The Bangladesh factor in Bengal polls

With the 2026 West Bengal Assembly heading towards a fiery contest between the Trinamool Congress and the BJP, neighbouring Bangladesh has emerged as a major factor in the battle of narratives between the two heavyweights in the ring.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah have upped the ante by accusing the Trinamool Congress of “vote-bank politics” based on “ghuspetiyas” (infiltrators) and asked voters to bring the BJP to power to secure the border and stop infiltration.

‘Border Guarding is the Centre’s Job’

West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool leader Mamata Banerjee dismissed the charges as the “usual Hindutva communal politics which has no place in Bengal”. Her nephew and party general secretary, Abhishek Banerjee, reminded Home Minister Amit Shah that guarding the international border was the “Centre’s responsibility” and that the Border Security Force was under the Central government.

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Shah hit back by raising the problems of land acquisition for setting up border outposts in West Bengal, deflecting the blame on the state government.

Other Trinamool Congress campaigners emphasised the primacy of Bengali identity as something that transcended the barriers of religion and caste.

The BJP, on its part, is pushing for a Hindu consolidation to trump the Trinamool, and the Bangladesh diatribe is part of that campaign. Its poll managers privately confide that the saffron party has to win at least 60 per cent of the total Hindu vote in West Bengal to come within striking distance of victory. Assam Chief minister and party leader Himanta Biswa Sarma believes that if Hindu consolidation has worked in Assam, it will also work in Bengal this time.

Muslims constitute 27 per cent of the Bengal electorate, less than in Assam. The Trinamool can only retain power if the Muslims wholly back Mamata Banerjee and the Bengal Chief Minister can retain at least half the total Hindu vote, so far largely focused on women and the rural poor.

This writer has been a witness to West Bengal elections, first as a university student and then as a journalist, since 1978, when the Left Front swept to power and ruled the state for 34 years. This has been followed by 15 years of Trinamool rule. Both the CPM-dominated Left and the Trinamool Congress, despite their national pretensions, have been largely region-driven parties, tapping into the Bengali linguistic-cultural identity and thus remaining averse to the politics of religious polarisation.

“This atmosphere around this election reminds me of the surcharged atmosphere during the Partition. Never in post-Independence West Bengal has demonstrative religiosity dominated an election as this one,” says Sukharanjan Dasgupta, veteran political commentator and author on state politics.

Bangladesh political analyst Shakeel Anwar fears this would adversely impact already strained India-Bangladesh bilateral ties, but that is another issue.

Impact of Hasina’s Ouster

The ouster of the Sheikh Hasina government in Bangladesh and the phenomenal rise of Islamist radical forces in that country during the Mohammed Yunus-led interim government have made a substantial impact on the popular psyche in West Bengal. With atrocities against Hindus and non-Muslim minorities, especially the rape of women, and mounting attacks on Sufi shrines widely reported from Bangladesh, and even a large number of liberal Muslims fleeing into West Bengal since August 2024, the BJP’s anti-infiltrator tirade began to gain traction, amplified by social media. Protests over the arrest and continued detention of ISKCON monk Chinmay Prabhu in Bangladesh erupted in Kolkata, and demonstrations occurred before the Bangladesh Deputy High Commission in the city.

Under the direct patronage of the Yunus-led interim government, the pro-Pakistan Jamaat-e-Islami, which had been banned during Hasina’s tenure, took centre stage in Bangladesh politics, along with the newly formed National Citizens Party led by the youth leaders of the anti-Hasina agitation. The NCP aligned with Jamaat-e-Islami, whose leaders promised an Islamic theocratic state in Bangladesh, raising fears of minority marginalisation.

Jamaat’s Border Victories

In the February 2026 parliamentary elections in Bangladesh, Jamaat-e-Islami made phenomenal gains. With the Yunus government effectively banning the Awami League, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party swept the polls, winning 213 seats in a 300-member Jatiyo Sangsad (Parliament).

But Jamaat-e-Islami, which had never won more than 18 seats in parliamentary polls in independent Bangladesh, ended up winning 68 seats. Its allies, including the NCP, won nine more. Since the BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami have been allies against the Awami League since the 1990s, Bangladeshi media often speculate on the possibility of a national consensus government with Nobel laureate Yunus as President, the BNP’s Tarique Rahman as Prime Minister and the Jamaat chief Shafiqur Rahman as Deputy Prime Minister.

The BNP’s lack of administrative resistance to Jamaat-enforced Taliban-type moral policing against women and attacks on liberal institutions linked to the legacy of the 1971 Liberation War raises the spectre of a dangerous slide towards Islamist radicalism that started during the Yunus regime.

Of the 68 seats won by Jamaat-e-Islami in the February polls, 51 are located in the districts bordering India. All but a few of them are on the borders of West Bengal in Bangladesh’s western districts like Rangpur, Rajshahi, Gaibandha and Satkhira.

BJP’s Border Gains

As many as 44 Assembly constituencies in West Bengal’s 294-member state Assembly are located on the border with Bangladesh. Spread across districts including Cooch Behar, Jalpaiguri, Uttar Dinajpur, Dakshin Dinajpur, Darjeeling, Malda, Murshidabad, Nadia, North 24 Parganas, and South 24 Parganas, these constituencies often influence electoral outcomes in West Bengal. Another 50-odd seats alongside these 44 are not far from the Bangladesh border and are directly influenced by developments across a live frontier.

In the 2021 Assembly elections, the Trinamool Congress won 27 of these 44 seats, especially those with significant Muslim populations. But the BJP made significant gains, winning 17 of these 44 seats, especially by virtue of their strong performance in constituencies with a high presence of Matua Hindus, mostly migrants from Bangladesh. Matua voters are also a decisive factor in about 40 seats. The BJP is slightly worried over the substantial deletion of Matua voters during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) but hopes to retrieve the situation by promises of citizenship through the CAA.

Since the communal riots in April 2025 in Murshidabad district, the BJP has intensified its campaign of ‘Muslim appeasement’ and being ‘soft on infiltration’ against the Trinamool Congress. Due to rising Islamist radicalism, especially reflected in sweeping Jamaat victories in districts along the West Bengal border, the BJP campaign is expected to have much more electoral traction than ever before. Even in Muslim-dominant districts like Malda and Murshidabad, where voter deletion in SIR has been the heaviest, the Bangladesh factor may lead to Hindu vote consolidation as never before and can spring a few upsets.

Jyoti Basu’s Prophecy

Nobody understood this “two Bengals” communal spillover better than the late Jyoti Basu. With his roots in East Bengal, Basu was surely nostalgic, but pragmatism shaped his approach to Bangladesh.

When he took the lead in India signing a 30-year treaty on Ganges water-sharing in 1996 and then played a key role in the Indian push to end the tribal insurgency in Bangladesh’s Chittagong Hill Tracts a year later, I asked Basu why he was so keen to help the then newly installed Sheikh Hasina government in Bangladesh.

In his characteristic cryptic response in Bengali, with some hand signs thrown in, Basu said: “Okhane ora ese gele, ekhane eder atkano muskil hobe.” Meaning that if Hasina loses out, the Islamists will take over Bangladesh, and we will have trouble keeping out the Hindutva brigade here. He did not name anyone; first, he said “ora” (they), pointing to the chin, meaning the beard, then said “eder” (pointing to the forehead used for the tilak).

Basu’s worst fears may now appear to be coming true.

(Subir Bhaumik is a former BBC and Reuters correspondent and author on South Asian conflicts. He has worked in Myanmar as Consulting Editor of the country’s leading media group, ‘Mizzima’. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.)