Sholoshohor railway station is still there. It is still crowded, noisy and not particularly beautiful. People wait for trains, buy tea from shops, meet friends and continue their day. But I can no longer see Sholoshohor as simply a railway station. When I look at it, I see where we gathered, where we ran, where we hid and where we refused to leave. As a student activist during Bangladesh's quota reform movement, I witnessed how the meaning of a very ordinary place could change within hours. I also experienced how something as simple as a WhatsApp group could become another kind of fortress, a digital place of information, trust and resilience.
To understand why this place became so important to us it is necessary to go back to 1971. Bangladesh gained independence after the liberation war and freedom fighters became an important part of our national identity. Many Bangladeshi families have relatives who participated in the war. We grew up respecting their sacrifice. After independence, Bangladesh introduced a public service quota system in 1972. Thirty percent of government positions were reserved for freedom fighters, alongside quotas for war-affected women and people from different districts. The system changed several times over the following decades and the freedom fighters’ quota was eventually extended to children and grandchildren. By 2018, 56% percent of the relevant govt. job were rese
rved under different quotas, while 44 percent were based on merit. among 56% reserved quota, 30% were reserved for freedom fighters and for their grandchildren.
For students like us the frustration was never simply about removing every quota or disrespecting freedom fighters. We wanted reform. In fact, students in the 2018 movement had demanded that the quota system be reduced and reformed rather than completely abolished. Government jobs are highly valued in Bangladesh. My friend and I were approaching the stage of our lives when we were thinking seriously about employment and our futures. We discussed these issues constantly. The question was simple. After studying and competing for years, would we have a fair opportunity.
I was a first year student at the university of Chittagong during 2018 quota reform movement. I participated in those protests. It was one of my first experiences of student activism. I remember the political pressure surrounding the movement and the feeling that students’ demands were losing control of their own direction. Afterward, with the support of one of my professors, we founded a student organization around a simple idea. This land is yours. No matter what background you come from, you have the right to ask questions, criticize and think about your position in your own country. Six years passed I was now in my final year. Then the quota issue returned.
In June 2024n a high court ruling effectively brought back the freedom fighter descendant quota that had been removed for certain government jobs after the 2018 protest. Students’ demonstration spread across universities and violence escalated. What began as a quota reform movement developed into a much larger national crisis. Once again we came to Sholoshohor. Sholoshohor was never officially part of our university campus. The main campus is far from the center of Chittagong, and many of us used the train to travel between the city and the university. Because it was convenient and centrally located. Sholoshohor gradually became our unofficial gathering place. Nobody declared it a student space. We made it one.
That is why Tim Cresswell's idea of place makes so much sense to me. A place is not meaningful simply because of its physical location. People give places meaning through their activities, memories , experiences, and relations. Sholoshohor was geographically just a railway station. But our everyday student life had already transformed it into something more. In July 2024 meaning changed. Outside reporting shows just how central Sholoshohor had become to the Chittagong protests. In July 6, several hundred several hundred university of chittagong students began a protest march from sholoshohor railway station area. Later organizer called on students from institutions across Chittagong to gather there for demonstration. I remember police confrontation, fear, and remember friends being heavily injured which lead some of them to instant death. Every corner of the station seemed to change purpose. Shops that normally sold tea or food became our shelters. Railway tracks were no longer simply railway tracks. They became ground that we tried to told. We believed that if sholoshohor fell our movement in Chittagong would lose one of its most important gathering places.
None of us owned the station. But all of us we're ready to give our life to defend it. This is where valentines discussion of home and belonging become very meaningful to me. Belonging doesn't depend only on legal ownership. Realtionships, memories, identity and emotional attachment can make people feel deeply connected to a place. Sholoshohor was obviously not our home. but during those days it developed a powerful sense of collective belonging. The discussion of whiten, Gomez and Perez also helped me to understand why those memories remain so strongly to the station. Their research shows that how experience of violence and displacement can be remembered through our bodies, emotions and places. Their Colombian context is very different from mine in Bangladesh. But the concept of embodied geography connects strongly with my experience. I do not remember the movement only through dates. I remember where I stood. I remember where we ran, I remember which shops became shelter. My body remembers the geography of sholoshohor.
At the same time another ordinary space was changing. It is whats app. Before the movement our whats app groups were mainly for university information, jokes, conversations and everyday communication. During the movement they became spaces where we checked whether friends were safe, shared information, warned each other about danger and discussed where people were gathering. It made me ask question which I never asked or though before. Does a place have to be physical?
If places are produced through relationships, experineces, practice, trust and shared meaning then a whats app group can also become a kind of place. Sholoshohor became our physical place of resistance ], while whats app became our digital place of resilience.
When we returned to sholoshohor in 2024, we were not arriving without history. We carried the national memory of 1971 our unfinished memories of 2018, years of frustration, friendship and uncertainty about our own futures. All of that came with us into the station. Today sholoshohor is still there. Trains still arrive. People still buy tea. Student still cross the railway tracks. physically nothing changed. But for me everything has changed.
References
Cresswell, T. (2004). Place: A Short Introduction. Blackwell Publishing.
Valentine, G. (2001). Social Geographies: Space and Society. Pearson Education.
Whitson, R., Gómez, N. R., & Pérez Quintero, C. (2024). "'We Live to Write, from our Life, the Best of Stories': Exploring Colombian Women's Embodied Narratives of Displacement through Body Mapping." Cultural Geographies.
The Daily Star. (2024, July 6). "Anti-Quota protests: CU students hold road march, sit-in programmes." The Daily Star
The Daily Star. (2024, July 10). "History of the quota system in Bangladesh." The Daily Star
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. (2024). Preliminary Analysis of Recent Protests and Unrest in Bangladesh.
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