A Shadow on India’s Eastern frontier

The BNP’s win in Bangladesh masks the deeper peril of radical Islamist consolidation along India’s border.

At first glance, the much-awaited Bangladesh elections appeared to have delivered clarity as the Bangladesh National Party (BNP) swept to power with a commanding majority, decisively outpacing the radical Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami. For many, this appeared reassuring as a mainstream nationalist force had prevailed over a hardline religious party. Yet, the results saw a more troubling development whose implications stretch beyond Bangladesh’s borders and directly into India’s strategic heartland.

Across the western and north-western belt of Bangladesh, in districts that stare directly into India, the Jamaat has managed to establish a continuous electoral footprint by winning in areas that brush the country’s eastern frontier. From Satkhira and Khulna facing South and North 24 Parganas, through Kushtia and Rajshahi abutting Nadia and Murshidabad, up to Rangpur and Gaibandha overlooking Assam and the Siliguri corridor, Islamist mobilisation has acquired democratic legitimacy.

Large swathes of West Bengal including districts like Malda, Murshidabad, Nadia, North 24 Parganas, Alipurduar share deep social, linguistic and familial ties with precisely those Bangladeshi districts where Jamaat has gained in the recent polls.

Inseparable Relationship

Five years ago, during West Bengal’s 2021 assembly elections, the BJP itself registered unexpected gains across many of these same border constituencies. The border belt, in other words, has been politically combustible on both sides. Jamaat’s rise bow adds an ideological accelerant.

Jamaat’s relationship with Bangladesh is inseparable from the country’s violent birth. In 1971 the party opposed independence and aligned with Pakistan’s military rulers. Its cadres were accused of collaborating in atrocities against intellectuals, minorities and pro-liberation activists. This is a foundational legacy. When Bangladesh remembers the genocide, Pakistan and Jamaat are recalled together, as perpetrators of crimes against humanity. No subsequent rebranding has erased that association.

That history also binds Jamaat ideologically to Pakistan in ways that should unsettle India. The party’s worldview which is hostile to secular nationalism, deeply inimical to India, and animated by transnational Islamist solidarity, has long placed it at odds with Indian security interests. Its earlier participation in government coalitions coincided with periods when anti-India militant groups found sanctuary in Bangladesh, and when cross-border networks flourished with minimal restraint.

Jamaat’s present resurgence follows a familiar arc. After being marginalised for years (its registration was cancelled in 2013 and its leaders prosecuted through war-crimes tribunals), it rebuilt itself patiently. The lifting of its ban by an interim government in August 2024 gave it formal breathing space. Over the following year, it consolidated organisational control in rural strongholds, expanded welfare networks and mobilised student wings.

Living Force

By the time of the recently concluded election, it was no longer a relic of Bangladesh’s past but a living force embedded across the country’s western rim.

This revival carries echoes of a much older transnational story. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 globalised Islamist politics in South Asia. Pakistan became the nerve centre of the anti-Soviet jihad, supported by Saudi money and Western strategic indulgence. Islamist organisations including the Jamaat included had built durable networks spanning charities, mosques, student groups and diaspora communities. Those ecosystems did not dissolve with the Cold War’s end. They have adapted, professionalised and dispersed, reaching as far as London and the Gulf.

Legal clashes in diaspora countries, scrutiny of charities and contested narratives of justice reveal an unresolved tension between Bangladesh’s historical reckoning and global legal norms.

The Jamaat is not a purely domestic actor. Its ideological and organisational networks cross borders with ease.

What sharpens India’s anxiety is the political context at home. West Bengal’s Trinamool Congress government under Mamata Banerjee has long been indulging in minority appeasement and avoiding hard questions of border management, illegal migration and voter integrity.

Unlike Assam or Tripura, Bengal’s political leadership has shown little appetite for muscular border enforcement or for confronting illegal migration head-on. A radicalised hinterland across the border would only serve to exacerbate these tensions.

Jamaat’s gains in the border areas naturally acquires additional significance with elections approaching in Assam and West Bengal. Jamaat’s advances in constituencies facing Malda, Murshidabad, North 24 Parganas and Cooch Behar, give organised Islamist forces a deeper social base precisely where India’s border management is weakest.

Heightened Anxieties

Its presence near the Indian border raises the risk of renewed logistical support for extremist groups, ideological radicalisation in border madrassas and the reactivation of old smuggling routes used for arms, fake currency and trafficking people.

In these border districts of West Bengal where economic stagnation, youth unemployment and identity politics already fester, Jamaat’s success will only embolden local hardliners. Radicalisation today is less about formal training camps than about narratives of grievance and victimhood that travel fast in an age of cheap smartphones and encrypted messaging.

New Delhi’s predicament is further compounded by domestic political constraints. Any attempt by the central government to tighten border controls or push for stricter citizenship enforcement in West Bengal risks being portrayed as communal targeting. The Mamata Banerjee government, with its predilection to appease its minority vote bank, has never cooperated with the Centre in the best of times. This Centre–State discord is a glaring structural weakness which lethal actors like Jamaat are poised to exploit.

The other question is just how the BNP will reset Bangladesh’s ties with India? The BNP’s previous stints in power were marked by ambivalence towards Indian security concerns. In the early 2000s, militant outfits hostile to India found sanctuary in Bangladesh; arms consignments meant for insurgents in India’s northeast moved with alarming ease. It took sustained diplomatic pressure and a decisive change of government in Dhaka to reverse that permissiveness

The BNP possibly understands the economic and strategic value of stable relations with its largest neighbour. Yet, street realities may limit its room for manoeuvre. Jamaat does not need cabinet seats to exert influence. Its strength lies in disciplined organisation, ideological clarity and the ability to mobilise pressure from below.

There is also a broader geopolitical dimension. India’s eastern strategy rests on three pillars: stabilising the northeast, integrating it economically with Southeast Asia, and countering China’s influence in the Bay of Bengal. Bangladesh is central to all three. A Dhaka less inclined to align with Indian interests and more susceptible to Islamist pressure complicates each objective. China, ever alert to opportunities, would find it easier to present itself as an alternative partner unconcerned with domestic ideological currents.

Jamaat’s return to electoral centrality thus marks a new and potentially volatile chapter for the entire region. From Satkhira to Rangpur, Islamist mobilisation has gained legitimacy precisely where India’s borders are most porous and politics most fragile.

For New Delhi, the lesson is stark. Border management, intelligence coordination and political clarity in eastern India are no longer administrative matters or partisan disputes. The frontier is stirring again. Ignoring the shadow now would mean confronting something far darker later.