On April 15, as Bangladesh’s capital sweltered under a heatwave, hundreds of activists from the Islami Andolan Bangladesh gathered outside Dhaka’s Baitul Mukarram Mosque. They carried banners declaring, “Stop Hindu aggression on waqf lands” and “Save Muslim identity”.
A day earlier, India’s Supreme Court grappled with a paradox: can a law that claimed to ensure transparency in managing Islamic endowments coexist with the rights of minorities in a secular democracy?
The Waqf (Amendment) Act, passed by India’s Parliament on April 4, has become a rallying cry for Bangladesh’s embattled Islamist parties. Their rhetoric, framing the bill as a “Hindu nationalist land grab”, has ignited protests and deepened anti-India sentiment.
The Bharatiya Janata Party government argues that the law modernises a system plagued by corruption and inefficiency. However, critics, however, see a Trojan horse. The All India Muslim Personal Law Board claimed it is unconstitutional, while Congress MP Syed Naseer Hussain accused the BJP of fuelling communal polarisation.
In Dhaka, the law has been weaponised. On April 15, the far-right Khilafat Majlis called for a march to the Indian Embassy, alleging that the BJP is “building temples on waqf lands” and “killing Muslims”.
Days earlier, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party warned the bill could “destabilise religious harmony” and urged India to reconsider it. Even the Labour Party and Hefajat-e-Islam joined the chorus, framing the law as a threat to Islamic identity .
Three factors are driving the reaction in Bangladesh.
Islamist parties, sidelined in Bangladesh’s 2024 elections (the Jamaat did not win any seats and historically has never won more than 5% vote on its own), are leveraging the Indian law in an attempt to reclaim their relevance. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party has found it convenient to focus on the law in India, ignoring the 12% inflation rate at home and chatter about a bailout from the International Monetary Fund.
Unresolved issues such as the dispute about sharing the waters of the Teesta River have bubbled under the protests. So too does anger in Bangladesh against the “shoot in sight” policy of India’s Border Security Force. India claims that those who have been killed are cattle smugglers or have been attempting to enter the country illegally. But Bangladeshis say the dead are cattle traders or farmers will plots along the border.
As an editorial in Bangladesh’s Daily Star has previously noted, anti-India sentiment is being “repurposed to legitimise outrage” .
Groups such as the Islami Andolan Bangladesh have framed the Indian law as being part of a global pattern of Islamophobic, linking it to Kashmir and Myanmar’s Rohingya crisis .
On April 17, as Bangladesh’s protesters dispersed and India’s Supreme Court adjourned until afternoon, one truth became clear: the Waqf Bill is no longer about property laws. It is a proxy for deeper anxieties – about identity, sovereignty, and secularism in South Asia.
As India’s Chief Justice Sanjiv Khanna reminded lawyers while considering challenges to the Waqf (Amendment) Act, “When we sit in court, we lose our religion. We are absolutely secular.” It’s a lesson South Asia’s politicians urgently need to learn.
Zakir Kibria is a writer from Bangladesh. His email address is zk@krishikaaj.com.
