Shashi Tharoor flags Jamaat-e-Islami win in Bangladesh varsity polls as ‘worrying portent of things to come’
Shashi Tharoor says Jamaat student wing's win in Dhaka could impact the upcoming elections in Bangladesh in 2026
Congress MP and former global diplomat Shashi Tharoor on Thursday expressed worry at the victory of religio-political party Jamaat-e-Islami's student wing in Dhaka University elections in Bangladesh.
“This may have registered as barely a blip on most Indian minds, but it is a worrying portent of things to come,” Tharoor wrote on X on Thursday.
He saw it as a sign of “increasing sense of frustration” with the major parties, the (banned) Awami League of ousted former PM Sheikh Hasina and the Bangladesh National Party (BNP) of another former PM, Khaleda Zia. He theorised that the Jamaat-e-Islami won “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”.
He cautioned India: “How will this play out in the Feb 2026 general elections? Will New Delhi be dealing with a Jamaat majority next door?”
Tharoor did not expressly mention Nepal, where protests by frustrated young citizens from ‘Gen Z’ unseated the newest coalition government. But India's neighbourhood has seen similar protests — triggered by immediate moves such as a social media ban in Nepal's case — over the past half a decade. Sri Lanka saw such frustration and protests before Bangladesh.
As for the Dhaka University elections, the BNP's Jatiyatabadi Chhatra Dal (JCD) has alleged rigging by the Jamaat-backed Islami Chhatra Shibir. And it decided to boycott the Jahangirnagar University elections now, two days after the crushing defeat at the premier university in the capital city. This sparked fears of violence, prompting the Bangladesh Army to engage troops alongside paramilitary guards on and around the the Jahangirnagar University campus on the outskirts of the capital.
After the Jamaat wing's landslide victory at Dhaka University, bagging nine of 12 posts of the student union, it got congratulatory messages from the Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan, apart from some advisers of Professor Muhammad Yunus’ interim national government.
Students linked with the Jamaat have not had a major presence at Dhaka University, which has a history of Bengali nationalism and the 1971 liberation struggle.
“The fact that the Shibir succeeded in overwhelming its nearest rival, Chhatra Dal, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP)’s students’ wing, less than six months before the February 2026 parliamentary election, is an additional worry for political parties,” analyst Pranay Sharma noted in an article.
