When was the last time results of a university’s student union election prompted a prominent politician from another country to comment on it on a social media platform? I cannot think of any. But these are extraordinary times, when the young and the restless in colleges and universities are taking extraordinary measures to alter the course of political movements and push back against the hollowing out of democratic institutions. No politician can now afford to ignore what college and university students think.
Earlier this month, in Nepal, angry youths took to the streets following a social media ban and also to express frustration over systemic corruption, lack of jobs, and economic disparity.
People got killed, buildings were set on fire, the prime minister fled in a helicopter, and a new one was put in charge through what is now being touted as a Gen Z revolution.
On 5 August 2024, in a similar students’ protest in Bangladesh, which has been termed the July revolution, then prime minister Sheikh Hasina had to flee her country and take refuge in India. It was the students of Bangladesh who came on the streets to effect a momentous political change in the country. And this is why the results for the students’ union elections for Bangladesh’s most famous public university, Dhaka University, and Congress leader Shashi Tharoor’s tweet on the same should be taken seriously.
On 11 September, sharing a PTI story that ran with the headline, ‘Jamaat-e-Islami wins Dhaka varsity polls’, Tharoor tweeted that the news may have registered as “barely a blip” on most Indian minds, but it is a “worrying portent of things to come”.
Tharoor added that there is an increasing sense of frustration in Bangladesh with the major parties, the now banned Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and those who wish “a plague on both your houses” are increasingly turning to the Jamaat-e-Islami, “not because these voters are zealots or Islamist fundamentalists, but because the JeI are not tainted by the corruption and misgovernance associated, rightly or wrongly, with the two mainstream parties”.
“How will this play out in the Feb 2026 general elections? Will New Delhi be dealing with a Jamaat majority next door?” he wrote.
Jamaat’s resurrection
Soon after the fall of the Hasina government, I was called by the Minister Counsellor at the High Commission of a Western nation at her official residence in central Delhi to have an “informal but private chat” on the developments in Dhaka. Apart from the Minister Counsellor, the Head (Foreign and Security Policy) and the second secretary at the High Commission, I found myself in a room with the diplomatic affairs editor of an Indian national daily and a professor of international affairs of a private university in Sonipat who claimed to have a deep knowledge of Bangladesh.
The two other Indians in the room cheered the July Revolution and laid out the many flaws of ‘dictator’ Hasina and her just comeuppance. However, I pointed out my one fear for the Bangladesh of tomorrow: that Jamaat will be the new system.
I was not wrong.
Banned only a year before, when Hasina was still the prime minister of Bangladesh, Islami Chhatra Shibir—the student wing of Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami—won a decisive victory in the Dhaka University Central Students’ Union (DUCSU) elections on 10 September. It secured 14 top ranks, including the posts of Vice President and General Secretary. The victory was welcomed by the Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan.
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This is the first time in Bangladesh’s history that the Islami Chhatra Shibir has won an election in Dhaka University.
On 25 March 1971, the Pakistan Army had raided the Dhaka University campus and carried out a planned massacre of 200 students, 10 teachers, and 12 employees. Armed with heavy weapons such as tanks, automatic rifles, rocket launchers, heavy mortar, light machine gun, Pakistani soldiers had encircled Dhaka University from the east (unit 41), from the south (unit 88) and from the north (unit 26).
In the wake of the Pakistan Army action, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman had declared the independence of Bangladesh through EPR wireless at 12:30 am on 26 March 1971.
And who were the local collaborators of the Pakistani Army?
“In March 1971, using the violence as an excuse, the Pakistan Army intervened to stem the growth of nationalist sentiments in the east. It recruited local pro-Pakistan Bengalis and non-Bengalis, including members of the Islamic organisation Jamaat-e-Islami for its operations against Bengali factions,” wrote Pakistani author and oral historian Anam Zakaria.
Times change, and political parties adopt new ideologies to suit shifting currents. But the Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh has been steadfast in the vision it has for the country of tomorrow.
On 1 May 2025, when the world observed Labour Day, Ameer of Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami Shafiqur Rahman said that a sustainable and peaceful society cannot be established without the law of Allah. “Therefore, both workers and employers must come forward hand in hand to build a society based on Islamic principles,” he said at a workers’ rally in Dhaka’s Purana Paltan.
Bangladesh watcher and former Governor of Tripura and Meghalaya, Tathagata Roy, told me it would be foolish to take the Jamaat lightly. “It is regimented, extremely motivated, and highly focused to realise its dream of a country based solely on Islamic principles,” he added.
Some argue it is too early to read the national mood in Bangladesh based on the results of a varsity poll.
Nitty gritties of election
Bangladeshi writer and researcher Mohiuddin Ahmad has argued, and rightly so, that many factors and conditions come into play in a national election: the reach of organisations, funding, professionalism of campaigning, identifying popular candidates, candidates’ personal conduct and history, and inter-party relations. “If there is no sabotage from inside or outside, and if the national election is held under a truly neutral government, it is still too early to predict what the outcome will be,” he wrote.
But Bangladeshi political journalist Sahidul Hasan Khokon argues that Jamaat has used the past year since the fall of Hasina to firmly embed itself in every nook and cranny of Bangladesh’s social and political systems. “It has not been seeking power in terms of asking for advisor posts in the interim government under Yunus. Instead, the Jamaat is placing its men in all key posts of the bureaucracy, the judiciary, the police, the military, and academic institutions,” he said.
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Khokon added that while the world has woken up to the rise of the Jamaat after the Dhaka varsity polls, he has been tracking its moves to take over the reins of the country for over a year. According to Khokon, the Jamaat wants to turn back the clock and take Bangladesh closer to Pakistan and against India. In the days to come, he said, India will have to bear the brunt of Jamaat’s political rise in Bangladesh.
On 19 August 2025, residents of Lakhimari and Bishkhowa—two border villages in Assam’s Dhubri district under Golakganj police station—raised alarm after receiving threatening phone calls and audio messages allegedly from individuals linked to Jamaat-e-Islami. The calls, which were traced to a Bangladeshi number, contained explicit threats of “terrible consequences” for anyone arrested by the police. The caller also warned that homes in the border belt could be set ablaze if villagers assisted security forces in taking action against the outfit.
And the political rise of Jamaat is not a threat for India alone, but also for the largest political party in Bangladesh after Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League. With the Yunus government banning AL, it was widely believed that the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) would sweep the next round of elections in February 2026. But the BNP has been caught unawares by the Jamaat’s meteoric rise.
In a recent interview, senior BNP leader Gayeshwar Chandra Roy warned that communal forces are rising in the country after the fall of Hasina’s fascism.“Those whom you call fundamentalists, I also call them fundamentalists. They are now selling tickets to heaven. Yet they themselves don’t know whether they will go to heaven or not. Instead of democratic values, a frenzy of communalism has started, which helps create mobs,” Roy said.
Instead of organising its large cadre base and giving the party a political direction after the fall of the Hasina government, BNP top leaders have failed to rein in internal strife. They either refute charges of vandalism and extortion against the party cadre or contain such activities, Khokon told me. “As a result, the BNP has become very unpopular in Bangladesh even as the Jamaat has organised itself,” he said.
South Asia geopolitical analyst Mubashar Hasan said that the Jamaat is aiming to form a broader political alliance with other Islamist parties such as Khelafat-e-Majlish, Islami Andolon, and influential religious civil society forums such as Hefazat-e-Islam. “This broader alliance with other Islamist parties will shift Bangladesh’s mainstream politics to the right. As a result, the BNP, traditionally a centre-right party, has moved toward the centre in the post-Hasina period,” he wrote.
With the Awami League still in political wilderness, the BNP disorganised, and the Jamaat tying up with other Islamist political parties, the February polls may throw up a big surprise for both the BNP and Bangladesh. India should be wary.
Deep Halder is an author and journalist. He tweets @deepscribble. Views are personal.
(Edited by Saptak Datta)