What the BJP Victory Means for Bangladesh

There is no coincidence in politics, as my friend Jyoti Rahman often likes to say, political outcomes are overdetermined. Meaning that they are results of multiple factors, some independent, where any single or subset of factors could have produced the outcome. 

That said, let’s consider this very simplistic and broad level generalization of West Bengal politics.

Ever since BJP came into national power in 2014, it has been trying very hard to win state power in West Bengal. Despite playing the Muslim threat card, economic mismanagement card, governance failure card and other cards in political playbook, West Bengal remained out of reach.

Then in 2024 Sheikh Hasina’s government in Bangladesh fell and a golden opportunity came for hyping the threat of Muslim encroachment and Hindu repression.

We don’t need to revisit the antics of politicians like Shuvendu Adhikari or TV anchors like Mayukh Ghosh. While we in Bangladesh may have found them amusing and annoying, they were actually hitting home runs among the intended audience.

Then in the April 2026 Election BJP at last won power in West Bengal in such a great landslide that it far exceeded even the BJP-associated polls.

There has been lots of reports and analyses since the results came out on how the Bangladesh factor influences this BJP tide, not as the determinative factors but as one of the important ones.

It doesn’t take galaxy brain to make some connections between fall of fortune of Awami League in Bangladesh and rise of BJP in West Bengal. There is a reverse connection too. Since BJP’s seemingly interminable stint at national power began in 2014, there have been steady flow of news, videos and anecdotes of Muslim persecution in India.

Due to the lack of elections in Bangladesh, we couldn’t gauge the change in the political fallout of that in Bangladesh. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Bangladesh on the 50th anniversary of 1971 War of Independence caused lots of violence and some deaths in Bangladesh. All these were harbingers of something that we couldn’t exactly predict.

After the July Uprising, Bangladeshi antipathy towards India's heavy-handed approach to both democracy in Bangladesh and Muslims in India, came out in the open. It’s fair to say that Hasina’s closeness to India was one of the factors that turned a large section of the people and much of the elites against her.

So, what does this seemingly bidirectional cause and effect tell us about the direction of politics in Bangladesh for the next few years? We can only speculate based on the past few years.

It occurs to me that the political party in Bangladesh that has suffered the largest setback with the BJP victory in West Bengal is the Awami League. Undoubtedly, anti-Bangladesh and anti-Muslim rhetoric and actions will intensify in the coming years from Kolkata.

It is just political expediency. Mr. Shuvendu Adhikari has already loudly proclaimed that Sheikh Hasina is the only legitimate ruler of Bangladesh and soon she will return to Dhaka to take her rightful place.

Now, what is the likelihood that the party whose chief is sheltering in New Delhi and whose top leaders are sheltering in Kolkata will gain more purchase among the general people in Bangladesh from that? Is being perceived as a stooge of a semi-hostile, powerful neighbour ever politically advantageous?

So, I don’t see possibility of increase of popularity and influence of Sheikh Hasina and Awami League among the general people and the elites of Bangladesh, from the nadir since July 2024.

On the contrary, anti-Muslim and anti-Bangladesh rhetorics and actions in West Bengal will only solidify the large anti-Awami majority

Moreover, the intellectual core of Awami League will be further decimated.  An already weakened Bengali Nationalism is going to be almost moribund. At the core of Bengali Nationalism is a common social and cultural heritage of the Bengali speaking people in both sides of the border.

With the Kolkata bhodrolok and cultural elite embracing religious chauvinism as the guiding political ideology, one leg of Bengali Nationalism should be totally crippled for the next few years.

I think both an inclusive Bangladeshi nationalism and right-wing nationalism will gain at the expense of the popular and political base of the Awami League.

A great realignment of the political distribution in Bangladesh, already evident since August 5 and in the 2026 Election, will further solidify.

However, this doesn’t mean that both the BJP national government and the BJP West Bengal government will be similarly antagonistic to Bangladesh in rhetoric and action.

National and state policies have wide divergence. Even during Mamata Banerjees tenure we have seen that while the central government wanted more friendly policies like water-sharing treaties, the state government vehemently undermined the efforts because of local political demand.

In this increasingly multi-polar world where China’s relative power is ascending by leaps and bounds, the Indian central government should want to have a firm and friendly presence in Dhaka.

Shafiqur Rahman is a Political Economist and Executive Director of Bangladesh Research Analysis & Information Network (BRAIN).