The Death that Fell on History
There are some deaths which are wounds to the heart, and some which befall the nation at large with the weight of the unwritten chapter in its history. The death of Sharif Osman Hadi belongs to the latter category. Death arrived as loss of life, but it also meant an end to the promise of Bangladesh, to that unfulfilled promise of '71 and to that awakened conscience of July 36.
However, this is no ordinary passing. It is a silencing of a moral voice in a point in time when the democracy of the Bangladesh imagination is finding it very hard to breathe with this renewed force of authoritarianism. It is a warning: “The old is dying, and the New cannot be born; there is a great variety of morbid symptoms in this interregnum,” wrote Antonio Gramsci in his Prison Notebooks. Sharif Osman Hadi was in an interregnum, an era of a love for freedom but an oppression which has learned to speak with subtle and disciplined tongues.
Being so weak that he was forced to lie bedridden in a hospital in Singapore, his moral fibre was irrevocably rooted in the streets of Bengal, among the dispossessed, the watched, and the silenced. The death of Choudhury, therefore, represents not only a personal or familial tragedy; it also represents an ideological rupture when, more than ever, a clear moral Bangladesh, and by extension, a moral South Asia, is required.

Born of July 36, anchored in 1971
Sharif Osman Hadi was born on July 36, although he was obviously rooted in 1971. July 36 is not a turning point in the Liberation War in the stories of Sharif Osman Hadi. July 36 is the moral sequel to the Liberation War. The revolt was not an isolated event. There was a collective feeling that something sacred was being undermined—not sovereignty per se, but sovereignty in the sense of what it meant.
By 1971, the freedom gained after spilling blood had been diminished, according to Hadi, to being watered down by silence, familiarity, and acceptability. The Liberation War did not mark an official closure that Hadi understood from the Liberation War. It marked an intended unfinished agenda. This independence gained after spilling blood cannot be abandoned on the grounds of observance.
Thus, the importance of 36 on July is where a new generation realized that there was an instinctual recognition that history was being emptied as it was being commemorated.

An Organic Intellectual of a Restless Time
In this historical moment of such importance, what Hadi becomes is what Gramsci refers to as an intellectual of the organic type—not an intellectual exported by society but an intellectual born of the struggle, proclaiming the truths that have ways of becoming normalized and invisible by power. He resisted the thought of liberation based in religion and of nationalism lacking moral substance.
His resistance was not nostalgic or regressive in nature. His resistance was invariably modern in thought and attuned to the understanding that liberty, once achieved, had to be vigorously protected from dissolution both from the inside and outside.

Fascismo Culturale y la Maquinaria del Consentimiento
Hadi knew a thing or two about the fascistic methods prevalent in South Asia, a thing or two that the regimes of South Asia have developed into a fine art over the years—fascist regimes do not often come clad in the uniforms of bayoneted soldiers but in the garments of rewriting history, compressing identity, dissent policing, and the glorification of loyalty as an act of morality.
Gramsci called this cultural hegemony. It may be said that cultural hegemony is a kind of domination that does not come from force but from consent, from the way in which society learns to accept things as “common sense” (Gramsci, Prison Notebooks). Hadi was well aware that, besides the authoritarian forces in, and the threats that Bangladesh faced, there was another, much more insidious, challenge to the sovereignty of Bangladesh, namely the cultural hegemony of the more powerful neighboring state.
Such a form of repression does not do away with borders but devalues them. The flags remain, and the elections are held, but the right to narrate oneself, to speak on an equal footing, instead of on a subservient plane, is being eroded.

Moral Nationalism and the Defense of Sovereignty
Hadi passionately argued against the relativism of the Liberation War of 1971, against the diminution of the moral certainty of this past, against the subordination of this history to regionalist discourses that valued power over sacrifice. Hadi rejected readings of history that subordinated Bangladesh to secondary and derivative roles, as junior partners, buffer states, or politics defined by loyalty rather than liberty. For Hadi, sovereignty entailed not merely territory but epistemology—the power of demarcation over one's past, the power of definition over one's future.
However, this was not an aggressive or exclusionary nationalism. This was, instead, the case with moral nationalism—a positional ethics that was Defensive, grounded in dignity, not domination. According to Frantz Fanon, the second conquest on the post-colonial society was not undertaken by the colonialists but by the structure of dependency which was established on the basis of the previous conquest. However, the second conquest was rejected by Hadi.
Ashis Nandy made the same point when he said that “the cultural fascism that marks South Asia prefers to cloak itself as a civilizational essence, commanding compliance as a condition of its dispensation, in which hierarchy becomes harmony.” Hadi would not conform to this charade.

South Asian Parallels – Sri Lanka and Nepal
The situation in Bangladesh regarding the continuum from 1971 to July 36 is not an exception in this regard. A critical analysis of the scenario in Sri Lanka following the Aragalaya uprising will demonstrate how the uprisings of the people might mark the beginning of the end of regimes without altering the hegemony structures in place but only a situation similar to the passive revolution in the Prison Notebooks of Gramsci. The regimes have changed hands, and slogans have triumphed, but no alteration took place in the structures of dependence in the areas of economy, culture, and strategy; otherwise, it was a case of passive revolution.
Nepal has yet another lesson that can be drawn from its circumstances. The Nepalese government has removed the monarchy by drafting a republican constitution, yet the sovereignty of the country remains threatened by the struggle among the regions for preeminence. The imperfections in the political system have made the intervention of the international community a natural occurrence in the life of the Nepalese and not the exception. The sovereignty in the formal national framework has been lost over time in the historical and action aspects on the global platform, where Hadi places Bangladesh.

After the Uprising: Silence as Strategy
History has shown that the most dangerous time for a revolution is not when it is happening, but when it is not happening. As things return to normal, it does not simply unravel, it renews. Observation replaces spectacle. Fear is institutionalized.
“Authoritarian regimes exist not only by silencing the truth, but by making the telling of the truth unbearable.” As a generation that lived the revolution but had to face the soft violence of the counter-revolution, Sharif Osman Hadi was part of a whole generation. As of July 36, he has now had to live under observation and segregation. As a person, he could have toned down the discourse of the resistance. For that, he put himself in danger, not because he was foolish, but because he was faithful.

Democracy as Daily Dignity
For Hadi, democracy has never been about a mantra or a polling station. It has been about living with dignity every day: to speak out without fear, to disagree without disappearing, and to vote without intimidation. This is what the Brazilian educator Paolo Freire referred to in his construct of the practice of freedom, not a gift.
Hadi is called not to occupy but because the idea of citizenship is being contested.

The Summons to the Living
His courage was not performative. It was profound, quiet, and expensive—a courage which brings others out for the first time. This quality of courage proves to be at risk in the most volatile period: after the revolution, when the movements are absorbed.
Thus, Sharif Osman Hadi’s death is no conclusion but a challenge – to the youth of Bangladesh and to the young democrats of South Asia as well. Do not turn him into a slogan. Do not enshrine him in your memory. Honor his memory by refusing to keep the silence of normalization and by holding your head high even when it is easier to keep your head low in submission.
From Dhaka to Delhi, and Colombo to Kathmandu to Islamabad, a lesson emerges: Revolutions are crushed not only by force of arms. "Revolutions perish," as Thomas Paine told a different age, “When bravery is exhausted and memory fades."
If there is one thing we have learned from Sharif Osman Hadi, it is this: courage does not die with the courageous. It waits, patiently, dangerously, to be regained.