Welcome to Foreign Policy’s South Asia Brief.

The highlights this week: India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party improves its position after significant state elections, Bangladesh closely watches the results in neighboring West Bengal, and India and Pakistan tensions remain high a year after their military conflict.

Welcome to Foreign Policy’s South Asia Brief.

The highlights this week: India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party improves its position after significant state elections, Bangladesh closely watches the results in neighboring West Bengal, and India and Pakistan tensions remain high a year after their military conflict.

West Bengal’s Saffron Wave

On Monday, votes were counted in five Indian states that held elections last week, and the results delivered a boost to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). In Kerala, the opposition Indian National Congress defeated a coalition of leftist parties. But the BJP significantly benefited from the outcomes everywhere else.

In Assam, the ruling party maintained its hold on power in the state legislature, and it also triumphed in the union territory of Puducherry. In Tamil Nadu, a long-standing BJP rival—the regional Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam party—was stunned by a new party, Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam. Led by an actor-turned-politician, the new party campaigned on an anti-corruption platform.

The most significant result came in India’s fourth-most populous state, West Bengal, where the BJP won in a landslide over the incumbent All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) party. In doing so, it unseated its leader, Mamata Banerjee, one of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s most formidable rivals.

Banerjee has been chief minister of West Bengal for 15 years, three years longer than Modi has been premier. The BJP’s triumph is striking, given that voter turnout was estimated at a record high of nearly 93 percent. The BJP hasn’t ruled West Bengal at any time in the party’s 46-year history, and now it has a massive mandate to lead the government.

The BJP’s victory in West Bengal, which saw the party take 207 of 294 seats, can be attributed to a range of factors, from economic distress to anti-incumbency sentiment. Opponents of the ruling party also point to a more controversial factor: the Indian Election Commission’s decision to remove 9 million voters from the state’s voter rolls, or nearly 12 percent of the electorate.

Data shows that many of those removed are Muslims, who make up a........

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