Bangladesh has entered a new political moment: One whose consequences may extend well beyond a single electoral cycle. The voters have elected the 13th Jatiya Sangsad, delivering a decisive mandate to the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). The BNP and its allies have crossed the 200-seat mark in the 300-member parliament, comfortably above the 151-seat majority threshold. Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI), meanwhile, is unlikely to cross 80 seats. It remains a robust showing, ensuring the party a consequential parliamentary presence. The arithmetic is unmistakable. Its implications will unfold more slowly.
This was not a routine alternation of power. It followed the banning of the Awami League, the exile of Sheikh Hasina to India, and an unsettled interim phase associated with Muhammad Yunus. One of the republic’s founding forces was absent from the ballot, but not from political memory. In Bangladesh, history is not merely commemorated; it remains politically operative.
The BNP’s return restores one of the two poles that have shaped post-1990 politics. Founded by Ziaur Rahman and later led by Khaleda Zia, the party has long articulated a nationalism attentive to sovereignty, identity and strategic distance from India. Under Tarique Rahman, that tradition now enters a different phase.
Years in exile appear to have moderated tone and recalibrated emphasis. Recent statements by Rahman suggest greater attentiveness to institutional process, economic stability and calibrated foreign engagement. Exile can deepen grievance; it can also cultivate perspective. Whether that measured register endures in office will define the character of this mandate. Democratic resilience depends not only on decisive victories, but on disciplined limits.
The election also clarifies the place of JEI. With representation less expansive than apprehensions had suggested, yet electorally substantial, JEI re-enters the parliamentary mainstream with weight. Its history remains intertwined with the events of 1971, when it opposed the liberation struggle. Yet, electoral support for Jamaat need not be read as historical revisionism. It reflects the electorate’s continuing negotiation between liberation memory, religious identity and contemporary governance concerns. Bangladesh’s political imagination has long held these strands in tension.
The constitutional referendum held alongside the parliamentary vote adds another layer to this transition. Public endorsement of the proposed Charter confers democratic legitimacy. But legitimacy at inception does not guarantee durability. Constitutions derive authority not from text alone, but from how power is actually exercised within their limits.
The generational mobilisation that preceded this election has now encountered electoral arithmetic. Student leaders reshaped political discourse, articulating impatience with patronage and entrenched hierarchy. Yet mobilisation did not translate proportionately into parliamentary representation. Moral energy unsettles. Institutions endure.
Questions of inclusion remain central. Reports of vandalised Hindu homes and attacks on temples during periods of transition have generated unease. In any constitutional democracy, minority confidence is a quiet but essential measure of institutional health. Electoral victory cannot substitute for reassurance. The promise of 1971 was sovereignty anchored in equality. That promise retains moral force.
Economic realities further frame this moment. Bangladesh’s development trajectory, anchored in garments, remittances and the transformative participation of women in the workforce, remains one of South Asia’s more compelling stories. Yet, global pressures and structural vulnerabilities demand steadiness. Governance will be judged less by rhetoric than by administrative competence. Markets respond to predictability; citizens respond to delivery.
For India, this transition calls for composure anchored in strategic realism. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar’s condolence call on Rahman following the passing of Begum Khaleda Zia signalled early diplomatic engagement. It reflected a recognition that statecraft must endure beyond partisan cycles. The India–Bangladesh relationship rests on history, but it is sustained by geography: Shared rivers, integrated supply chains, border management, energy connectivity and maritime security in the Bay of Bengal. Geography imposes continuity even when politics introduces change.
Yet, geography does not shield the relationship from
strategic contestation.
The broader regional environment is not neutral, and it would be naïve to assume otherwise. China’s expanding infrastructure footprint is strategic in design and cumulative in effect, embedding long-term leverage through ports, connectivity corridors and financial exposure. Pakistan’s interest is less structural and more tactical. The ISI’s historical networks within Bangladesh, particularly among Islamist formations, have not dissolved; they have adapted. Their utility lies in moments of political transition.
The United States and the United Kingdom have also been closely engaged since the interim phase associated with Yunus. Framed in the language of democratic transition and institutional reform, their involvement nonetheless carries strategic intent. From an Indian perspective, external calibration of political outcomes in Dhaka, however carefully couched, inevitably affects the regional equilibrium and India’s own security calculus.
Bangladesh will determine its own future. But India cannot afford strategic complacency. Stability in Dhaka is integral to India’s eastern security architecture. In a region where influence accumulates incrementally and leverage compounds quietly, vigilance is not intrusion — it is prudence.
In 1971, Bangladesh asserted its sovereignty before the world. In 2026, it confronts a quieter but no less consequential test: Whether decisive electoral victory can consolidate democratic order without narrowing plural space, and whether sovereignty can be exercised without becoming susceptible to competing strategic pulls.
The realignment is evident. Its ultimate significance will depend not on the scale of the mandate, but on the discipline with which power is exercised — and on the clarity with which Bangladesh navigates a region where equilibrium is fragile and influence is rarely benign.
The writer is dean and professor, SIS, JNU, and former member, NSAB
