Editorial

Geography is not a choice. Bangladesh and India will share a border long after every current government has passed into history. The question, therefore, has never been whether relations will exist, it is what kind of relations they will be. Built on mutual respect and sovereign equality, or sustained through asymmetry, political favoritism, and the slow accumulation of distrust? That is the question the current crisis forces both countries to answer honestly.
The origins of this crisis are not difficult to trace. Between 2009 and 2024, Bangladesh-India relations reached their warmest point since independence. Security cooperation deepened, trade expanded, connectivity improved, and India secured strategic access to its northeastern states through Bangladeshi territory. On paper, the relationship looked like a regional model. Beneath the surface, it was something more complicated.
Throughout those fifteen years, Bangladesh experienced serious democratic deterioration. Elections were contested, political opponents were silenced, enforced disappearances became a documented pattern, and press freedom eroded systematically. Western governments and international human rights organizations raised consistent objections. India, with equal consistency, either stayed silent or continued its warm engagement regardless. The message this sent to ordinary Bangladeshis was not ambiguous: New Delhi valued a friendly government in Dhaka more than it valued the democratic rights of the Bangladeshi people. Whether or not that reading fully captures India’s calculations, it became a political reality. When the mass uprising of August 2024 removed Sheikh Hasina from power, that accumulated perception did not dissolve. It hardened.
In diplomacy, perception is rarely a secondary concern. It is often the only one that matters.
No single-issue captures India’s dilemma more sharply than the continued presence of Sheikh Hasina on Indian soil. A state retains the sovereign right to grant shelter to foreign political figures, that principle is not in dispute. What is in dispute is the line between humanitarian shelter and implicit political endorsement, a line India has conspicuously refused to draw. The Bangladeshi people, through a popular uprising whose scale cannot be credibly dismissed, rejected a government. When the principal figure of that government was permitted to remain in India while continuing to make political statements, a significant portion of the Bangladeshi public reached a logical conclusion: that India had not accepted the new political reality, and that the Awami League remained its preferred interlocutor in Dhaka. India could have adopted a clearer, more transparent posture on this question. It chose not to. That choice carries consequences.
India is, by every meaningful measure, the dominant power in South Asia. Its economy, military capacity, and regional influence dwarf those of its neighbors. But disproportionate power generates disproportionate responsibility. When tensions arise between a stronger and a weaker state, the expectation of greater restraint and diplomatic maturity falls naturally on the more powerful party. This is not sentiment; it is the foundation of any sustainable regional order. A regional power that uses its weight to pressure rather than reassure its neighbors does not produce stability. It produces resentment.
The political transition of August 2024 gave India a clear opportunity: to demonstrate, convincingly, that its relationship was with Bangladesh as a nation and not with any particular political party. India did not take that opportunity. Influential sections of Indian media and political commentary produced a sustained narrative portraying Bangladesh as unstable, hostile to minorities, and approaching state failure. Many of these claims were later shown to be exaggerated or factually false. Yet they shaped public opinion in both countries, and the damage to Bangladeshi trust was real. Simultaneously, social media discourse in India filled with references to military operations and aggressive scenarios directed at Bangladesh. These were not official government positions. But states are judged not only by what their governments formally declare, they are also judged by what their political culture tolerates and amplifies.
Border conduct has added another layer of tension. Bangladesh has formally raised complaints about push-in operations, instances where individuals were transferred across the frontier outside established diplomatic and verification procedures. Both countries possess functioning bilateral mechanisms for handling such matters. When those mechanisms are bypassed in favor of unilateral, informal action, it does not read as routine border management. It reads as political pressure. Many Bangladeshis have drawn precisely that conclusion.
Then there is the question of military signaling. Every state has the right to develop its defense capabilities, India’s sovereign right in this regard is unquestioned. But military posture also functions as a political language, and context determines meaning. Bangladesh has never made a territorial claim against India. It has never adopted an aggressive military stance. It has not joined any alliance directed against Indian interests. On the contrary, it has cooperated with India on security matters across successive governments. When security framing and military messaging intensify specifically toward a neighbor that poses no military threat, during a period of political strain, the message being communicated is not reassurance. A mature regional power should make its neighbors feel secure, not anxious.
Bangladesh today is pursuing a diversified foreign policy, strengthening relations with China, Malaysia, Türkiye, the Gulf states, Japan, and Europe. This is not anti-India policy. It is sovereignty in practice. India itself maintains concurrent relationships with the United States, Russia, and France without treating this as a contradiction. Bangladesh deserves the same latitude. A confident Bangladesh pursuing its interests through multiple partnerships is ultimately a more stable and reliable neighbor than one kept dependent and resentful.
India’s deepest strategic error, however, may be simpler than any of this. It treated the Awami League and Bangladesh as if they were the same thing. No political party, however long in power, is coterminous with a nation. Bangladesh existed before the Awami League and will continue long after it. By investing its political capital so completely in one electoral force, India created distance between itself and a large, diverse, and politically conscious society. That is the distance it is now struggling to close, from a position of diminished trust.
Bangladesh is not without its own responsibilities. Minority communities must be protected, not as a concession to external pressure, but as a constitutional and moral obligation. The rule of law must be upheld without exception. Foreign policy must be grounded in realistic national interest rather than reactive emotion. Political sentiment is not a substitute for strategic thinking. These obligations belong to Bangladesh regardless of what India does or does not do.
But responsibility in this relationship is not equally distributed. India’s sustained alignment with the previous government, its handling of the Hasina question, its border conduct, its tolerance of hostile narratives, and its position as the dominant regional power. all of this places the heavier burden of repair at New Delhi’s door.
What Bangladesh asks of India is not charity. It is recognition. Recognition that the Bangladesh of 2026 is not the Bangladesh of 2023. That its people made a sovereign political choice which deserves respect. That a relationship worth having must be founded on equality rather than managed through leverage.
Geography cannot be renegotiated. Diplomatic behavior can. And in the present moment, the first meaningful step toward rebuilding trust must come from India, not because Bangladesh is without fault, but because the country with the greater power and the longer record of consequential choices carries the greater obligation to move first.

Relations between neighboring countries work best when they are built on restraint, not assertion. For Bangladesh, the real issue is not whether India calls it a friend, but whether India’s behavior matches the standards of friendship. That question matters because trust in diplomacy is shaped far more by conduct than by vocabulary.
Bangladesh has consistently avoided hostility toward India. It has not claimed Indian territory, nor has it sought to project power across the border. Its position has been straightforward: peaceful coexistence, practical cooperation, and respect for sovereignty. In that context, any perception of pressure, asymmetry, or political interference naturally draws scrutiny.
A sovereign state has every right to defend itself. If India expands its military capacity or deepens its strategic partnerships, that is its prerogative. Bangladesh is no different. It may strengthen its own defense systems, choose its own suppliers, and build security ties according to its own national interests. Sovereignty is not a favor granted by neighbors; it is a constitutional reality.
The same applies to foreign policy. Bangladesh is not obliged to seek validation for its choices, whether in defense, diplomacy, trade, or technology. Its relationships with China, the United States, Türkiye, Japan, Pakistan, the European Union, Gulf states, or any other partner should be guided by one principle alone: Bangladesh’s national interest.
What troubles many Bangladeshis is not engagement itself, but the appearance of hierarchy. When a larger state expects deference while treating its own strategic moves as normal, the result is not confidence but resentment. Friendship cannot survive if one side assumes the role of instructor and the other is expected to remain compliant.
Border management has also become a sensitive issue. Allegations of push-ins, if true, are not minor administrative concerns. They carry human consequences and diplomatic weight. Such matters require transparent legal and diplomatic procedure, not actions that create the impression of unilateral control.
There is also growing discomfort over the use of Bangladesh’s internal issues, especially minority concerns, as a lever in external politics. The protection of minorities in Bangladesh is an internal responsibility of the Bangladeshi state. Raising such issues in good faith is one thing; using them to influence domestic politics is another.
Bangladesh today is not a country without leverage. Its economy has expanded, its strategic location matters, and its regional importance is increasing. That reality should encourage confidence, not dependence. A mature foreign policy must reflect that confidence by remaining independent, balanced, and firmly anchored in national interest.
Bangladesh is open to friendship with India. It is open to friendship with everyone. But friendship, to be meaningful, must be mutual. It cannot rest on pressure, imbalance, or assumptions of entitlement. If India wants to be seen as a genuine partner, it will need to demonstrate that it understands a simple truth: sovereign nations do not seek approval for being sovereign.

In contemporary geopolitical commentary, the specter of a large-scale military conflict between India and Bangladesh occasionally resurfaces, sometimes as a product of genuine security anxiety, and other times as inflammatory political rhetoric. Yet, while absolute certainty is a luxury foreign to international politics, a cold calculus of South Asian strategic realities reveals that a large-scale Indian invasion of Bangladesh remains highly improbable. Modern warfare has repeatedly demonstrated that raw firepower does not automatically translate into a successful occupation, nor does occupation guarantee strategic gain. For any decision-maker in New Delhi, regardless of bilateral tensions, a military campaign across the border represents one of the least rational options available.
The primary obstacle to any hostile outside force is Bangladesh’s underappreciated, defender-biased geography. The nation sits atop the world’s largest river delta, a labyrinthine network of thousands of rivers, floodplains, and wetlands that severely restricts the mobility of heavy armor and mechanized supply convoys. During the monsoon season, this terrain transitions from challenging to treacherous; flooding washes out infrastructure, degrades lines of communication, and transforms the landscape into an operational nightmare for an army unfamiliar with its fluid dynamics. Compounding this is the topography of the Chittagong Hill Tracts, which provides an ideal environment for protracted defensive and asymmetric operations.
Furthermore, military planners must account for the human element: population density and national consciousness. Housing over 170 million people within a highly compact territory, Bangladesh presents a recipe for unsustainable urban and guerrilla resistance. For Bangladeshis, sovereignty is not an abstract legal concept but a visceral component of national identity forged in the crucible of the 1971 Liberation War. Any foreign encroachment would inevitably trigger a massive mobilization of civil networks, ensuring that an invading force would face a hostile population capable of disrupting intelligence and logistics indefinitely. This resistance would be anchored by the Bangladesh Armed Forces, which have undergone two decades of steady modernization, enhancing their defensive, maritime, and airspace capabilities to impose severe, compounding costs on an adversary from day one.
From a defensive standpoint, India’s own geopolitical environment strongly discourages the opening of a new theater. New Delhi is already burdened with a complex, multi-front security matrix. To the west lies a volatile relationship with Pakistan, characterized by persistent cross-border friction and the long-standing dispute over Kashmir. To the north, a heavily militarized, unresolved border dispute with China across Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh demands continuous strategic focus and resource allocation. For India to entangle its forces in Bangladesh would be to court catastrophic strategic overextension, a vulnerability that Beijing and Islamabad would be highly likely to exploit through synchronized pressure on India’s existing fronts.
Crucially, India faces a severe internal chokepoint: the Siliguri Corridor. This narrow strip of land, colloquially known as the “Chicken’s Neck,” serves as the solitary overland artery connecting mainland India to its northeastern “Seven Sisters” states. The vulnerability of this corridor means that maintaining a stable, predictable relationship with Bangladesh is a structural necessity for Indian territorial integrity. Any major conflict in the delta would instantly reverberate across the Northeast, exacerbating localized ethnic tensions, threatening vital supply lines, and destabilizing a region that already requires delicate federal management.
Beyond regional dynamics, Bangladesh’s rising economic and maritime weight has integrated it deeply into the global architecture. Situated at the northern apex of the Bay of Bengal, the country sits at the geopolitical crossroads of South and Southeast Asia, a critical junction in the broader Indo-Pacific strategy. Major global actors, including the United States, China, Japan, and the European Union, hold expanding commercial and strategic stakes in Bangladesh. Any unilateral military action by India would immediately spark a high-level international political crisis, inviting severe global backlash, diplomatic isolation, and a rapid flight of foreign capital that would derail India’s aspirations of being recognized as a responsible global leader.
Ultimately, the most damning argument against an invasion is the total absence of a strategic prize. India holds no territorial claims over Bangladesh, nor are there resources or geographic assets that New Delhi cannot more efficiently access through trade and diplomacy. History offers no parallel here; the unique humanitarian and geopolitical variables of 1971 bear no resemblance to the realities of a modern, sovereign Bangladeshi state fully integrated into international economic systems.
For Dhaka, the strategic mandate remains clear: continue to fortify its national position by diversifying global partnerships, modernizing its defense architecture, and maintaining a fiercely independent, balanced foreign policy. An invasion of Bangladesh would not be a victory for an aggressor; it would be a costly, self-inflicted trap, a strategic reality that ensures it remains highly unlikely.

Population Reality

Muslims in India constitute one of the largest Muslim populations in the world. According to India’s 2011 official census, Muslims made up 15% of the country’s population, which today is estimated at more than 220-230 million people.

In contrast, Hindus in Bangladesh make up around 7% of the population, numbering approximately 14-15 million people.

In other words, the Muslim population of India is larger than the entire population of Bangladesh. Therefore, their social, political, and cultural presence would naturally be expected to be much greater.

Religious Freedom and Religious Practice

In Bangladesh, Hindus openly celebrate Durga Puja, Janmashtami, Rath Yatra, Kali Puja, Saraswati Puja and other religious festivals. These events receive security support from the state and administration and are widely covered at the national level.

Muslims in India also freely perform prayers, celebrate Eid, undertake Hajj, and operate madrasa education and religious activities. However, in recent years, controversies over the hijab, mosque-temple disputes, objections to the call to prayer (Azan), cow-related issues, and debates centered around religious identity have created concerns within the Muslim community.

Representation and Participation in the Mainstream

One important indicator of the actual condition of a minority community is its participation in the mainstream institutions of the state and society.

Although Hindus constitute around 7-8% of Bangladesh’s population, they have a significant presence in education, medicine, engineering, law, business, universities, the civil service, judiciary, and police. Various studies suggest that minority representation in some levels of the civil service, judiciary, and police ranges between 12-15%, which is nearly double their share of the population. In some professions, their participation is estimated to be as high as 20-25%.

Many secretaries, judges, police officers, doctors, teachers, industrialists, and cultural figures in Bangladesh come from the Hindu community.

On the other hand, although Muslims constitute about 15% of India’s population, their representation in the administration, police, judiciary, and other policy-making institutions has long been lower than their population share. Various studies have found that Muslim representation in the IAS, IPS, and higher government services remains around 3-5%, which is significantly lower than their population proportion—roughly one-fifth of what it would be if representation matched population size.

As a result, Hindus in Bangladesh appear to be comparatively overrepresented in many state and professional sectors relative to their population share, while Muslims in India remain underrepresented in several key state institutions despite being a much larger community.

Security of Places of Worship and Religious Sites

The demolition of the Babri Mosque in India was not merely the destruction of a building; it was a historic turning point that had a long-term impact on the sense of security among Indian Muslims. Since then, legal and political disputes surrounding several mosques, along with cases of mosque demolition or eviction, have attracted international attention.

In Bangladesh, incidents of attacks, vandalism, and arson targeting temples have occurred and are certainly concerning. However, there is no comparable example of a major historic temple being removed or demolished with direct state or court backing. In most cases, the authorities have stated that action would be taken against those responsible.

Citizenship and the State’s Approach

This is perhaps the most significant difference between the two situations.

The controversy surrounding the CAA and NRC in India emerged largely because many Muslims feared that citizenship verification processes could place them at greater risk. Many analysts viewed this as a form of structural pressure on Muslims. The nationwide protests, including the famous Shaheen Bagh movement, were fundamentally driven by concerns over citizenship and equal rights.

In Bangladesh, there has been no comparable state-level debate regarding the citizenship or constitutional status of Hindus. A Hindu citizen does not face the prospect of losing recognition as a Bangladeshi because of his or her religious identity.

Social Behavior and Public Space

Over the last decade, international media have documented numerous incidents in India involving Muslims being forced to chant “Jai Shri Ram,” being harassed over allegations of possessing or consuming beef, or being targeted because of their religious identity. These incidents do not represent the behavior of all Indians, but they are real and documented occurrences.

In Bangladesh, incidents of attacks, intimidation, and harassment against Hindus have occurred. However, there is no widespread, organized national pattern of forcing Hindus to recite Islamic declarations of faith, compelling religious conversion, or systematically forcing religious slogans upon them.

Protests, Assemblies, and Political Activism

In Bangladesh, Hindu groups have organized public rallies, human chains, demonstrations, and protests on issues related to minority rights, security, representation, and specific incidents. Such events generally take place openly.

Muslims in India also organize protests. However, the experience of the anti-CAA and anti-NRC movements demonstrated that large-scale Muslim-centered political protests often face greater political controversy, security scrutiny, and state response.

Media, Rumors, and Narrative Warfare

When attacks against Hindus occur in Bangladesh, a section of the Indian media often presents them as representative of the overall situation in Bangladesh.

Conversely, incidents involving discrimination or actions against Muslims in India are frequently explained as matters of law enforcement, removal of illegal structures, or local disputes, with less attention given to broader patterns and trends.

As a result, both countries experience not only real incidents but also competing narratives and information battles.

New Delhi wants the world to believe what happened to Dr Zahed Ur Rahman at Indira Gandhi International Airport was a paperwork issue. Nearly two and a half hours held at immigration, while the rest of his delegation walked through without incident, was apparently just routine screening. Nobody outside South Block actually believes that, and nobody should pretend to.
Dr Zahed is not a private citizen. He is the Adviser to Bangladesh’s Prime Minister on Policy and Strategy Affairs, and on Information and Broadcasting, leading his country’s official delegation to a meeting convened by India’s own Ministry of External Affairs. His visit was formally communicated in advance through a diplomatic note verbale. His government had done everything right. India still chose to make him wait.
The “computer glitch” defense does not survive contact with the facts. A flagged name, a routine check, an unfortunate coincidence, these are the excuses of an establishment that has been caught being petty and is now looking for cover. If this were truly administrative, the rest of the Bangladeshi delegation would not have cleared the same checkpoint without a hitch while their delegation leader was left standing for hours. Bureaucratic errors do not selectively target the one official whose government no longer takes orders from Delhi.
That is the real story here, and Delhi knows it. This is the same establishment that spent over a decade comfortable with a Dhaka that asked few questions and caused fewer problems. That arrangement ended last year. Bangladesh removed a government that had outsourced its spine, and what followed was not chaos, it was clarity. A country of 170 million people reasserted that its foreign policy answers to its own citizens, not to its largest neighbor’s preferences. Delhi has not metabolized that yet, and an immigration desk became the venue for its sulking.
To his credit, Dr Zahed did not swallow it quietly. When Indian officials offered, belatedly, to let him through, he declined and flew home through Colombo rather than accept an entry stamp on those terms. That is exactly the posture Dhaka has been missing for years. For too long, Bangladesh’s instinct was to absorb every slight quietly and call it diplomacy. Those days are over, and Delhi will need to get used to dealing with a neighbor that no longer performs gratitude for basic respect.
Dhaka’s response so far, summoning the Deputy High Commissioner and registering “deep disappointment,” is the correct first step and nothing more. A diplomatic note is not a deterrent. If Delhi believes a polite protest is the ceiling of Bangladesh’s response, it has learned nothing from the last year. The government should demand a direct, unconditional apology, not a quiet clarification buried in a press briefing.
The lesson here is not really about one airport or one official. It is about how long this government intends to let “routine screening” function as a euphemism every time Delhi wants to remind Bangladesh of the old order of things. The uprising settled that question domestically. It is past time it got settled at the border too.

There is a reason these expulsions happen at night. Light makes witnesses, and witnesses make accountability, which is precisely what India’s Border Security Force has spent the past month trying to avoid along its frontier with Bangladesh. According to Human Rights Watch, that effort has failed. Comprehensively.
Since 1 June, Bangladesh’s border guards have foiled 21 separate attempts by the BSF to force more than 200 people, among them children, through breaches in the barbed-wire fence and into Bangladeshi territory. This is not an aberration. Twenty-one incidents in a matter of weeks describes a system, not a mistake and systems require sign-off, infrastructure, personnel briefed and dispatched with intent.
The testimony assembled by HRW is difficult to read as anything other than what it is: state-enabled cruelty dressed in the bureaucratic language of migration control. In Panchagarh, ten people including children were stranded on an embankment in no man’s land for 75 hours, exposed to lightning and heavy rain, sustained by what witnesses called minimal food from the very force that had put them there. In Thakurgaon, a pregnant woman and her child were among those left stranded for nearly two days at the zero line before being taken back. These are not the conditions of a managed deportation process. They are the conditions of abandonment.
What makes the pattern harder to defend, not easier, is the documentation now sitting behind it. A union council member in Panchagarh recalls meeting a family from Siliguri carrying Aadhaar cards, India’s own proof of citizenship, whose eldest member had voted in four previous elections. Their names had simply vanished from a revised electoral roll, one of more than nine million removed in West Bengal ahead of March’s state elections and within months they were being walked toward a border that was never theirs to be walked toward. In Assam, a citizenship verification drive in 2019 left close to two million people stateless; Human Rights Watch reports that exclusion from voter rolls has since become, in one activist’s words, a trigger for arrest, detention and expulsion in itself.
West Bengal’s newly installed chief minister, Suvendu Adhikari, has been candid about the intent behind this machinery, describing a “detect, delete and deport” policy that he says has already forced nearly 5,000 people back across the border. Assam’s chief minister, Himanta Biswa Sarma, has been equally direct, telling Human Rights Watch that authorities “take them to a convenient location near the border” and “literally push them across”, an admission, in his own words, of exactly the practice his government’s diplomats might otherwise call unsubstantiated.
None of this withstands the standards India has signed up to. Arbitrary deprivation of citizenship, expulsion without due process, detention without access to legal representation these are violations of international human rights law, not policy choices a government gets to make unilaterally because the people affected happen to speak Bengali. The expulsion of children compounds the breach: the Convention on the Rights of the Child guarantees protection from arbitrary detention and a right to nationality that does not evaporate because an electoral roll was redrawn.
Bangladesh’s response throughout has been the position any sovereign state is entitled to take: no entry outside legal channels, no acceptance of anyone without verification, and no willingness to absorb the human cost of another country’s domestic political project. That is not intransigence. It is the baseline of how borders are meant to work between neighbors operating in good faith a standard India’s own conduct, documented now in granular and repeated detail, has failed to meet.
The Indian government has the means to dispute findings it considers unfair. What it does not have, after this month, is deniability. Twenty-one foiled attempts, nine witness accounts, and statements from its own state leadership describing the practice in plain terms have closed that door. The only question remaining is whether Delhi corrects course, or simply waits for the next moonless night.