Bangladesh's political upheaval since Sheikh Hasina's ouster in 2024 has strained ties with India, amplified by foreign influences and the mysterious killing of youth leader Sharif Osman Hadi. This post examines recent developments, emerging leaders, external roles, and future trajectories for both nations.
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| India - Bangladesh |
Historical Context of Ties
India and Bangladesh shared strong bonds under Hasina's Awami League, rooted in 1971 liberation support and expanded through trade, security, and connectivity projects. New Delhi viewed Dhaka as a counterweight to extremism and a Northeast gateway.
Key milestones included:
Power-sharing agreements and transit rights for Indian goods.
Joint counter-terrorism efforts against groups like ULFA.
Economic interdependence, with Bangladesh as India's largest trading partner in South Asia.
Hasina's authoritarian drift drew criticism, but it aligned with India's strategic needs, fostering a personal rapport between leaders.
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The 2024 Monsoon Revolution
Student protests against job quotas in July 2024 escalated into a mass uprising, toppling Hasina on August 5. Brutal crackdowns killed hundreds, prompting her flight to India.
Protests symbolised youth frustration with dynastic rule and corruption.
Post-resignation violence targeted Awami League symbols, with Human Rights Watch documenting potential crimes against humanity.
Muhammad Yunus's interim government took charge, promising reforms and elections by late 2025 or early 2026. This shift disrupted India's preferred stability.
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Emergence of New Leaders and Hadi's Assassination
Youth figures like Sharif Osman Hadi of Inqilab Moncho rose as anti-Hasina voices, demanding genuine democracy. Hadi's organisational skills made him a threat to the old elites.
On December 12, 2025, assailants shot Hadi in Dhaka; he died on December 18 in Singapore. Riots followed, hitting Indian-linked sites amid claims that attackers fled to India and ties to the banned Chhatra League.
Hadi's death fueled narratives of backchannel sabotage against rising heirs.
His party issued ultimatums to Yunus, escalating unrest.
This martyrdom hardened anti-India sentiment, viewing New Delhi as protector of Hasina-era networks.
Foreign Elements in the Upheaval
India has sheltered Sheikh Hasina post-exile, facing backlash over extradition refusal and imposing trade curbs on Bangladeshi goods, which has eroded trust and triggered attacks on Indian missions.
China, meanwhile, advances with infrastructure loans and port/airfield projects near the Siliguri corridor, positioning itself as an alternative patron amid the anti-India wave.
Pakistan engages through ideological outreach via religious networks and naval visits signaling a thaw, reviving 1971 tensions while aiding Bangladesh's balancing act against India.
The US and West push human rights probes with limited direct sway, primarily supporting Yunus but remaining secondary to these Asian rivals.
Overall, India closely monitors China's growing footprint, with the Hadi assassination case amplifying suspicions of cross-border intrigue.
Strains in Bilateral Relations
Post-Hasina, ties face trade disputes, border tensions, and rhetoric questioning Indian hegemony.
Hasina's death sentence in November 2025 heightened extradition demands that India resists.
Yunus engages New Delhi pragmatically, but BNP revival and street anger complicate resets.
Shared challenges like the Teesta water-sharing linger unresolved.
Public perception casts India as a meddler, risking long-term isolation.
Future Scenarios and Pathways
As Bangladesh teeters on the edge of transformation or turmoil in early 2026, journalists tracking the subcontinent's fault lines see three plausible paths forward, each carrying profound risks and opportunities for India-Dhaka ties.
In the most hopeful scenario, credible elections later this year will usher in a pluralistic order where youth leaders channel their energy into parties rather than streets, allowing India to pivot from Hasina-era favouritism toward broad-based economic aid and people-centric diplomacy that rebuilds frayed trust. Yet dark clouds loom: if Yunus's interim regime or a narrow elite coalition entrenches power through selective justice and security crackdowns, cycles of protest and assassinations—like Hadi's chilling end—could spiral, pushing Bangladesh into factional violence that further alienates New Delhi and invites trade wars.
Worse still, a geopolitical tilt toward China-dominated infrastructure could encircle India's vulnerable Northeast, amplifying encirclement fears as Beijing's ports and airfields reshape the strategic map, while Pakistan's subtle ideological inroads stoke 1971 ghosts.
For India, the playbook is clear but urgent: embrace non-interference, prioritize equity in water-sharing and trade, and counter rivals through collaboration rather than confrontation—or risk watching a historic partnership slip into irrelevance amid Dhaka's revolutionary aftershocks.
Conclusion: Opportunities Amid Uncertainty
In the swirling aftermath of Bangladesh’s 2024 Monsoon Revolution and the shadow of Sharif Osman Hadi’s mysterious December 2025 assassination, India-Dhaka relations stand at a precarious crossroads—one that savvy subcontinental watchers see not just as a bilateral test but as a microcosm of broader geopolitical chess involving Delhi, Beijing, and, lurking in the wings, Western powers with their own destabilizing agendas.
Journalists poring over the debris of torched Indian missions, trade ledgers strained by retaliatory tariffs, and whispered intelligence reports can’t ignore the stark reality: Hasina’s exile in New Delhi, the alleged flight of her Chhatra League-linked assassins across the border, and Yunus’s fragile interim balancing act have poisoned the well of trust, turning a once-sturdy partnership forged in 1971’s blood into a tinderbox of resentment and recrimination.
Yet amid this fog of fury, analytical eyes discern glimmers of renewal—if India plays its cards with uncharacteristic finesse, ditching Hasina-era hubris for a diplomacy that courts Bangladesh’s rising youth heirs, not just its dynastic relics.
Dig deeper, however, and a chilling pattern emerges, one that conspiracy-minded analysts in Delhi’s think tanks and Dhaka’s street cafés have long suspected: a Western hand, subtle yet insidious, stoking Bangladesh’s flames to keep India perpetually off-balance while carving out strategic perches to monitor a rising China. Consider the timeline—US-funded NGOs amplifying the quota protests into a full-throated revolution, Human Rights Watch reports timed to delegitimise Hasina just when India needed her most, and now, post-Hadi, muted Western pressure on Yunus to “reform” while funnelling aid that props up anti-India rhetoric without demanding accountability for the youth leader’s killers.
It’s no coincidence, these observers argue, that Washington’s focus on “democracy promotion” in Dhaka dovetails with its Red Sea obsession: a destabilised Bangladesh becomes a pressure valve on India’s eastern flank, diverting Delhi’s bandwidth from the Indo-Pacific to border headaches, all while the US bolsters its naval chokehold on China’s oil arteries through Bab-el-Mandeb. With Hadi’s back-channelled elimination—rumours swirl of Western intelligence whispers greasing the wheels for “acceptable” chaos—Bangladesh risks morphing into Washington’s perfect South Asian canary, chirping instability to keep India reactive and China encircled via proxy.
The analytical case builds on hard geography and incentives. India’s Siliguri Corridor, that slender “chicken’s neck” lifeline to its Northeast, lies perilously exposed to Dhaka’s volatility; a Hadi-style martyrdom every election cycle ensures no stable government emerges to lock in Indian connectivity deals, leaving the corridor vulnerable to the very Chinese airfields and ports Beijing is busily auctioning off in post-Hasina Bangladesh. Western fingerprints?
Look at the funding trails: USAID grants to student agitators pre-2024, think tank papers from DC framing Hasina as an “authoritarian” to justify regime change, and now, selective sanctions that punish Indian-linked firms but spare Chinese ones. This isn’t happenstance—it’s a classic containment playbook, updated for the 2020s: destabilize India’s backyard to hobble its China focus, while dominating the Red Sea to squeeze Beijing’s 80% energy imports via that chokepoint.
Hadi’s death fits too neatly: a rising “heir” who rallied against elite capture, silenced just as BNP-Zia forces (with their pro-Pakistan leanings) regroup, ensuring Bangladesh stays fractious, non-aligned in name only, and a perpetual thorn for Delhi.
But here’s where journalism meets prescription: India holds the agency to flip this script, transforming peril into parity. Start with public diplomacy that humanises—floodlight cultural exchanges, youth scholarships, and flood relief that sidesteps Yunus’s politicos for Bangladesh’s street-level aspirants, the very Hadis of tomorrow.
Economically, double down on equity: fast-track Teesta water-sharing, zero-tariff access for Bangladeshi textiles, and joint ventures in green energy that undercut China’s debt traps without the stench of patronage. Strategically, New Delhi must call the West’s bluff—publicly demand transparency on Hadi’s probe, tie aid to extradition progress on Hasina, and weave a subcontinental narrative exposing how US “democracy” dollars fueled the assassins’ safe houses.
Lean into multilateralism too: revive BIMSTEC as an India-Bangladesh anchor against Chinese inroads, while quietly courting BNP moderates with security pacts that neutralise Islamist creep without evoking 1971 ghosts.
The payoff? A Bangladesh that institutionalises its revolution—elections by mid-2026, yielding a BNP-Awami hybrid wary of Beijing but hooked on Indian markets—while India sheds its “big brother” baggage for genuine peer status. Ignore the Western conspiracy at peril, though: without countering this destabilisation axis, Delhi risks a Bangladesh locked in Hadi-esque cycles, China’s ports sprouting unchecked, and a Red Sea-strangled China lashing out unpredictably, dragging India into proxy wars it can’t afford.
For the subcontinent’s journalists and analysts, the insight is sobering: Hadi’s blood isn’t just a Dhaka tragedy; it’s a flare signalling how far the West will go to check India’s rise, using Bangladesh as the board and its youth as pawns. India’s move now decides if this is an apocalypse or an opportunity—forge resilient ties that weather assassins and agitators, or watch the neighbourhood burn under foreign matches. The clock ticks; history, rarely patient, awaits no one.
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