The Authoritarian Trajectory: BJP's Electoral Model and Bangladesh's Strategic Challenge

The Mirror Sheikh Hasina Never Saw

On August 5, 2024, Sheikh Hasina fled Bangladesh in a helicopter, ending 15 years of increasingly authoritarian rule. The Awami League had perfected a model of governance that seemed unassailable: total control over state machinery, captured judiciary, intimidated opposition, compliant media, and elections that delivered predetermined results. From 2009 to 2024, Hasina transformed from democracy’s champion to its executioner—all while convincing herself and her allies that the system was sustainable.

Across the border, Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party has been following an identical playbook with remarkable precision. The parallels are not coincidental—they reveal a common architecture of authoritarian decay that democratic systems in South Asia seem uniquely vulnerable to.

But there is one critical difference: when the Awami League faced its moment of reckoning, the explosion was directed inward. When BJP faces its inevitable electoral reversal, the explosion will be directed outward—at enemies manufactured over a decade of hatred politics. And Bangladesh, as India’s softest neighbor, may find itself in the crosshairs.

The Architecture of Parallel Decay

Institutional Capture: The Same Playbook

The patterns are unmistakable:

Scholar Ali Riaz observed that the Awami League “established total control over state machinery and politics.” The same assessment now applies to BJP’s India. In 2021, the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Institute reclassified India from a flawed democracy to an “electoral autocracy”—the same category that described Bangladesh under Hasina.

The RSS Advantage

One crucial difference exists: unlike Hasina, who built her authoritarian apparatus from the top down, Modi draws from nearly 100 years of Hindu nationalist organizing. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) operates over 80,000 daily shakhas, controls educational institutes, trade unions, and agricultural organizations, and comprises over 50 affiliated organizations. This makes BJP’s project more deeply rooted—but also more dangerous when it eventually faces crisis.

The Manufacture of Hatred

BJP’s electoral success rests on a simple formula perfected over decades: consolidate the Hindu majority vote by constructing Muslims and Pakistan as existential threats, then substitute governance failures with religious conflict.

The Evidence

Christophe Jaffrelot, the foremost scholar on Hindu nationalism at Sciences Po, has documented the direct link between communal violence and BJP electoral success:

“Communal riot was a recipe for the electoral success of the BJP, and that was demonstrated in the 2002 elections, when the BJP won those seats where riots occurred.”

The Gujarat laboratory in 2002 proved the model. After the Godhra train burning killed 58 Hindu pilgrims, violence left 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus dead. In the subsequent state elections, BJP won 126 of 182 seats—performing best in the very constituencies where rioting occurred. Modi’s “Gaurav Yatra” (procession of pride) through riot-affected areas “propelled Modi’s political career within his party, forging an image of a hardliner who would be tough against Muslims.”

The Two-Track System

BJP operates a sophisticated dual messaging strategy:

1. Official Track: Modi emphasizes “reform, perform, transform”—development, digital India, infrastructure
2. Underground Track: BJP’s IT cell, with 100-150 paid staff and 1.2 million volunteers, systematically circulates polarizing content through WhatsApp groups

This architecture achieves the party’s “two fundamental objectives”: consolidating a majority Hindu vote bank through existential threat narratives, and “systematically blurring socio-economic realities” by substituting governance failures with religious conflict.

The Half-Life of Hatred

But manufactured hatred has a half-life. The 2024 election delivered a warning: despite the Ram Mandir inauguration in Ayodhya—the culmination of decades of Hindu nationalist aspiration—BJP fell to 240 seats, 32 short of a majority. The party even lost the Ayodhya/Faizabad seat itself.

The polarization model shows diminishing returns. What worked in Uttar Pradesh doesn’t necessarily work in Bengal “even when similar enabling conditions exist.” Voters in many states have begun prioritizing economic concerns over religious mobilization.

This creates a dangerous dynamic: BJP has spent a decade cultivating rage against Muslims, Pakistan, and now Bangladesh—but this rage becomes an unmanageable liability when it can no longer be converted into electoral victories.

The Unactionable Enemies

BJP’s political rhetoric has created three primary enemies in the Indian imagination: Pakistan, China, and increasingly, Bangladesh. But nuclear deterrence and military reality make action against the first two existentially dangerous—leaving only theatrical gestures and, potentially, the softest target.

Pakistan: Theater Over Strategy

India has conducted three major “limited strike” operations against Pakistan since 2016:

2016 Surgical Strikes (Post-Uri)

• Claim: 35-40 militants killed in precision strikes
• Reality: No photographic evidence provided; Pakistan denied incursion occurred; defense commentator Mohan Guruswamy called it “political charlatanism”

2019 Balakot Airstrikes (Post-Pulwama)

• Claim: BJP President Amit Shah claimed 250+ terrorists killed
• Reality: Reuters, Atlantic Council, and Australian Strategic Policy Institute satellite analysis showed all structures intact with no casualties. Local Reuters investigation: “No one died. Only some pine trees died.” India’s own External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj admitted “no Pakistani soldier or civilian was hurt.”
• Actual Outcome: Pakistan shot down an Indian MiG-21 and captured its pilot; India accidentally shot down its own helicopter, killing six airmen

2025 Operation Sindoor (Post-Pahalgam)

• Claim: 100+ terrorists killed across nine targets
• Reality: Four-day conflict, 125+ fighter jets engaged, according to AirForces Monthly analysis India lost three aircraft, sustained Pakistani retaliation

The Carnegie Endowment’s definitive assessment:

“Both India’s 2016 surgical strikes and 2019 Balakot airstrike… were more important as signals of Indian political resolve and dangerous appetite for risk rather than as an effective cost-imposition strategy and achieved negligible operational effects on the targeted terrorist networks.”

The Electoral Calculus

Despite military ineffectiveness, the electoral benefits are measurable:

• After Balakot, 76% of voters were aware of the strikes
• BJP vote share among those aware: 45%
• BJP vote share among those unaware: 32%
• Difference: 13 percentage points

This is why limited strikes continue despite strategic futility—they are not military operations but electoral campaigns conducted with missiles.

China: The Untouchable Enemy

Against China, even theatrical strikes are impossible. After the 2020 Galwan Valley clash left 20 Indian soldiers dead, India’s response was muted. The power asymmetry is too stark: China’s economy is five times India’s size, its military technology is a generation ahead, and any genuine conflict risks catastrophic escalation.

BJP rhetoric regularly invokes China as a threat, but action remains confined to infrastructure building and diplomatic posturing. The gap between words and deeds is unsustainable when a population has been primed to expect muscular responses.

The Pahalgam Pattern: How Crises Are Weaponized

The April 2025 Pahalgam attack that killed 26 tourists provides a template for understanding how crises—whether prevented or permitted—serve BJP’s electoral needs.

The Suspicious Circumstances

Multiple security failures converged:

1. Three-Tiered Security Grid Failure: All three security layers (Army’s 3rd Rashtriya Rifles, CRPF’s 116th battalion, J&K Police) failed simultaneously
2. Intelligence Gaps: Attackers in Indian Army fatigues went undetected
3. Administrative Negligence: Local authorities opened the Baisaran Valley to tourists without informing security agencies
4. No Infrastructure: No surveillance cameras, drones, or medical response system in a tourist destination with 1,000+ daily visitors

Union Home Minister Amit Shah admitted: “If nothing had gone wrong, why would we be sitting here? There have been lapses somewhere.” J&K Lt. Governor Manoj Sinha took “full responsibility” for the security failure—the first such admission by the Modi government in over a decade.

The Electoral Context

The attack occurred:

• Weeks before crucial Bihar state elections (October/November 2025)
• During PM Modi’s Saudi Arabia state visit
• While US Vice President JD Vance was visiting India

Modi’s response was revealing: instead of visiting Kashmir, he cut short his foreign visit to go to Bihar for election rallies, where he promised to chase attackers “to the end of the earth.”

Opposition leader Shakti Singh Yadav criticized: “Instead of sharing the grief of the victims’ families, he chose to come to Bihar for electoral gains.”

The Pattern Recognition

The Pulwama-Pahalgam sequence reveals an identical playbook:

Former J&K Governor Satya Pal Malik concluded Pulwama was a “systemic failure involving gross security and intelligence lapses.” The same assessment applies to Pahalgam.

False Flag or Convenient Negligence?

Whether these attacks represent active false flags or merely convenient negligence that serves electoral purposes, the pattern is clear: security failures before elections, theatrical military responses, inflated claims contradicted by evidence, and immediate electoral exploitation.

Pakistan’s defense minister calling Pahalgam a “false flag operation” may be dismissed as enemy propaganda—but the documented security failures, electoral timing, and historical pattern demand serious scrutiny.

When BJP Falls: The Explosion Will Be External

The Awami League’s collapse demonstrated that authoritarian systems built on institutional capture eventually face reckoning. BJP’s moment will come—whether through electoral defeat, internal RSS fractures, or economic crisis.

But unlike Bangladesh’s inward implosion, BJP’s collapse will be directed outward. Here is why:

The Unspent Rage

A decade of manufactured hatred against Muslims, Pakistan, and “anti-nationals” has created expectations that cannot be satisfied through governance. When economic failures mount—unemployment, inflation, agricultural distress—the pressure valve historically has been external enemies.

Pakistan Is Increasingly Risky

Each iteration of limited strikes has moved up the escalation ladder:

• 2016: Ground raids
• 2019: First airstrikes inside Pakistan since 1971
• 2025: Multi-domain strikes, four-day conflict, aircraft losses

The “stability-instability paradox” suggests nuclear weapons may encourage limited conflicts, but cumulative provocations increase miscalculation risks. Each operation must be more dramatic than the last to achieve the same electoral effect—a dangerous trajectory toward genuine war.

Bangladesh: The Softer Target

This creates pressure to find a safer outlet for manufactured rage. Bangladesh, post-Hasina, offers several “advantages” from BJP’s perspective:

1. Non-Nuclear: Unlike Pakistan, no existential deterrent
2. Weaker Military: Bangladesh’s defense capabilities are modest compared to Pakistan
3. “Hindu Victimhood” Narrative: BJP has already invested heavily in portraying Bangladesh as persecuting Hindus
4. Hostile Interim Government: Unlike the compliant Hasina regime, Yunus’s government has distanced itself from India
5. Electoral Utility: West Bengal, Assam, and other eastern states can be mobilized through Bangladesh-focused polarization

The Bangladesh Files Campaign

This is already visible. A right-wing think tank comprising BJP leaders and supporters has launched “Bangladesh Files”—photo exhibitions across West Bengal modeled on “Kashmir Files,” the film that “whipped up anti-Muslim sentiment” in 2022.

Since Hasina’s fall, Indian media has systematically spread disinformation about Bangladesh:

• Portraying attacks on Awami League offices as attacks on Hindu temples
• Circulating misleading videos about Hindu persecution
• Ignoring the killing of a Muslim government lawyer while amplifying the arrest of Hindu monk Chinmoy Krishna Das

The ruling Trinamool Congress correctly identifies this as “a renewed attempt by Hindutva ecosystem to create communal polarization in Bengal.”

What Bangladesh Must Prepare For

Bangladesh faces a neighbor whose political system requires external enemies to function. When BJP’s electoral model begins failing—as it inevitably will—Bangladesh must be prepared for:

Short-Term Provocations

1. Diplomatic Escalation: Increased rhetoric about Hindu persecution, demands for “protection” of minorities
2. Economic Pressure: Trade restrictions, water disputes, transit complications
3. Cross-Border Incidents: Manufactured or exaggerated incidents at the border
4. Disinformation Campaigns: Intensified “Bangladesh Files” propaganda for domestic Indian consumption

Medium-Term Risks

1. Limited Strikes: As Pakistan becomes too dangerous, Bangladesh may become the target of theatrical military operations
2. Support for Insurgency: Backing for anti-government elements, particularly those aligned with Awami League remnants
3. Sanctuary Denial: Using Hasina’s presence in India as leverage

Long-Term Scenarios

If BJP faces serious electoral reversal while maintaining state power, the pressure for dramatic external action increases exponentially. Bangladesh’s non-nuclear status and weaker military make it the “safest” target for a regime that has promised its population muscular nationalism but cannot deliver against nuclear-armed adversaries.

The Strategic Response

Bangladesh must:

1. Strengthen Defense Capabilities: Not to match India, but to raise the cost of intervention
2. Deepen China-Pakistan Ties: Creating a three-front dilemma for India, as documented in our previous analysis
3. International Coalition Building: Ensuring Western and regional stakeholders have incentive to prevent Indian adventurism
4. Domestic Resilience: Building the economic and social cohesion that makes external pressure ineffective
5. Information Warfare Capability: Countering BJP’s disinformation campaigns with truth

Read full analysis: Why India Won’t Launch a Full-Scale Attack on Bangladesh →

Read full analysis: The Three-Front Trap →

Conclusion: Recognizing the Mirror

Sheikh Hasina never recognized herself in the mirror of authoritarianism. She convinced herself that institutional capture was governance, that electoral manipulation was democracy, that opposition persecution was security. Her allies in Delhi encouraged this self-deception because it served their interests.

The BJP sees Bangladesh’s July Revolution not as a warning but as a threat—evidence that “foreign hands” can topple friendly governments, rather than proof that authoritarian systems eventually face reckoning.

This blindness is dangerous. BJP’s hatred politics has created expectations that cannot be satisfied through governance, manufactured enemies that cannot be defeated through theater, and a population primed for external conflict. When the domestic model fails—as it must—the pressure for external action will be immense.

Bangladesh is not Russia’s Ukraine—we have established this. But Bangladesh may become BJP’s pressure valve: the target of choice when manufactured rage requires an outlet and nuclear-armed adversaries are too dangerous.

The time to prepare is now. Not because war is imminent, but because understanding the trajectory allows for prevention. The same authoritarian architecture that consumed the Awami League is consuming BJP’s India. The question is not whether reckoning comes, but what form it takes—and whether Bangladesh is prepared when it does.

This Delta Dispatch represents the analysis of the Inqilab Delta Forum research team.

Related Analysis:

• Surgical Strikes and Electoral Dividends: India’s Limited War Doctrine as Political Theater — Detailed analysis of the limited strikes pattern that may be applied to Bangladesh
• The Soft Target: Why BJP’s India May Attempt a Limited Incursion on Bangladesh — Examining the infrastructure, pretexts, and scenarios for potential action
• Why India Won’t Launch a Full-Scale Attack on Bangladesh: Economic Suicide and the Three-Front Trap
• The Three-Front Trap: Why China and Pakistan Make Indian Aggression Irrational
• India Is Not Russia: Why the Ukraine Analogy Fails for Bangladesh