Opinion The battle for Bangladesh: Can Tarique Rahman’s BNP defeat radical ideology?
The BNP is a party of ordinary troubles. It is still plagued by racketeering cadres at the grassroots, political violence, infighting, and a hierarchy colored by provincial elites and nepotism. Tarique Rahman seems to have matured as a leader during his exile in the United Kingdom
Supporters of Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) cheer during an election rally of their party Chairperson Tarique Rahman in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Sunday, Feb. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Mahmud Hossain Opu)
When asked if his party would take up the offer for a unity government with the Jamaat-e-Islami, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) supremo Tarique Rahman replied, “How can I form a government with my political opponents, and then who would be in the opposition?” This diverging vision on the question of political unity tells us more about the respective parties than anything else. “I hope to have them as a good opposition,” Rahman continued, referring to the Jamaat. The Jamaat’s offer of unity betrayed its fundamental discomfort with what it sees as the inconvenience of electoral politics. On the other hand, Rahman and the BNP take the democratic form seriously. Even in the case of the Awami League, Rahman has reiterated that the decision to reject the League must be left to the ballot.
Elections are around the corner in Bangladesh. Looking at the election manifestos of the two main competitors, one would be hard-pressed to find significant differences. As with election manifestos everywhere nowadays, both promise development and the resolution of the main problems of everyone, from brick-kiln workers to bankers. Even on the touchy issue of relations with India, both parties make unremarkable promises. The unserious nature of the manifesto discourse is exemplified by the Jamaat’s promise of adequate representation to minorities and women — in reality, the party has fielded one Hindu candidate and no women at all. But, as everyone in Bangladesh apparently knows by now, the parties are not only contesting on their merits; rather, the fight is as much about what kind of trouble the other poses.
The division of Bangladesh into Old and New is precisely about this question of trouble: The advocates of New Politics — primarily the student revolutionaries and the extremists — promise a world without the troubles of Old politics, that is, a Bangladesh free of corruption, extortion, “fascism”, and nepotism. The Jamaat ameer (supremo) has gone to the extent of promising that its elected representatives would forego Member of Parliament privileges and live an ordinary life. “If necessary, we will ride rickshaws,” he said. The message is that the party is bent on eradicating the immorality endemic in politics.
It is not that these promises are unrealistic. On the contrary, the Jamaat will actually follow through on them, and that is precisely the problem. By acting to create a utopia devoid of troubles, the Jamaat, in all probability, will slowly drag Bangladesh into a world of dystopian troubles. Piety may or may not be a value in civic life, but the track records of those who are pious about their ideologies are just as bad as those of crass dictators. This is the lesson of the twentieth century; from Russia to Germany to Iran, some of the biggest political disasters were engineered by those who piously followed their dogma. What’s more, such movements are known to promise a better result each time without ever correcting their past mistakes, and the Jamaat is no different. It is an unrepentant party of piety that disavows the very possibility that it can cause evil.
In contrast, the BNP is a party of ordinary troubles. It is still plagued by racketeering cadres at the grassroots, political violence, infighting, and a hierarchy colored by provincial elites and nepotism. Tarique Rahman seems to have matured as a leader during his exile in the United Kingdom, and presents himself as an altogether different personality compared to the image of corruption he had acquired during the previous BNP-led government. But it is still unclear whether he can steer the party away from its old habits, or whether his own old habits have died away. These troubles squarely put the BNP on the side of Old Bangladesh, with its familiar troubles.
The BNP, like democratic forces elsewhere in the present juncture, might look like a status quoist party. This, though, is an oft-repeated false binary between parties of establishment and parties of radical change. The real divide is now between radicalised conservatives who appear as disruptors and grounded moderates who are against the production of a risk society.
Kuriakose Mathew teaches politics and international relations at the School of Liberal Arts and Management Studies, P P Savani University, Surat. His research focuses on democratic forces in transitional polities. Arjun Ramachandran is a research scholar at the Department of Communication, University of Hyderabad
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