidarity and internationalism. I recognise that, at the local level, it’s a much more complicated situation, but I do believe that we can go beyond symbolic actions. For that, we need a clear sense of who the agents of change are, what forces exist on the ground, and what strategic choices lie ahead of us.
