What the Jamaat student wing victory in Dhaka University elections says about Bangladesh politics

In September, nearly 400 young men from Islami Chhatra Shibir, the Jamaat-e-Islami’s students’ front, gathered at Dhaka University’s historic Nawab Ali Chowdhury Senate Building to celebrate after defeating the Bangladesh Nationalist Party’s student wing in the Dhaka University Central Students’ Union elections.

Soon the wood and glass-panelled auditorium rang out with the thunderous chorus: hijab, hijab, hijab. This continued for a good 30 seconds before the students settled back into their chairs with big smiles.

The Shibir’s nominees clean-swept the Dhaka University Central Students’ Union elections, a feat not achieved since Bangladesh’s 1971 liberation war when – along with their parent party, the Jamaat – they were branded as razakars , or collaborators of the occupying