BNP's success in navigating this complex political landscape will depend on its ability to exhibit political maturity, which involves distancing itself from reactionary and punitive politics while positioning itself as a defender of democratic principles and institutional integrity.
It has been over six months since Bangladesh experienced a radical political transformation, symbolised by the ouster of the then increasingly autocratic regime of long-serving Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on August 5, 2024. While the student-led ‘anti-quota’ agitation of June 2024 became a primary catalyst for this upheaval, the broader recalibration of political dynamics was essentially shaped by the mass mobilisation capacity of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), along with its Islamist counterpart, Jamaat-e-Islami. Their popular mobilisation played a crucial role in helping transform an initially circumscribed anti-reservation protests into a broader anti-regime movement by foregrounding entrenched economic and political grievances, ultimately precipitating the downfall of the Hasina regime.
For BNP, having endured a protracted phase of political marginalisation under the Awami League’s authoritarian political upmanship, the student unrest emerged as an opportune channel for reviving its political relevance after having failed in its attempts to build similar movements earlier. The party envisioned this mass mobilisation as a means to recalibrate the country’s political equilibrium in its favour, particularly in anticipation of electoral processes post-regime transition.
However, the unfolding political landscape has placed BNP in an increasingly precarious position, as it now finds itself constrained by the manoeuvres of the Anti-Discrimination Students’ Movement (ADSM), the umbrella group representing students, which enjoys a predominant influence in the Interim Government led by Nobel Laureate Professor Mohammed Yunus, established to steer the country ‘democratic return’ after Hasina’s removal.
While, at a superficial level, a convergence of interests between the student movement and BNP initially appeared discernible, there is an emergent ideological and strategic schism between the two stakeholders over how the contours of the country’s body-politic ought to shape up. In a context where the students are trying to reframe the political architecture of the country by rewriting its guiding framework, a central question that increasingly assumes importance is whether BNP will be able to reclaim its political foothold.
There are a host of issues that demonstrate growing disagreements between the BNP and the leadership of the Anti-Discrimination Students’ Movement (ADSM), including proposed electoral, constitutional, and broader institutional reforms, the unspecified timeline for the conduct of national elections, and, most importantly, the ideological and structural contours of the proposed Proclamation on the July-August Uprising. The Yunus Administration’s failure to contain the growing lawlessness across the country has only aggravated the mutual distrust, manifesting most recently in a violent altercation wherein ADSM cadres targeted the BNP’s student wing, Bangladesh Jatiotabadi Jubodal or simply Jubodal, at Khulna University of Engineering and Technology in response to its recruitment efforts. The ensuing confrontation, which left over 150 students, majorly Jubodal supporters, grievously injured, demonstrates the paradoxical trajectory of ADSM’s praxis itself, progressively mirroring the very coercive strategies it decried as emblematic of the Awami League’s authoritarian excesses not long ago.
The foremost disagreement revolves around the growing demands and efforts of the student leaders to abrogate the nation’s constitutional framework, which they derisively characterise as the “Mujib-badi Constitution of 1972.” These new-age proponents of political transformation in Bangladesh contend that the existing constitutional framework constituted a fundamental repudiation of the ideals that underpinned the struggle of the country’s freedom fighters, asserting that it has demonstrably failed to embody the genuine “aspirations of the Liberation War participants.” As such, they insist on burying this document to frame a new constitutional doctrine for Bangladesh that, according to them, would not only encapsulate such aspirations but also nurture and preserve the democratic character of the country going forward. Consequently, they advocate for the wholesale dismantling (burying) of this foundational constitution in favour of framing a newly constitutional doctrine—one that, in their assertion, would not only encapsulate the aspirations of the country’s freedom fighters but also serve as a bulwark for fostering and perpetuating the democratic integrity of the nation as it marches on.
In direct opposition to the wholesale “constitution abrogation” discourse being advanced by the student leaders, the BNP has unequivocally renounced such calls of total annulment and has instead advocated a calibrated approach centred on targeted constitutional amendments designed to institutionalise safeguards against the potential entrenchment of autocratic rule by future administrations. More critically, the BNP leadership emphasises that any such far-reaching constitutional restructuring must be undertaken exclusively by a duly elected government having democratic legitimacy rather than by a transitional regime operating which lacks popular legitimacy. In alignment with this position, senior BNP leadership is growingly reiterating their demand for the Interim Administration to fulfil its prescribed mandate of conducting national elections expeditiously, thereby ensuring that such structural reforms proceed within the framework of procedural legality rather than through the radical and extra-constitutional rupture that student leaders are championing.
The BNP has adopted a measured yet unequivocal stance against ADSM’s revisionist historiography, particularly its attempt to reframe Bangladesh’s ‘Liberation War’ as a ‘People’s War’ through the Proclamation on the July Uprising, an ideological reconfiguration that evidently omitted any reference to the country’s Independence Declaration of March 26, 1971. This proclamation had served as the galvanising impetus for the mobilisation of Bangladesh’s liberation fighters throughout the Pakistan Army’s protracted ten-month military campaign, which ultimately culminated in its emergence as a sovereign entity on December 16, 1971. The BNP, alongside other political actors, has forcefully chastised ADSM’s leadership for what it perceives as a gross subversion of the national consensus on the Liberation War, contending that such historical revisionism constitutes an affront to the legacy of the aspirations of the country’s founders.
Consequently, there is a growing perception within BNP that the ADSM leadership is using the rhetoric of reforms through the interim government as a deliberate mechanism to delay the elections, ostensibly to recalibrate Bangladesh’s political reality to its own advantage. For instance, this scepticism was explicitly voiced by the party’s acting president, Tarique Rahman, through his pointed admonition recently, warning that “some people are prolonging all kinds of processes by talking about reforms, reforms. Today, we have to see whether this (harping on reforms) is a conspiracy. If this process is prolonged on the plea of reforms, then the country’s problems will multiply.”
Similarly, the proposition advanced by Muhammad Yunus to lower the legal voting age from 18 to 17 has elicited strong censure from the BNP, which perceives it as another pretext for delaying the elections under the guise of reform. BNP General Secretary Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir contended that such pronouncements from the top of the interim administration engendered widespread apprehension among the populace by reinforcing anxieties that the electoral process will be subjected to further obfuscation and unwarranted delays, thereby exacerbating the prevailing climate of political uncertainty.
The BNP now finds itself trapped in an intractable political dilemma akin to being positioned between the devil and the deep blue sea. It is caught between the exigencies of its strategic alignment with the student uprising, which facilitated the removal of its principal adversary, the Awami League, and the aggressive power consolidation efforts by the Anti-Discrimination Movement leaders. With this evolving situation increasingly constricting BNP’s operational bandwidth, it, therefore, necessitates a recalibrated strategy—one that would balance political dexterity with an unwavering commitment to democratic principles.
The present precarious circumstances also dictate that the party take a nuanced yet bold approach, one that is based on forging tactical alliances with other political actors and collectively mobilising public sentiment to foreground the urgency of elections. It must recalibrate its engagement to ensure that the electoral question is firmly placed before the populace, thereby exerting pressure on the interim government to expedite the process. It cannot rely on the hollow assurances of an unelected regime, whose actions increasingly appear motivated to structurally smoothen the political ascendancy of the ADSM as it manoeuvres towards the institutionalisation of its own political entity, which is a perilous gamble that the BNP can ill afford. It may be noted that the student leaders have announced to launch of their own political party under the broader tutelage of the Anti-Discrimination Students Movement and its Jatiya Nagorik Committee (the National Citizens Committee), launched in September 2024 to build a national consensus on the contours of Bangladesh’s post-Hasina political trajectory, by the last week of February 2025.
To solidify its political standing, the BNP must clearly affirm its dedication to democratic pluralism through concrete political actions. This requires the party to cease its implicit support for the interim government's indiscriminate campaign of political reprisals against dissenting forces, such as the Awami League and liberal media representatives. Any failure to address or oppose the unilateral actions of the student movement, which heavily influences the interim government, could risk relegating the BNP to the political periphery—ca situation it has sought to avoid after experiencing it for the past fifteen years. The party’s ability to successfully navigate this intricate political conundrum hinges upon its capacity to demonstrate political maturity, which should be based on distancing itself from reactionary retributive politics and instead positioning itself as a custodian of democratic norms and institutional integrity.
* Mohmad Waseem Malla is a Research Fellow at the International Centre for Peace Studies, New Delhi, India, where he also serves as the Assistant Editor of its quarterly Journal of Peace Studies (JPS). He has a PhD in International Studies from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India, and works at the intersection of South Asia and the Middle East. The views expressed here are his own.
