Delhi-Dhaka Reset

The return of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) to power under Tarique Rahman has reopened a question that Delhi can no longer postpone: what does a sustainable India-Bangladesh relationship look like when comfort with a single strong partner is no longer an option? For nearly a decade and a half, India’s approach was built around former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. The bargain was clear.

In exchange for close security cooperation, improved connectivity and a broadly India-friendly strategic posture, Delhi offered political backing that often looked like indulgence. The arrangement delivered tangible gains, especially against insurgent networks in India’s northeast, but it also carried a price. In Bangladesh, a growing section of public opinion came to see India not as a supportive neighbour but as a patron of an increasingly authoritarian order. The upheavals of 2024 and Sheikh Hasina’s flight into exile exposed how narrow that bet had been. The BNP’s landslide changes the geometry. Mr Rahman is signalling strategic autonomy, including renewed engagement with Pakistan. That is not inherently anti-India, but a claim to room for manoeuvre. India, however, cannot pretend history is irrelevant.

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The last BNP-led government, in coalition with Jamaat-e-Islami, coincided with serious security anxieties for Delhi, including the 2004 Chittagong arms haul allegedly meant for Indian rebel groups and attacks on Hindu minorities after the 2001 election. Those memories explain India’s caution today. But caution is not a strategy. Treating the new government primarily as a problem to be managed risks recreating the very resentments that hollowed out the old relationship. There is also the awkward matter of Sheikh Hasina’s presence in India. Her death sentence in absentia over the 2024 crackdown, and Delhi’s refusal to extradite her, has turned a former partner into a permanent irritant. India is under no obligation to make its legal decisions in Dhaka’s image, but it should recognise the political reality.

As long as Sheikh Hasina remains a charged symbol in Bangladeshi politics, every other negotiation will be harder. Quiet diplomacy about how her role recedes from centre stage would do more for stability than any public posturing. What should not be in doubt is the structural logic of cooperation. A 4,096-kilometre border, deep cultural links and dense trade ties make estrangement a fantasy. Bangladesh is India’s largest trading partner in South Asia; India is one of Bangladesh’s biggest export markets in Asia. The two militaries already exercise together and coordinate at sea. These are not the habits of adversaries. The real test is whether India can shift from a personality driven neighbourhood policy to an institution-driven one.

Engaging a BNP government on clear interests ~ security, water, trade, mobility ~ while lowering the rhetorical temperature at home would signal confidence, not weakness. For Dhaka, the burden is to prove that strategic autonomy does not mean strategic amnesia about the risks that once poisoned the relationship. A reset will not be dramatic. It will be procedural, incremental, and occasionally frustrating.