IN BANGLADESH’S ever-evolving political drama, few arenas carry the weight of Dhaka University. For decades, it has served as the crucible of revolutions, the incubator of national leadership and the most sensitive barometer of public mood. The 2025 Dhaka University Central Students’ Union (DUCSU) elections, therefore, drew the nation’s hawk-eyed attention, and their impact transcends campus politics. They are not merely a student contest — they are a revealing preview, a cinematic trailer of what the nation might witness in the general elections of 2026.
This time, the curtain rose to reveal an unexpected cast. The Islami Chhatra Shibir-backed panel swept to a decisive victory, securing the vice president, general secretary, assistant general secretary, and a majority of secretary posts. It was not a close contest. It was a landslide, conducted in a largely peaceful vote, with turnout running between 65 per cent and 87 per cent across centres — a level of engagement that should make national political parties take notes, not naps.
For those who study the correlation between student politics and national elections in Bangladesh, the message is blunt: the old order is gone, and the vacuum it left has not been filled with a credible alternative. What has emerged instead is a surge of organised Islamist student politics at the heart of the nation’s most influential university.
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History’s echo
BANGLADESH’S political history is impossible to separate from its student movements. The 1952 Language Movement began with students. The 1969 uprising that toppled Ayub Khan’s regime was student-led. The 1971 Liberation War was catalysed in no small part by campus activism. Even the democratic restoration in the 1990s bore the fingerprints of organised student agitation.
DUCSU has always been more than a student council. It has been a bellwether. When Bangladesh Chhatra League dominated DUCSU, Awami League drew comfort. When Chhatra Dal made gains, BNP saw momentum. Today, that pattern is repeating itself — but with a dangerous twist. The winners this time are neither mainstream Awami loyalists nor BNP-backed candidates. They are Shibir — a group associated with Jamaat-e-Islami, a party with a controversial past and a well-honed organisational machine.
This is not just a symbolic change; it is a structural one. It signals that, on the nation’s most politically conscious campus, the energy of the youth is not with the mainstream anymore. It has drifted — or been driven — towards those who combine ideological clarity with organisational discipline.
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BNP’s strategic folly
The root cause of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party’s most recent political blunder is that instead of reading the shifting tide with careful analysis, the BNP stepped directly into a political trap — a faction, using Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus as its front, sought to neutralise BNP’s democratic pressure-building process and was carefully enticed by opportunistic allies who see BNP not as a strong partner but as a fragile vessel through which their own ambitions could flow.
BNP, desperate to regain political relevance after years in the wilderness, mistook Yunus’s carefully crafted international image for domestic legitimacy. It allowed itself to be pulled into a framework that substituted external applause for internal consolidation. Yunus may have credibility among global elites, but Bangladeshi voters — especially the restless, ideological youth — do not cast ballots based on Davos panels or Wall Street Journal op-eds.
By allowing interim government to exert gravitational pull over its political strategy, BNP made two critical errors.
First, it alienated sections of its traditional base — conservative but pragmatic voters who expect a party not only to oppose the Awami League but also to present a coherent, nationally rooted vision. Instead of articulating bold economic reforms, institutional accountability or national security clarity, BNP began floating half-measures and imported talking points, none of which resonated beyond elite circles.
Second, it left open a vacuum among the most politically active demographic — students. BNP should have understood that a generation disillusioned with both Awami League’s arrogance and BNP’s indecision was ripe for targeted mobilisation. Instead, it ceded the field to Shibir, who organised quietly, methodically, and with a discipline that neither Awami League nor BNP has displayed in years.
The result: DUCSU is now effectively a launchpad for Islamist student politics at a time when Bangladesh’s political mainstream is already fractured.
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Lessons from the past and warnings for the future
HISTORY is merciless towards parties that misread their moment. Consider Pakistan in the late 1970s, when mainstream parties underestimated Islamist mobilisation at universities, only to find themselves outmanoeuvred in shaping national policy. Or Egypt in the post-Arab Spring chaos, where secular parties fragmented while the Muslim Brotherhood consolidated youth-driven networks that ultimately dominated elections.
Bangladesh risks a similar trajectory if its mainstream parties — and BNP in particular — continue to behave as if they have more time than they actually do. The DUCSU results are not a prediction; they are a warning shot. The 2026 election could easily produce a hung parliament, chaotic coalition-building, or even worse — a vacuum that invites anti-democratic forces to exploit national uncertainty.
BNP’s leadership needs to accept an uncomfortable truth: without a disciplined grassroots strategy, without reclaiming student politics from both inertia and ideological radicalism, it will not matter how much international sympathy they enjoy. The youth have already moved, and politics in Bangladesh does not wait for the slow to catch up.
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The road ahead
THE DUCSU election demonstrated several truths.
First, Bangladesh’s youth are no longer passive observers. They are voting, organising and shaping narratives — not in tea stalls, but in formal electoral spaces.
Second, ideological clarity beats nostalgic brand loyalty. Shibir did not win because students suddenly discovered Jamaat-e-Islami’s glorious record; they won because they offered a coherent identity and a functioning organisation while the traditional student wings bickered, hesitated and underperformed.
Third, political traps laid by other political parties. BNP and its other organisational wings are starkly involved in anti-democratic activities which are mostly related to crime. Thereby, BNP hands over its weak points to rivals. Opposition gets the bites for media trials.Ìý BNP walked into the trap willingly, and now it must walk itself out — quickly — before the DUCSU ‘trailer’ becomes a box-office disaster in 2026.
Finally, Bangladesh needs its mainstream parties to compete seriously again. If politics retreats from campuses, it will not disappear; it will metastasize. Student politics has historically been Bangladesh’s democratic oxygen. Choked with credible engagement, it risks turning toxic — producing neither reformers nor leaders, but ideologues who view politics as zero-sum warfare.
BNP has one last chance to prove it understands the stakes. It can rebuild, re-engage and reposition itself not as the party of nostalgia, nor of imported solutions, but of competent, nationally grounded leadership. If it fails, DUCSU 2025 will be remembered not just as a campus election but as the beginning of a generational realignment — one that the BNP itself will have unwittingly accelerated.
In politics, as in chess, missing the warning signals is rarely forgiven. The board has shifted. The youth have moved. The trailer is over. The feature film begins in 2026.ÌýÌýÌý
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MA Hossain is a political and defence analyst.
