DHAKA, Bangladesh — It took Bangladesh’s High Court less than two minutes on Monday to dismiss a petition aiming to remove the designation of Islam as the country’s state religion, a challenge that had wended its way through the court system for 28 years.

The effort had struck a nerve among Bangladeshis, whose tug of war over secularism and Islam dates to the 1971 war for independence from Pakistan. The country’s largest Islamic political party had declared a nationwide strike on Monday, and Sunni Muslim groups had staged protests demanding that the hearing be called off.

They need not have worried. A swarm of lawyers had barely taken their seats when Justice Naima Haider ruled that the group of 15 petitioners, 10 of whom had died as the case navigated the court bureaucracy, had no standing to raise the issue with the court.

Subrata Chowdhury, the lawyer who filed the original petition 28 years ago, looked lost as he listened to the judge.