Dr Sudhir Kumar Das
(dasudhirk@gmail.com)
The present volatile situation in Bangladesh points to a vacuum in governance where disparate groups— political and religious – vie for space in the backdrop of an impending general election. Since the ouster of Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League government in August 2024, the diplomatic relation between India and Bangladesh has gone from bad to worse. Bangladesh plunged into a vortex of violence in the aftermath of the assassination of rabidly anti-India radical student leader Sharif Osman Hadi, followed by the brutal mob lynching of Dipu Chandra Das. These events have further compounded the intensity of bitterness between the two countries. The naked dance of violence continued in the absence of any effective policing, as the police force has been demoralized under the present ruling dispensation for obvious reasons. Provocative and unsubstantiated social media posts were made accusing India of being complicit in the murder of Osman Hadi. The forces behind stoking this anti-India sentiment in Bangladesh are not very hard to guess.
One wonders how and why Bangladesh has turned so intensely anti-India, forgetting its history of independence. The country that had sacrificed the lives of 3,900 of its brave soldiers for the liberation of Bangladesh, the country that had hosted 10 million refugees for over a year in 1971 even at a time when it was itself a very poor country and the same refugees changed the demography of Northeast India forever, helped the nascent country in every international forum to gain recognition in the face of staunch opposition from powers like America and China; now the same country is treated with disdain by the present generation of Bangladeshis. However, issues like Teesta and Ganga water sharing and border killings have given a handle to some Bangladeshi politicians to whip up anti-India sentiment. The present youth of Bangladesh belong to the post-independence generation and are oblivious of the genocidal campaign of the Pakistani forces against their population in 1971 during Operation Searchlight. To expect gratitude for India from this present generation of Bangladeshis would be like hoping for philanthropy from a miser. All these hostilities notwithstanding, India has been providing financial aid to Bangladesh since its inception. Even in the face of growing anti-Indianism, India has honoured its commitment of grants and concessional Lines of Credit (LOC). In 2024-25 alone India has provided a financial grant of Rs. 120 crore, and in 2025-26 Indian aid for community-orientated projects amounts to Rs. 120 crore. However, Bangladeshi politicians have mastered the art of blaming India for everything that happens there. Beginning from floods to scarcity of rice to rising prices of onions and eggs, everything is blamed on India. Bangladeshi politicians, including Prof. Yunus, have learnt that it pays to take a hostile posture with regard to India to remain in power. In this surcharged atmosphere happens the killing of Sharif Osman Hadi, who is unapologetically anti-India and a radical Islamist. In an age when public perception is shaped by a flood of fabricated narratives released through all-pervasive social media, it took no time to link India to the killing of Osman Hadi. The fabricated social media news that the assassins of Hadi have fled to India and are given protection by the Indian agencies, just like Sheikh Hasina, spread like a forest fire, gaining ground and resulting in violent demonstrations in front of the Indian High Commission’s office in Dhaka and Chittagong. During the student-led July-August Uprising, a fertile anti-India field was created on the ground that Sheikh Hasina remained in power only because India supported her. All the evils happening in Bangladesh are blamed on Sheikh Hasina; hence, in public perception, Hasina and India became synonymous with hegemony and a favourite punching bag for a section of Bangladeshis. The ouster of Hasina was projected as the second liberation from ‘Indian hegemony’. Provocative anti-India statements were made by the student leaders and also by some of the members holding responsible offices in the interim government. One such statement was the grandiose plan of capturing India’s Northeast, West Bengal, and Bihar and annexing them to create a Greater Bangladesh, the landmass once ruled by Siraj ud-Daulah, the Nawab of Bengal, in the mid-18th century. There are clear indications that China and Pakistan too contribute substantially to the rise of anti-India sentiment in Bangladesh to put India in a diplomatically awkward position.
The student-led July-August uprising in Bangladesh to oust the Sheikh Hasina government had many strands. One group of student leaders joined the interim government led by Professor Mohammad Yunus. Another group created a political party, the National Citizen Party (NCP), and is getting prepared to contest in the forthcoming general elections, and a third neither joined the government nor created any political party. Sharif Osman Hadi belonged to the third group. He established the Inquilab Mancha to propagate his radical Islamist ideals and fight against the so-called ‘Indian hegemony in Bangladesh’. Sharif Osman Hadi was getting ready to contest from the Dhaka 8 constituency against BNP candidate Mirza Abbas in the forthcoming February 12 general elections. There may be many forces wanting to eliminate him from the scene. It can be political rivalry or a covert act by some third force to put India in an awkward position and make the political scene murkier in this election season. In such a complex political situation, to accuse India of being complicit in the assassination of a second-rung leader of the July-August Movement sounds utterly preposterous. However, it is an acknowledged fact that mob psyche is usually bereft of rational thinking and sane actions. The present interim government’s moral bankruptcy is palpable, as it cannot control the very same forces that had brought it to power.
A volatile and hostile Bangladesh raises concerns in the Indian security establishment. The Yunus-led interim government has been increasingly drifting away from India and is developing closer proximity with Pakistan. After the July-August Uprising there was widespread violence against the minority communities, especially Hindus, and India, rightly so, spoke against it, ruffling many feathers in the Bangladeshi establishment. When the situation in Bangladesh was tense after the killing of Osman Hadi, pouring fuel on the anti-India fire, Siraj ul-Haq, the former amir of Pakistan’s Jamat-e-Islam, tweeted on his X handle accusing India of having a hand in Hadi’s killing and congratulated the youth of Bangladesh for resisting expansionist India’s dream of an Akhand Bharat. In November 2024, soon after Mohammad Yunus came to power, Pakistani cargo ships started sailing from Karachi to Chittagong directly, the first sea contact between the two countries since 1971, marking a thaw in their relationship. It was not only cargo ships but also a Pakistani naval ship that docked at the Chittagong port in December 2024, again a first of its kind. Pakistan reportedly wants a defence pact with Bangladesh similar to one it signed in September with Saudi Arabia. China and Pakistan are exploiting this fluid situation in Bangladesh by stoking anti-India sentiment. China has jumped into the fray to fish in the troubled waters by organizing a tripartite meeting in Kunming in June 2025 in which the foreign secretaries of Bangladesh and Pakistan had discussions with the deputy foreign minister of China. This meeting has made the mandarins of the Indian security establishment sit up and take notice of this new triumvirate of hostile forces. This growing bonhomie between Pakistan and Bangladesh facilitated by China suggests impending military cooperation in the future. China is constantly trying to deepen its relation with the Mohammad Yunus-led interim government. In an email interview given to ‘The Indian Express’, Sheikh Hasina’s son Sajib Wajed Joy said that the newfound love between Bangladesh and Pakistan will definitely create security problems for India. Moreover, he accused the head of the interim government, Mohammad Yunus, of trying to convert Bangladesh into an Islamic state inimical to Indian interests. The activities of Pakistani agencies, including ISI, have increased manyfold due to the active cooperation from the friendly Yunus government. In the context of a volatile Bangladesh, India must wait and watch till the elections are over and then decide on a course of action to deal with the new government to safeguard its own national interest.