Kolkata: In the past year, since the fall of Sheikh Hasina’s government in Bangladesh and her exile to India, Mohammad A Arafat has had no time to cultivate new hobbies or follow old passions. It is party work that keeps him busy, and the dream of Hasina’s return to Bangladesh by overthrowing the Mohammad Yunus government, which he claims is “illegal”.
“Bangladesh has been staring at the abyss since Hasina left,” the country’s former Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting told ThePrint over the phone.
“I have this one goal: to make things right in Bangladesh again. I really don’t have any hobbies now, or the time to play a sport, or keep myself engaged in any other entertainment in my life,” he said.
The 51-year-old former academic works around the clock. “I don’t even have any particular time to sleep. Sometimes, I get confused between dawn and dusk. Daily life is all about work, work, and more work,” Arafat added.
For him, work means planning political programmes in Bangladesh and keeping in daily touch with the Awami League ground workers and senior leaders who are in exile.
Arafat is part of the senior Awami League leadership that followed Hasina to India. On 5 August 2024, a student-led anti-quota stir became a clarion call for her ouster, and Hasina had to flee her country. In the year since, roughly 1,300 former ministers and the top and middle rung leaders of the Awami League, its youth wing Jubo League, and its students’ wing Bangladesh Chhatra League, have been in exile in India and other parts of the world.
According to a former central committee member of the party, who did not wish to be named, Awami League politicians and workers aren’t the only ones in exile. They’re joined by journalists, civil society activists, army officers, law enforcement officers, and diplomats who had to flee Bangladesh “after a witch hunt against them by the Mohammad Yunus administration”.
“If you count them, the number will exceed 2,000,” the Awami League leader said.
Those who are in India have mostly settled in New Town, a fast-growing planned satellite city on the outskirts of Kolkata. Broad roads, easy availability of affordable apartments for rent, shopping malls, fitness centres, and close proximity to the Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose International Airport have made New Town the ideal residential hub for them.
Though we are separated and isolated from our loved ones, we will continue to fight for them no matter where we are. We believe that the Bangladeshi people deserve better and our nation must be restored to the economic jewel in the crown of the region.
Mohammad A Arafat, former Member of the Bangladesh Parliament
Away from family members who are still in Bangladesh, their lives have fallen into a pattern: Fajr namaz, gym sessions or morning walks, online meetings every evening with Awami League leaders and workers within Bangladesh and across the globe, and hopes of return.
Among them is the former home minister of Bangladesh, Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal, who was spotted in the area last October.
‘Didn’t come here to relax’
On 2 October 2024, the news spread like wildfire in Bangladesh when the local press reported that the country’s former home minister Khan was spotted in Kolkata’s famous amusement park, Nicco Park.
No one had seen Khan leave the country. The law enforcement agencies in Dhaka were hard-pressed trying to explain to the public how he had disappeared from Dhaka and reappeared in Kolkata. Khan had, by then, been named in several cases related to killings during the Anti-Discrimination Student Movement in July and August 2024. He was one of several ministers and MPs from the Awami League government whose whereabouts had remained unknown after Hasina fled to India.
“We have looked into the matter. If they had passed through immigration, we would have proof. In their cases, there is no proof… Many [Awami League ministers and leaders] have left illegally. Some are still in the country, and many have been arrested by law-enforcing agencies,” Additional Inspector General of Police (acting) Shah Alam told the local press.
A former Awami League MP who lives in New Town told ThePrint that he meets Khan regularly. According to him, the former home minister of Bangladesh has now rented a spacious apartment in the area, where he entertains regular visitors—his party colleagues and now New Town neighbours. Khan stays with his wife and daughter in Kolkata and travels every week to Delhi for party meetings and also to meet high-level functionaries of the Indian establishment. His son, Safi Muddassir Khan Jyoti, was arrested in Dhaka in September last year.
According to the former MP, Khan has been tasked with keeping up the morale of leaders and party members. “We have not come here to relax and stay indefinitely. We have come here to stay alive and be ready to fight tomorrow,” is the former minister’s daily message to party colleagues who drop in at his apartment.
Unlike Khan, who is busy with weekly travels to Delhi and daily meetings in Kolkata, other Awami League leaders have been able to breathe easy since last August.
Also read: A handwritten note, 2 signatures, only dead ends in Kashmir—Sarla Bhat murder is no easy case
A ‘discrete’ party office?
On condition of anonymity, a former Awami League MP from Cox’s Bazar said that life has fallen into a pattern now.
“I wake up at the crack of dawn and offer my Fajr prayers at the 3BHK apartment I share with another Awami League MP. Then we both head to the neighbourhood fitness studio, which is rather impressive. I do weight training while my flatmate has enrolled for Pilates classes,” the MP said.
The 1,500 square feet apartment comes at INR 30,000 per month, which the MP doesn’t find too steep. A mild irritant, however, is that the cook and the cleaner take too many unscheduled leaves.
“I am not used to cooking. Neither is my flatmate. But on days we are forced to cook, it is over a video call with my wife, who is still in Dhaka and who gives detailed instructions. This is new for me. By the time I return home to Bangladesh, who knows, I might take up a new career as a chef,” said the former MP jovially.
After a post-lunch siesta, evenings are spent in online meetings with the rank and file of the Awami League in Bangladesh, India, and other countries. The members share and dissect political news from their homeland and plan their next moves.
“Though we are separated and isolated from our loved ones, we will continue to fight for them no matter where we are. We believe that the Bangladeshi people deserve better and our nation must be restored to the economic jewel in the crown of the region. We are fuelled by our love for our country, and we will always be connected to Bangladesh through our ideals, our pride, and our patriotism for our great nation,” said Mohammad A Arafat.
Yunus created anarchy in Bangladesh, committing gross human rights violations that the world has rarely seen in the 21st century. I feel obliged to let the world know. The aim isn’t to inflame anyone—it’s to widen context, challenge lazy claims, and keep attention on those who are harmed.
Harun Al Rashid, former Bangladeshi diplomat
Recently, the Bangladeshi press has been reporting about a “discreet ‘party office’ of Bangladesh Awami League” in Kolkata that Indian intelligence agencies are aware of. The former Cox’s Bazar MP denied the report.
“Yes, there is space we have rented in New Town where all of us meet. There are almost 1,300 party leaders in Kolkata. We can’t possibly meet at the former home minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal’s living room! But to call it an office would be a gross exaggeration,” he said.
Also read: What sets Premanand Maharaj apart—‘doesn’t sell miracles’, a celebrity favourite
A novel & a hair transplant
Far away from Kolkata’s New Town, former Bangladeshi diplomat Harun Al Rashid has settled down to a new life in a quiet neighbourhood in Canada’s Ottawa. Though not a member of the Awami League, Rashid is part of the party’s ecosystem as a vocal supporter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and a strong critic of the Yunus administration.
After the fall of the Sheikh Hasina government, Rashid, then Bangladesh’s ambassador to Morocco, was ordered to return home in December 2024. He delayed his return and then posted on Facebook against the interim government.
“I had titled my post, ‘A Plea for Bangladesh—and for Myself’. In response, the interim government cancelled mine and my family’s passports,” Rashild said.
In Ottawa, he spends most of his time writing. “I read less than I’d like, but I keep a paperback open somewhere in the house—five pages with morning tea, a chapter before bed,” he added.
Rashid said he is self-employed now, which he finds unnerving at times. He keeps a simple budget and says no to work that pulls him too far from home.
In the past year, he has been active online. His social media profiles are filled with his opinions on the new political trajectory in Bangladesh. “Yunus created anarchy in Bangladesh, committing gross human rights violations that the world has rarely seen in the 21st century. I feel obliged to let the world know. The aim isn’t to inflame anyone—it’s to widen context, challenge lazy claims, and keep attention on those who are harmed,” he added.
In between his rants on Yunus, Rashid’s day is made when he can write a clean paragraph, sitting at his desk. It is such days that have resulted in the manuscript for his first work of fiction, a dystopian novel on Bangladesh.
Titled The Mapmaker’s Prayers, Rashid’s story revolves around the fictional character of Wadud from the 1946 Bengal riots through Bangladesh’s 1971 birth. “As a boy, my hero Wadud witnesses his Hindu neighbours being burned alive and his friend Babul’s family being destroyed. His friend Rekha is abducted and forced to marry the hardline cleric Jafor. It is what happens to Wadud and Bangladesh that my novel is about,” Rashid said.
While Wadud’s fictional world is dystopian, a young Awami League MP from Dhaka has found some reasons to smile. The MP, who has been staying alone in a 2BHK apartment in New Town since December 2024, has taken the free time at his disposal to get himself a headful of hair.
“I had a receding hairline when I escaped from Dhaka. My wife had been telling me for a few years to go for a hair transplant. But I was so busy in my constituency being a first-time MP that I could never manage time in Dhaka,” the young MP said.
He flew to Delhi in January 2025 and got himself a new look from a hair transplant centre in South Delhi. “In such trying times, a new head of hair is something to feel good about.”
Deep Halder is an author and journalist. He tweets @deepscribble.
(Edited by Prasanna Bachchhav)