Can BNP’s Tarique Rahman protect Hindus in Bangladesh?

Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) has registered a landslide victory in the parliamentary election in Bangladesh. Tarique Rahman, the party’s leader and the son of former premier Khaleda Zia, is poised to become the prime minister.

The elections held on Thursday (February 12) were the first since the ouster of former PM Sheikh Hasina in 2024 following a student-led uprising. BNP’s mammoth win has brought back focus on the country’s minorities, particularly Hindus, who have come under attack since the fall of Hasina’s Awami League government.

Will Tarique Rahman be good news for Bangladesh’s Hindus? Let’s take a look.

Tarique Rahman to be Bangladesh PM

The BNP has bagged a clear parliamentary majority by securing over 200 of the 299 seats. The opposition Jamaat-e-Islami and its allies won more than 70 seats, while others gained fewer than 10 seats in the Jatiya Sangsad, or House of the Nation.

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The National Citizen Party (NCP), led by youth activists who played a key role in Hasina’s ouster, won just six of the 30 seats that it contested as part of the Jamaat-led alliance.

The decisive mandate in favour of BNP has put Tarique Rahman in a position to stake a claim to form the next government in Bangladesh.

India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi was among the first world leaders to congratulate Rahman as his party swept the Bangladesh polls.

“Delighted to speak with Mr. Tarique Rahman. I congratulated him on the remarkable victory in the Bangladesh elections,” Modi posted on X.

He said he expressed support to Rahman in his endeavour to fulfil the aspirations of the people of Bangladesh.

“As two close neighbours with deep-rooted historical and cultural ties, I reaffirmed India’s continued commitment to the peace, progress, and prosperity of both our peoples,” the Indian leader wrote.

Ties between New Delhi and Dhaka have nosedived since Hasina's government was toppled in August 2024, after which she fled to India. Bangladesh has called on India to extradite the former PM, but New Delhi has not obliged.

India has also flagged concerns about the sharp surge in attacks on minorities since Hasina’s ouster.

With the BNP triumph, there are hopes that the relationship between the two neighbours will be back on track.

Bangladeshi Hindus live in fear

Hindus in Bangladesh have been living in fear amid a spate of attacks targeting the community in recent years.

According to the Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council, an umbrella group representing minority communities, more than 2,000 incidents of communal violence have been reported since the collapse of the Hasina government.

These include at least 61 killings, 28 instances of violence against women, such as rape and gang rape, and 95 attacks on places of worship involving vandalism, looting and arson. The group also accused the interim government of Bangladesh, led by Muhammad Yunus, of often dismissing or downplaying reports of such violence.

Hindus were attacked even in the week Bangladesh went to the polls. A day before elections, the bloodied body of a young Hindu tea garden worker, with his hands and legs tied with ropes, was found in Kamalganj upazila in northeast Bangladesh. This was the second killing of a Hindu in the South Asian country this week.

At least 15 targeted murders of Hindus have been documented in Bangladesh in a 45-day period, the South Asia Forum for Freedom of Religion Belief said in a statement recently. Multiple incidents of arson attacks against Hindu households have also been reported in Bangladesh in recent months.

The attacks against the Hindu minority increased since the murder of Islamist leader Sharif Osman Hadi on December 18, 2025. Hours after his death, Dipu Chandra Das, a 27-year-old Hindu garment worker, was brutally lynched in Mymensingh, in northern Bangladesh, after being accused of blasphemy. The tragedy captured on camera spread terror across the Hindu community.

It has to be noted that the rise in attacks against Hindus has coincided with the reemergence of Jamaat-e-Islami, Bangladesh’s largest Islamist party.

Speaking to Associated Press (AP), Ranjan Karmaker, a Dhaka-based Hindu human rights activist, said that the perceived notion that Hindus vote en masse also makes them vulnerable.

He said the community remained in fear due to the culture of impunity and near-weekly incidents of violence. Karmaker warned that in some parts of Bangladesh, the Hindu community was facing “an existential crisis.”

“The individuals involved in this violence are not being brought under the law, nor are they being held accountable through the justice system. It creates the impression that the violence will continue,” he said.

Can Tarique Rahman protect Hindus?

BNP chairman Tarique Rahman will face many challenges as he leads Bangladesh. One of them is to protect the country’s minority communities.

The spike in attacks on Hindus under the interim Yunus government had inflamed tensions between New Delhi and Dhaka. To reset ties with India, Rahman will have to allay fears of the Hindu community in his country through action.

The BNP leader, who returned to Bangladesh in late December after nearly 18 years of exile in the United Kingdom, has said Bangladesh should be a “secure” home for all communities, irrespective of religious and regional differences, reported The Hindu.

“People from the hills as well as the plains live here. That apart, we have people belonging to Islam, Buddhist, Christian and Hindu faiths and for them we want to build a secure Bangladesh,” Rahman had said in a Bengali speech delivered at a public meeting in Dhaka’s Purvachal neighbourhood.

His party also strongly condemned the attacks on Hindus, especially the lynching of Dipu Chandra Das.

Referring to the worsening security situation in the country, Rahman called for protecting the administrative machinery of Bangladesh in his speech. “We must preserve law and order in this country at any cost and we must remain calm and composed in the face of any provocation.”

BNP candidate and freedom fighter Md Fazlur Rahman, who has won from the Kishoreganj-4 constituency, had urged Hindus not to leave Bangladesh during his campaign.

“Never think about leaving your own country. I have always been beside you. I am a freedom fighter. I took training in the hills of Meghalaya and we freed our country from the clutches of Pakistan,” he had said at an election rally.

He further stressed the need to protect communal harmony. “In the body of Bangladesh there are two hands — one Muslim and another Hindu. If one hand is absent, it will be difficult for the other hand to survive,” he said. Fazlur Rahman had said that he wanted to create an environment in the country where no religious festival would require security arrangements.

BNP candidate Gayeshwar Chandra Roy has won in Dhaka–3. Parties had not given tickets to enough Hindu candidates in the 2026 elections. Speaking to The Wire, BNP's newly-elected Hindu MP said the answer lies in democracy when asked about reviewing the atrocities against Hindus under the interim government.

“Without democratic process, no one can enjoy their right,” Roy said. “We first need democracy and rule of law.”

According to senior journalist and author Deep Haldar, there is "cautious optimism" among Hindus as BNP is set to return to power after 20 years. “When the BNP was in power last time, between 2001 and 2006. It was one of the worst periods for Hindus in Bangladesh,” Halder told LiveMint.

However, he added that in 2001, when the BNP had come to power, it was in alliance with the Jamaat-e-Islami.

“This time, Jamaat and BNP were political rivals. And from what I have heard, a sizeable Hindu vote has gone to the BNP. Even as Jamaat chose to reach out to Hindus, more Hindus chose BNP over Jamaat. So I think there is cautious optimism among Hindus about the BNP government,” said Halder.

With inputs from agencies