4 min readFeb 22, 2026 06:47 AM IST First published on: Feb 22, 2026 at 06:47 AM ISTThe Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) has won a clear-cut victory, securing 212 of the 299 parliamentary seats. Tarique Rahman, the son of former BNP leader and Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, who was in exile since 2008 is now officially the PM. However, the BNP’s principal opposition, the Awami League, was not allowed to participate in the polls.Several questions immediately come to mind. How will the BNP govern the country, riven by political turmoil since the ouster of Sheikh Hasina? How are relations with India, its principal neighbour, likely to evolve? How will Dhaka handle its recently strengthened ties with Pakistan? Will it continue to maintain warm relations with the People’s Republic of China? It is too early to offer definitive answers to these questions. It is, however, possible to make some tentative, educated guesses about the likely policy directions and choices of this nascent government.AdvertisementProffering initial answers requires delving into the history and evolution of the BNP since its inception in 1978 under General Ziaur Rahman. Zia, of course, had come to power in 1977 following the sanguinary aftermath of the assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman on August 15, 1975. Zia, while ruthlessly suppressing opposition and surviving multiple assassination attempts, held a largely free and fair election in 1979, in which his newly formed party won a parliamentary majority. His tenure in office, however, proved to be short-lived. Amid the country’s tumultuous politics, he too was assassinated in 1981 during another successful military coup. This coup brought General Hussain Muhammad Ershad to office.During General Zia’s tenure, the country shed some of its secular orientation. In an ironic twist, given that Zia had fought for the country’s liberation in 1971, he sought to improve relations with Pakistan. Quite unsurprisingly, these moves did not endear him or his regime to New Delhi. A decade later, his widow, Khaleda Zia, assumed power as military rule in Bangladesh came to a close.In the interim, especially under General Ershad, Bangladesh had increasingly moved away from its original secular foundations. Instead, religion was progressively enshrined in the country’s politics, with Islam being declared the state religion in 1988. It was hardly surprising that Begum Zia, upon assuming office, continued this drift. Indeed, her embrace of Islam in the country’s politics reflected a deep underlying tension in the country’s identity and political culture: the contradictory currents of linguistic and religious nationalism, a strain that continues to cleave the country.AdvertisementGiven that the country’s politics are riven along these lines and given the right-of-centre orientation of the BNP, it will bear watching how it proceeds to deal with the country’s steadily dwindling minority Hindu population, which has declined from about 12 per cent in 1981 to around 8 per cent today. Even though the BNP, with a firm majority in parliament, is not dependent on Jamaat-e-Islami, it will nevertheless be inclined to nod towards the growing religiosity that has come to characterise the country’s politics in recent decades.How it negotiates these shoals will, inevitably, affect its relations with New Delhi. Additionally, given its historic pro-Pakistani orientation, its diplomatic overtures towards Islamabad will be of interest to India. Already, under the interim government of Muhammad Yunus, Bangladesh had, among other measures, granted preferential access to its ports to Pakistan and strengthened defence ties. Given the BNP’s ideological leanings and its long-standing scepticism of India, the outreach towards Islamabad may continue under the new political dispensation.you may likeFinally, even before the ouster of Sheikh Hasina, China had made diplomatic and military inroads into Bangladesh. It is all but certain that the new government will do little to stem those trends, especially as it can utilise that relationship to reduce its dependence on India for trade and investment.In effect, the BNP’s win will, in all likelihood, accelerate several currents that have come to characterise Bangladesh’s domestic and foreign policies in recent years, especially under Yunus’s interim government. Under these circumstances, policymakers in New Delhi will face significant challenges. Addressing them and managing bilateral ties will require skill, patience and imagination. Even as Bangladesh’s election is worthy of celebration, several fraught issues loom on the horizon, both in terms of its domestic and foreign policy.Sumit Ganguly is a Senior Fellow and directs the Huntington Program on US-India Relations at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University