Vol. 13 No. 4 (2026)
World Social Work Day, 2026: ‘Co-Building Hope and Harmony: A Harambee Call to Unite a Divided Society’

Perspective

Life Against Deathworlds: Bangladesh’s July Charter 2025 and the Reconfiguration of Power

Published 2026-03-27

  • Rituparna Bhattacharyya

Rituparna Bhattacharyya
Research Consultant & Editor-in-Chief (Joint), Space and Culture, India, United Kingdom; Series Editor: Gender and Violence, Routledge, Taylor &Francis, United Kingdom;Senior Fellow, Advance HE, United Kingdom; Visiting Professor, University of Science and Technology, Meghalaya, India

Abstract

The July–August 2024 mass uprising in Bangladesh marked a definitive rupture in the nation’s political trajectory, culminating in the collapse of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s fifteen-year tenure. In the aftermath, the interim government led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus initiated a profound restructuring of the state. Throughout 2025, this transition materialised through three interconnected processes: the dismantling of the previous regime's ‘necropolitical’ apparatus of state-sponsored violence; the drafting of the July National Charter 2025 to overhaul the constitution; and the preparation for a historic joint general election and constitutional referendum. This perspective outlines how Bangladesh has navigated the transition from an authoritarian system characterised by severe human rights abuses to a nascent, reform-bound democracy, analysing the legal, electoral, and human dimensions of this ongoing transformation.

Keywords

July Charter 2025 , Necropolitics, Electoral Transition, Bangladesh

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Author Biography

Rituparna Bhattacharyya

Dr Rituparna Bhattacharyya, FRGS, SFHEA, is an independent research consultant and Editor-in-Chief (Joint) of the SCOPUS-indexed international journal Space and Culture, India, published from the UK. On 15 April 2025, she became a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, UK. She attained her Senior Fellow status at Advance HE (formerly the Higher Education Academy, UK) in 2021. And in 2018, she received an Associate Fellowship from Advance HE.

Rituparna is currently the Series Editor for Gender and Violence at Routledge, Taylor & Francis. She also works as an Associate Editor for two international journals. They are Humanities and Social Sciences Communications (nature.com), Springer Nature and Diversity & Inclusion Research, published by John Wiley & Sons, United Kingdom. Rituparna was appointed Executive Council member of Cotton University, India, in November 2023. On 17 September 2025, Rituparna was appointed as the conference coordinator for the Gender and Feminist Geographies Research Group (GFGRG) of the Royal Geographical Society, in collaboration with the Institute of British Geographers.

Earlier in 2009, she obtained her PhD from the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology, University of Newcastle, UK. This research was funded by an Overseas Research Scholarship (ORS) and an International Research Scholarship (IRS). In 2011, she received the New and Emergent Scholar award from the Journal Gender, Place and Culture, Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group for her contributions to Gender and sexuality in South Asia. In 1994, she received the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Award for standing First Class First (Geography Major) from Cotton College (now University). And in 1996, she secured First Class First (in MA, Geography) from Banaras Hindu University. She was also the recipient of the National Merit Scholarship from the Government of India.

She has over 25 years of experience in teaching and research. She possesses expertise in geohumanities related to gendered politics, inequalities, poverty, violence, sustainable development, and development in the Global South. She serves as an anonymous journal reviewer of 26 high-quality peer-reviewed journals. Dr Bhattacharyya volunteers at the Prag Foundation for Capacity Building, a public charitable trust in India, and the Alliance for Community Capacity Building for Northeast India, a UK-registered charity. She has more than 100 publications to her credit. Besides, she also writes popular/topical articles for India Today NE magazine, Niyamiya Barta (a local Assamese daily) and The Assam Tribune.

Her latest edited book is Sustainability in South Asian Cities (https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-97-7455-5; https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-97-7455-5), which was published by Springer Nature on 03 March 2025, where she operated as the corresponding editor. Her ORCID ID is https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4290-6172. She is also reachable at: rituparna.bhattacharyya@iitg.ac.in

A few other publications include:

  • Bhattacharyya, R. (2024). Genocides and Xenophobia in South Asia and Beyond: A Transdisciplinary Perspective on Known, Lesser-known and Unknown Crime of Crimes. New York and London: Routledge, Taylor and Francis. DOI: 10.4324/9781003205470. ISBN: 978-1-032-02091-4 (hbk), ISBN: 978-1-032-07122-0 (pbk) and ISBN: 978-1-003-20547-0 (ebk). https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/edit/10.4324/9781003205470/genocides-xenophobia-south-asia-beyond-rituparna-bhattacharyya
  • Bhattacharyya, R. (2023). North East India Through the Ages: A Transdisciplinary Perspective on Prehistory, History, and Oral History. London and New York: Routledge, Taylor and Francis. DOI: 10.4324/9781003157816; hard cover ISBN: 978-0-367-74431-1; paperback ISBN: 978-0-367-74435-9; ebook ISBN: 978-1-003-15781-6, https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/edit/10.4324/9781003157816/northeast-india-ages-rituparna-bhattacharyya
  • Anand, S., Das, M., Bhattacharyya, R., and Singh, RB. (2023). Sustainable Development Goals in Northeast India: Challenges and Achievements. International Geographical Union (IGU) Series: Advances in Geographical and Environmental Sciences, Springer Nature https://link.springer.com/book/9789811964770
  • Pulla, V., Bhattacharyya, R., & Bhatt Sanjai (2020). Discrimination, Challenge, and Response: People of North East India. London: Palgrave Macmillan, DOI:10.1007/978-3-030-46251-2; eBook ISBN:978-3-030-46251-2; Hardcover ISBN:978-3-030-46250-5 https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-46251-2
  • Das, T., Bhattacharyya, R., Alam, F., and Parvin, A. (2020). In-depth Semi-structured Interviewing: Researching Domestic Violence as a Public Health Issue in Bangladesh. SAGE Research Methods Cases Medicine & Health, Disciplines: Public Health. Online ISBN: 9781529719840, DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781529719840
  • Bhattacharyya, R., Sarma, P.K. & Das, T.K. (2023). Mass exodus of India’s internal migrant labourers during the first phase of COVID-19: a critical analysis. SN Social Sciences. 3, 108. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43545-023-00691-x
  • Das, T.K., Bhattacharyya, R. & Sarma, P.K. (2022). Revisiting geographies of nationalism and national identity in Bangladesh. GeoJournal. 87, 1099–1120. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-020-10305-1 (Springer)
  • Bhattacharyya, R. (2019). Symbolic Violence and Misrecognition: Scripting Gender among Middle-class Women, India. Society and Culture in South Asia. 5(1), 19-46. DOI: 10.1177/2393861718787870 (Sage)

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