Analysis: Bangladesh’s BNP seeks Hasina’s liberal mantle before elections

The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), the country’s largest governmental party, is decisively breaking its decades-long confederation with the Jamaat-e-Islami, the South Asian nation’s biggest Islamist group, repositioning itself alternatively arsenic a liberal, antiauthoritarian unit earlier nationalist elections.

The displacement comes 16 months aft the toppling of erstwhile Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, pursuing a wide uprising against her decade-and-a-half-long regularisation marked by wide quality rights excesses, including extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances, arrests of critics and absorption leaders, and a brutal crackdown connected protesters successful August 2024.

Hasina’s Awami League party, historically the BNP’s main rival, had implicit the decades proclaimed the mantle of a secular, wide pillar successful Bangladeshi politics, though critics disputed that assertion.

By contrast, the BNP and Jamaat were pulled unneurotic by their shared absorption to the Awami League. But their ideological differences were ne'er hidden: The BNP subscribed to a nationalist worldview, portion the Islamic individuality of astir Bangladeshis is the raison d’etre of the Jamaat.

Now, those differences person erupted into a full-fledged divided betwixt the parties that had ruled unneurotic successful the past non-Hasina authorities elected successful Bangladesh, betwixt 2001 and 2006.

Addressing enactment supporters this week, BNP Acting Chairman Tarique Rehman invoked the blood-soaked representation of Bangladesh’s 1971 Liberation War against Pakistan, saying “people saw” what happened then. He did not sanction the Jamaat, but the notation was intelligibly understood crossed Bangladesh: The Jamaat had opposed Bangladesh’s independency from Pakistan.

He besides accused the Jamaat of misusing religion to question votes.

In akin comments past month, BNP Secretary-General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir cautioned against dividing the state “in the sanction of religion” and stressed that the BNP’s authorities ought to remainder connected nationalist unity, antiauthoritarian principles, and the foundational tone of 1971.

So what’s down this shift?

The BNP’s caller communicative suggests that it wants to due the motivation vocabulary of secular nationalism that the Awami League agelong monopolised done its lopsided humanities revisionism of the existent tone of the liberation war. Awami League laminitis Sheikh Mujibur Rehman led the liberation struggle, but was besides liable for an autarkic Bnagladesh’s aboriginal descent into authoritarianism, erstwhile helium banned each different governmental parties to effort to acceptable up a one-party strategy successful 1975.

Hasina carried guardant that bequest erstwhile she was successful powerfulness betwixt 2009 and 2024, banning the Jamaat and arresting thousands of BNP leaders and workers – including its longtime main and erstwhile Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia, who is presently successful infirmary successful what her enactment and household person described arsenic a “very captious condition”. The Hasina government’s ruthless crackdown connected the governmental absorption and different critics turned the 2014, 2018 and 2024 elections into a sham, with the Awami League winning landslides against a scenery of repression.

To inhabit the secular nationalist void near by the Awami League – which itself has present been banned, portion Hasina is successful exile successful India – the BNP needs to sever ties with an Islamist enactment whose humanities baggage could hinder its effort to entreaty to an assemblage seeking pluralistic politics.

To beryllium sure, the BNP-Jamaat divided did not look overnight. For months, some parties person drifted isolated implicit halfway questions: Whether broader reforms indispensable precede elections, however to restructure the Constitution, and what governmental exemplary should specify the post-Hasina era.

The Jamaat pushed for sweeping structural changes earlier polls; the BNP insisted connected aboriginal elections and minimal law revisions. Their disagreements dilatory hardened into unfastened rifts.

But this interruption is not simply astir strategical disagreements. It reflects an ideological recalibration driven by the caller governmental environment.

The centre-left, liberal-secular abstraction that the Awami League erstwhile claimed is present vacant.

The BNP sees an accidental to inhabit it, earlier nationalist elections scheduled for February.

BNP’s calculation is anchored successful the shifting temper of the electorate. The youth-led uprising of 2024, the illness of one-party authoritarianism, and the civic awakening of municipality middle-class voters person each produced a renewed request for antiauthoritarian governance and governmental moderation.

Jamaat’s religion-driven leanings, the BNP believes, could clash with that sentiment. By rebranding itself, the BNP believes it tin resonate with voters who are disillusioned with some the Awami League’s authoritarianism and the Jamaat’s spiritual conservatism.

The reorientation besides aims to reclaim the motivation precocious crushed of 1971. For decades, the Awami League weaponised the Jamaat’s wartime collaboration with Pakistan to delegitimise the BNP by association. Now the BNP is flipping that narrative.

By denouncing the Jamaat’s relation successful 1971, the enactment is challenging the ideological monopoly the Awami League exercised for fractional a period – trying to entreaty to younger citizens who presumption 1971 done narratives of ideology and quality rights alternatively than loyalty to immoderate 1 party.

This attempted translation is not without risks. The BNP indispensable flooded scepticism astir whether this rebranding is genuine oregon opportunistic. Elements wrong the BNP’s ain ranks whitethorn defy the displacement towards a much wide identity.

Furthermore, the post-Hasina governmental abstraction is crowded: Youth-driven groups similar the National Citizen Party (NCP) and civilian nine networks are besides vying for the liberal-centrist vote.  Vote fragmentation could dilute the BNP’s gains unless it manages to unify disparate pro-democracy constituencies.

Yet the strategical logic down BNP’s recalibration appears compelling for now.

The enactment is nary longer positioning itself arsenic a centre-right unit competing with the Awami League; it is attempting to alteration into a wide antiauthoritarian level that absorbs erstwhile Awami League voters, municipality liberals, number communities, and politically awakened youth, each searching for a caller governmental home.

Whether this displacement succeeds volition beryllium connected however consistently the BNP maintains this caller ideological enactment and whether the nationalist believes that the party’s rupture with Jamaat is simply a principled determination alternatively than electoral choreography.

But what is wide already is that the BNP of 2025 is not the BNP of the past decade. Its leaders are speaking a caller connection – rooted successful inclusiveness, anti-sectarianism, and antiauthoritarian reform.

And they are speaking it loudly.

In breaking with Jamaat and stepping into the ideological crushed Awami League erstwhile owned, the BNP is reshaping the governmental scenery of Bangladesh. If the translation holds, it whitethorn go the astir consequential realignment successful the country’s authorities since the aboriginal 1990s – an ideological inversion successful which the erstwhile centre-right enactment becomes the superior custodian of wide antiauthoritarian authorities successful a post-Hasina Bangladesh.