It’s not hyperbole to suggest that the future of Bangladesh rests on Muhammad Yunus.

In the turbulence that followed the fall of the Awami League government on August 5, 2024, a corrosive idea has taken hold: that a single, internationally admired figure can function as a universal guarantor for lawbreakers. In today’s Bangladesh, that figure is Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus. Among groups now testing the limits of state authority, some appear to believe that whatever happens in the streets, Yunus—now leading the interim government—will intervene like a bondsman to spare them consequences.

That notion did not arise in a vacuum. A day after the Awami government fell, a satellite channel aired remarks by Professor Mokhtar Ahmed, a prominent Islamist commentator, urging conservatives to accept Yunus as the face of the interim government. Ahmed acknowledged that Yunus’s association with interest-bearing finance runs against Islamic doctrine, yet argued that Islamists should still back him as a “face-saving” figure for the world. Since then, the deterioration in public order has seemed to vindicate the calculation: if Yunus fronts the transition, some assume, the state will indulge their excesses.

The collapse of deterrence has been stark. In the weeks and months after August 5, law and order deteriorated dramatically. More than a thousand monuments and sculptures—many honoring the 1971 Liberation War—were reportedly defaced or destroyed. Attacks on police stations left officers dead and the force hobbled, creating a climate of impunity that emboldened crowds. What some protesters described as a liberation from repression increasingly resembled mob rule.

The anti-Hasina coalitions never moved in unison. Nationalist sloganeering against New Delhi’s “hegemony” curdled into threats to sever India’s “Seven Sisters” region, even as frightened Bangladeshi Hindus massed at border areas seeking refuge the day after the interim cabinet took its oath. Other signals pointed in the same grim direction: the release from prison of hard-liner preacher Jasimuddin Rahmani; the detention of Chinmoy Krishna Das, a monk widely regarded as a voice for minorities; and the vandalism of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s house. Freedom, for some, has meant unleashing actors that were bottled up during Sheikh Hasina’s tenure.

Rights monitors have put numbers to the trend. Ain o Salish Kendra (ASK), a leading human-rights organization, reports that of 128 violent deaths recorded in 2024 after August 5, 96 were attributable to mob attacks. The figures are chilling not only for their scale but for what they imply: a state ceding the street.

Targets have often been religious minorities and dissidents. On July 4, Dr. Kushal Baran Chakraborty—an assistant professor of Sanskrit at Chittagong University and a member of the Sanatani Jagoron Jote—was harassed on his way to a promotion interview. The attackers were linked to student wings of Islamist parties, including Bangladesh Islami Chhatra Shibir and Islami Chhatra Andolan. In Rangpur, a Hindu village was ransacked over an unverified blasphemy allegation; some 50 families fled, a microcosm of why U.S. concerns about religious freedom in Bangladesh resonate today.

Culture has not been spared. Singer Rahul Anand’s home came under attack, prompting him to leave for France. At this year’s Ekushey Book Fair, assailants targeted the independent publisher, Sabyasachi Prakashani. Such attacks do more than terrify artists and editors; they signal a society sliding from imperfect democracy toward an autocracy imposed not by decree but by crowds.

None of this predetermines Bangladesh’s future. Politics can still redirect the country’s course. This is the moment for major parties—especially the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and the Jatiya Party—to force a genuine debate about the rules of the game and to press for an election that is inclusive, free, and meaningfully fair. In his August 5 address to the nation, Yunus pledged a general election in February 2026, before Ramadan. That promise is welcome, but it matters only if the process is transparent and if parties—excluding the NCP, as you note—scrutinize the interim government rather than simply trusting it. BNP leader Mirza Abbas has already accused the authorities of political discrimination.

The stakes extend beyond scheduling. Many of the July uprising’s most visible actors speak openly about erasing the “Mujib–Awami” chapter from the country’s political narrative. A new epoch may be inevitable; a purge is not. The task now falls to parties across the spectrum to oppose partiality, resist vandalism masquerading as revolution, and defend the rights of minorities as the measure of national character.

Bangladesh is not condemned to mob rule. But the country will not be rescued by the reflected prestige of a Nobel medal—or by the comforting fiction that a single man can stand surety for everyone. Only institutions, enforced impartially, can prevent the republic from becoming a graveyard of its own democracy.