The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), the country’s largest political party, is decisively breaking its decades-long alliance with Jamaat-e-Islami, the South Asian nation’s largest Islamist group, instead repositioning itself as a liberal and democratic force ahead of national elections.
The change comes 16 months after the overthrow of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, following a mass uprising against her decade-and-a-half rule marked by widespread human rights excesses, including extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances, arrests of critics and opposition leaders, and a brutal crackdown on protesters in August 2024.
Hasina’s Awami League party, historically the BNP’s main rival, has asserted itself over the decades as a secular and liberal pillar of Bangladeshi politics, although critics have disputed this claim.
In contrast, the BNP and Jamaat were united by their common opposition to the Awami League. But their ideological differences have never been hidden: the BNP subscribes to a nationalist worldview, while the Islamic identity of most Bangladeshis is the Jamaat’s raison d’être.
Today, these differences have led to a real split between the parties that had governed together in the last non-Hasina government elected in Bangladesh, between 2001 and 2006.
Addressing party supporters this week, BNP acting president Tarique Rehman recalled the bloody memory of Bangladesh’s liberation war against Pakistan in 1971, saying “people saw” what happened then. He did not name the Jamaat, but the reference was clearly understood throughout Bangladesh: the Jamaat had opposed Bangladesh’s independence from Pakistan.
He also accused the Jamaat of abusing religion to get votes.
In similar comments last month, BNP general secretary Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir warned against dividing the country “in the name of religion” and stressed that BNP policies should be based on national unity, democratic principles and the founding spirit of 1971.
So what’s behind this change?
The BNP’s recent rhetoric suggests that it wants to appropriate the moral vocabulary of secular nationalism that the Awami League has long monopolized through its unbalanced historical revisionism of the true spirit of the liberation war. Awami League founder Sheikh Mujibur Rehman led the liberation struggle, but was also responsible for independent Bangladesh’s early descent into authoritarianism, when he banned all other political parties in an attempt to establish a one-party system in 1975.
Hasina continued this legacy when she was in power between 2009 and 2024, banning the Jamaat and arresting thousands of BNP leaders and workers – including its long-time leader and former Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia, who is currently hospitalized in what her party and family have described as a “very critical condition”. The Hasina government’s ruthless crackdown on political opposition and other critics turned the 2014, 2018 and 2024 elections into a sham, with the Awami League winning landslide victories amid a landscape of repression.
To fill the secular nationalist void left by the Awami League – which itself is now banned, while Hasina is in exile in India – the BNP must sever its ties with an Islamist party whose historical baggage could hamper its attempt to appeal to a public seeking pluralist politics.
To be sure, the BNP-Jamaat split did not happen overnight. For months, the two parties have drifted apart over fundamental questions: whether broader reforms should precede elections, how to restructure the Constitution and what political model should define the post-Hasina era.
The Jamaat pushed for radical structural changes before the elections; the BNP insisted on early elections and minimal constitutional revisions. Their disagreements gradually turned into open divisions.
But this rupture is not only due to strategic disagreements. This reflects an ideological recalibration driven by the new political environment.
The liberal-secular center-left space that the Awami League once claimed is now vacant.
The BNP sees this as an opportunity to occupy it, before the national elections scheduled for February.
The BNP’s calculus is rooted in the changing mood of the electorate. The youth-led uprising of 2024, the collapse of one-party authoritarianism, and the civic awakening of urban middle-class voters have all produced a renewed demand for democratic governance and political moderation.
The Jamaat’s religious leanings, the BNP believes, could conflict with this sentiment. By renaming itself, the BNP believes it can resonate with voters disillusioned by both the authoritarianism of the Awami League and the religious conservatism of the Jamaat.
The reorientation also aims to reclaim the moral superiority of 1971. For decades, the Awami League has used the Jamaat’s wartime collaboration with Pakistan to delegitimize the BNP by association. Today, the BNP is reversing this discourse.
By denouncing the Jamaat’s role in 1971, the party is challenging the ideological monopoly exercised by the Awami League for half a century – trying to appeal to young citizens who view 1971 through narratives of democracy and human rights rather than loyalty to any given party.
This attempt at transformation is not without risks. The BNP must overcome skepticism over whether this rebranding is genuine or opportunistic. Some elements within the BNP may resist moving towards a more liberal identity.
Furthermore, the post-Hasina political space is saturated: youth-led groups like the National Citizens’ Party (NCP) and civil society networks are also competing for the liberal-centrist vote. Vote fragmentation could dilute the BNP’s gains unless it can unify disparate pro-democracy constituencies.
Yet the strategic logic behind BNP’s recalibration appears compelling for now.
The party no longer positions itself as a centre-right force competing with the Awami League; it is trying to transform itself into a broad democratic platform that absorbs former Awami League voters, urban liberals, minority communities and politically awakened youth, all looking for a new political home.
The success of this change will depend on the consistency with which the BNP maintains this new ideological line and on the public’s conviction that the party’s break with Jamaat is a decision of principle rather than electoral choreography.
But what is already clear is that the BNP of 2025 is not that of the last decade. Its leaders speak a new language, rooted in inclusion, anti-sectarianism and democratic reform.
And they speak it loudly.
By breaking with the Jamaat and entering the ideological terrain formerly held by the Awami League, the BNP is reshaping the political landscape of Bangladesh. If the transformation holds, it could become the most consequential political realignment since the early 1990s – an ideological reversal in which the former center-right party becomes the main guardian of liberal democratic politics in a post-Hasina Bangladesh.
