Rudabeh Shahid
Bangladesh’s February 12 election delivered a result that was decisive in its headline numbers but deeply unsettling in its detail. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), led by Tarique Rahman, swept to power in a landslide, winning 209 seats. Jamaat-e-Islami, the Islamist party that was previously banned, secured 68 seats, its best performance in history. The Awami League was barred from contesting entirely. These three facts are now being read very differently by political forces in two Indian states, Assam and West Bengal, as they head into elections in April 2026. Bangladesh’s electoral result isn't just being reported in India; it's being actively manufactured into electoral ammunition, and that process tells us something important about how entangled foreign electoral outcomes and domestic communal politics have become in the borderland states.
For India, the BNP’s return to power is not simply another foreign election result but a moment that reopens older strategic anxieties. In the immediate aftermath, Indian right-wing media framed the exclusion of the Awami League as evidence of an Islamist turn in Bangladesh. Previously, Indian right-wing outlets had seized on the Awami League's exclusion as evidence of an Islamist turn in Bangladesh. Yet this narrative has been complicated by diplomatic signals suggesting a cautious thaw in bilateral relations. In December, newly elected Prime Minister Tarique Rahman received Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar, who arrived bearing a personal letter from Prime Minister Narendra Modi offering condolences for the passing of Tarique's mother, Begum Khaleda Zia.
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