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Shashi Tharoor warns Jamaat-e-Islami’s student wing’s Dhaka University win signals major change for Bangladesh politics.
Congress MP Shashi Tharoor (Image Credit: PTI)
Congress MP Shashi Tharoor raised alarm over the sweeping victory of Jamaat-e-Islami’s student wing at Dhaka University, describing it as a “worrying portent” for Bangladesh’s political trajectory and for India’s relations with its eastern neighbour.
On X (formerly Twitter), Shashi Tharoor wrote, “This may have registered as barely a blip on most Indian minds, but it is a worrying portent of things to come.”
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Pointing to the growing disenchantment among Bangladeshis with both mainstream parties- the now-banned Awami League and the Bangladesh National Party (BNP)- Shashi Tharoor observed, “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.”
The Congress leader cautioned that the development could have far-reaching implications, concluding his post with a pointed question, “How will this play out in the February 2026 general elections? Will New Delhi be dealing with a Jamaat majority next door?”
Parliamentary elections in Bangladesh are scheduled for February 2026.
Jamaat-e-Islami’s Poll Victory Breaks 54-Year Drought
In a watershed moment, Islami Chhatra Shibir (ICS), the student front of Jamaat-e-Islami, captured nine of the 12 key posts in the Dhaka University Central Students Union (DUCSU) elections held this week- the first Islamist victory in student union polls since Bangladesh’s independence in 1971.
Sadik Qayem was elected Vice-President with 1,442 votes, while SM Farhad secured the General Secretary’s post with 10,794 votes. The BNP-backed Jatiyatabadi Chhatra Dal (JCD), historically a dominant force on campus, rejected the results, alleging “planned manipulation” and terming the outcome a farce.
The Students Against Discrimination (SAD)- once at the vanguard of last year’s “July Uprising” that toppled Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League government- failed to make a mark amid deep internal divisions.
Meanwhile, Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus’s interim government has already banned the Awami League’s student wing, the Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL), branding it a “terrorist organisation.”
September 11, 2025, 17:17 IST
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