• Political divisions in Bengal, split between India and Bangladesh, are increasingly based on religious lines, with politicians on both sides capitalizing on religious sentiment.
  • In Bangladesh, the Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami won nearly one-third of the vote in February elections, its strongest showing ever.
  • In India’s West Bengal, the Hindu nationalist BJP won 207 of 294 state assembly seats with nearly 46% of the vote.
  • Anthropologist Rezwana Karim Snigdha warns of an ‘ill-motivated’ shift in rhetoric that sidelines shared Bengali identity in favor of religious identity.
  • Historical partitions of Bengal, including the British partition of 1905 and the permanent partition of 1947, continue to shape the region today.
  • Bangladesh was founded as a secular state, but after the assassination of founder Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in 1975, Islam became the state religion.

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