I Ahmad Wani:
In the shifting sands of South Asian politics, where old ideologies refuse to die quietly, two stories are unfolding that should worry anyone who values pluralism and peace. In Bangladesh, after Sheikh Hasina was forced out in August 2024, the interim government under Muhammad Yunus lifted the long-standing ban on Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh. What was once a pariah organization—widely seen as anti-liberation and responsible for horrific crimes during the 1971 war—has suddenly been given a new lease of life. The party is reorganizing, forming alliances, influencing campuses and mosques, and openly positioning itself as a major player in the country’s future elections.
Across the border in Jammu and Kashmir, something eerily similar is happening. Despite the Indian government’s tough posture after the abrogation of Article 370, a breakaway faction linked to the banned Jamaat-e-Islami Jammu and Kashmir has managed to register itself as the Justice and Development Front. They are contesting local elections, speaking the language of the Constitution, and claiming to be a legitimate political force. Over a hundred government employees have been sacked in recent years on charges of terror links, yet no law prevents these same networks from floating a political party. To many who have lived through the worst years in the Valley, this feels less like democracy and more like handing out a license for hate, terror, and conspiracy under the guise of political participation.
Both organizations draw from the same ideological well: the vision of Abul A’la Maududi, who founded Jamaat-e-Islami in 1941. They talk of “democratic Islam” or sometimes “socialist Islam”—a system where Islamic principles guide governance, welfare is emphasized, and modern elections are accepted as long as they serve the larger goal of an Islamic order. On paper it sounds reasonable, even progressive. In practice, it has repeatedly clashed with the lived reality of plural societies, where Hindus, Sikhs, secular Muslims, and people of different political beliefs try to coexist.
In Bangladesh the story is well documented. During the 1971 Liberation War, the East Pakistan branch of Jamaat-e-Islami stood firmly with the Pakistani army. They helped organize auxiliary forces—Razakars, Al-Badr, Al-Shams—that carried out targeted killings of Bengali nationalists, intellectuals, and Hindus. Leaders like Ghulam Azam met with Pakistani generals and promised full cooperation. The war left deep scars: millions displaced, an estimated three million dead, and a generation that still remembers the names of collaborators. After independence, the new government banned the party. It was revived only in the late 1970s when military rulers needed Islamist support to counter the Awami League. By the 2000s, Jamaat had entered coalitions, held cabinet posts, and built a vast network of schools, charities, and student wings.
Then came the reckoning. Under Sheikh Hasina, war-crimes tribunals convicted top leaders—Motiur Rahman Nizami, Abdul Quader Molla, Ali Ahsan Mujahid—and several were executed. The party was deregistered in 2013. But after Hasina’s fall, everything changed overnight. Today Jamaat leaders issue apologies for 1971, reach out to India, talk about democracy, yet the same old rhetoric about Islamic governance and opposition to secularism is creeping back into public discourse. Temples have been attacked, minorities feel more vulnerable, and the country’s politics has tilted noticeably rightward. The pattern is clear: give them space, and the old instincts return.
Kashmir tells a parallel tale, though the details differ. The Jammu and Kashmir Jamaat-e-Islami was never quite the same as its Bangladesh counterpart, but it shared the same Maududi-inspired worldview. From the 1950s it challenged the region’s Sufi traditions, pushed for stricter Islamic norms, and viewed Kashmir’s political status as unfinished business from Partition. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, when militancy exploded, the organization’s student wing and its ideological orbit played a significant role in radicalization. Hizbul Mujahideen drew heavily from that milieu. The targeted killings of Kashmiri Pandits, secular Muslims, National Conference workers, and anyone seen as loyal to India turned neighborhoods into killing fields.
One story still haunts me. A friend from a village close to Srinagar recently recounted what happened in the early 1990s. His eyes filled with tears as he spoke of a young Kashmiri Pandit who worked at the Khonmoh factory. Every day this man—clean-shaven, in his thirties, hair neatly trimmed, clothes carrying a faint fragrance—walked through the village on his way to work. He wore simple pants and shirt in the old Rishi Kapoor style, carried a tiffin box in one hand and files in the other. He greeted people politely, never caused trouble. Then one day a local man—someone my friend still calls a “monster”—and his terrorist associates ambushed him. They abducted him, tortured him brutally, and left him dead. That same man, my friend said, is still employed in the Rural Development Department, drawing a government salary as a permanent employee. This is only one story. Every corner of the Valley has similar accounts—of Pandits dragged from their homes, of moderate Muslims shot for speaking against militancy, of entire families forced to flee in the night.
The government banned Jamaat-e-Islami JK after the 2019 Pulwama attack and has renewed the ban repeatedly. Yet the ideological current has not dried up. Schools run by the old network were taken over, employees dismissed, but the political space has opened again for a rebranded version. The new front promises to work within the Indian Constitution, but many ask: how long before the old agenda reasserts itself? When the security grip loosens even slightly, the rhetoric of jihad against “kufars” tends to follow.
Amit Shah stood in Parliament in 2019 and called the abrogation of Article 370 an operation to make Jammu and Kashmir healthy—to cut out the roots of separatism and terror so normal life could return. Six years later, the question hangs heavy: Has Kashmir become healthy? The answer, sadly, is not yet. More killers remain in waiting, watching for any sign that the grip is weakening so they can resume what they call their holy war.
Allowing these groups political legitimacy does not tame them; it normalizes them. In Bangladesh we are already seeing the consequences—rising communal tension, closer ties with Pakistan, and a slow erosion of the secular spirit that defined the liberation struggle. In Kashmir, the same risk stares us in the face. Political participation should be a reward for those who accept the basic rules of a plural society, not a backdoor for ideologies that have repeatedly shown they cannot coexist with it.
The toxic nature of these movements does not change with time or rebranding. What they did before, they will do again when the opportunity arises. History has shown it in Bangladesh. The Valley has paid a terrible price to learn the same lesson. Ignoring that lesson now would be a tragedy we inflict on ourselves.
