For nearly two decades, India's Bangladesh policy rested on a narrow proposition that Bangladesh meant the Awami League, and the Awami League meant Bangladesh.
Once that premise was accepted, much else became easier to explain. New Delhi maintained ‘unusually’ close relations with Sheikh Hasina's government through three disputed elections. India gained transit arrangements, port access, growing trade and, most importantly, security cooperation against insurgent groups operating in its Northeast.
Bangladesh received benefits too, but the unresolved disputes became harder to ignore. The Teesta water-sharing agreement remained unsigned. Access to Nepal and Bhutan through India remained constrained. Dhaka's plans for major infrastructure projects involving China repeatedly became subjects of Indian concern.
Then came August 2024.
Hasina's government collapsed and she fled to India. Whatever strategic logic had sustained Delhi's policy suddenly confronted its central weakness: India had invested heavily in a government while allowing its relationship with a country to become identified with that government.
The question now is not whether India and Bangladesh need each other. Geography settled that long ago. The question is whether Delhi can build a relationship with Bangladesh that survives changes of government.
The economic relationship illustrates both the depth of the connection and its imbalance.
Indian exports to Bangladesh rose dramatically during the Hasina years. Bangladesh became one of India's most important regional markets. Even during the political deterioration after 2024, commerce proved remarkably resilient. Indian government figures show exports to Bangladesh of $5.81 billion against imports of $1.07 billion in the six months from August 2024 through January 2025.
That imbalance matters politically.
Bangladesh accepted it partly for years because the broader relationship offered advantages like access to Indian markets, connectivity, electricity, investment and a large neighbouring economy. But economic asymmetry becomes more conspicuous when political trust disappears.
India's decision in April 2025 to withdraw a transshipment facility for Bangladeshi exports, followed by restrictions affecting some goods entering through land ports, therefore carried significance beyond trade. In Dhaka, such measures could easily be read as evidence that economic access remained vulnerable to political relations.
This is where Delhi's old model encounters a problem. Bangladesh is not merely a recipient of Indian concessions. It is also a substantial market for Indian producers. A durable relationship has to recognise both facts.
The political assumptions behind the old model have also been tested.
An influential argument in Indian strategic circles held that the Awami League was the principal barrier against Islamist politics in Bangladesh. The BNP was frequently portrayed as dependent on Jamaat-e-Islami, while an open political system was presumed to create greater space for Islamist forces.
Bangladesh's post-2024 politics proved more complicated.
The BNP emerged as the dominant parliamentary force in the 2026 election, while Jamaat and its allies formed a sizable opposition. Whatever one thinks of either party, the result made one point difficult to avoid: Bangladeshi politics could not indefinitely be understood as a choice between the Awami League and religious extremism.
Coalitions, electoral calculations, the collapse of established parties and the emergence of the National Citizen Party all mattered. So did the absence of the Awami League from the contest.
The lesson for Delhi is simply that Bangladesh has a political system of its own. Attempts to reduce it to one friendly party and a collection of dangerous alternatives produced a poor analytical framework.
Another problem has been India's tendency, particularly in sections of its political and media discourse, to discuss Bangladesh through a Pakistan-shaped security lens. The comparison obscures more than it explains.
Bangladesh has cooperated extensively with India on security. During the Hasina years, Dhaka acted against insurgent networks operating against India and handed over prominent figures associated with ULFA. That cooperation materially changed the security environment in India's Northeast.
ThePrint's Shekhar Gupta has also warned against placing Bangladesh and Pakistan in the same strategic category, arguing that doing so risks narrowing India's diplomatic options.
The border remains the most damaging contradiction.
Bangladeshi rights organisation Ain o Salish Kendra continues to document deaths involving India's Border Security Force. Its figures for January through November 2025 recorded 28 deaths—20 from shootings and eight attributed to physical torture.
India and Bangladesh have repeatedly discussed reducing lethal incidents at the frontier, yet deaths continue. ASK reported at least six more Bangladeshi deaths involving BSF gunfire or alleged torture between January and May 9, 2026.
The recent controversy over "push-ins" has added another source of friction. ASK said in June that people, including women and children, had reportedly been forced towards Bangladesh without transparent procedures to establish nationality. It called for identity disputes to be handled through lawful verification and bilateral cooperation.
For Delhi, these incidents carry a political cost disproportionate to their place in the wider relationship. Every border death makes the language of friendship harder to sell in Bangladesh.
India's own parliamentary language is revealing in a different way.
A report by the Indian Parliament's Standing Committee on External Affairs said the government had adopted a "calibrated policy of non-interference" in Bangladesh's internal political processes after August 2024 while maintaining engagement with the interim government and other political actors. The same report said India's overall approach to Bangladesh remained unchanged.
The formulation was presumably intended to reassure. In Bangladesh, it inevitably invited another question: what, precisely, had India's policy been before August 2024? That question has history behind it.
Before Bangladesh's 2014 election, Indian foreign secretary Sujatha Singh met HM Ershad while his Jatiya Party was threatening to boycott the vote. Ershad later publicly described their discussion in terms that reinforced suspicions that Delhi wanted his party to participate. The election eventually proceeded with 153 parliamentary seats uncontested.
Episodes such as this accumulated. So did perceptions that India had become invested not merely in stability in Bangladesh but in a particular political arrangement. Hasina's continued presence in India has made escaping that history more difficult.
From Delhi's perspective, giving refuge to a former head of government can be treated as a separate diplomatic matter. From Dhaka, her political activity while in India is inevitably interpreted through the history of India's relationship with her government.
The most consequential change since 2024 may be that Bangladesh itself has become less willing to organise its diplomacy around India.
That should not be confused with an anti-India foreign policy.
Dhaka has expanded relations with China and the United States while continuing to engage Delhi. India's new high commissioner has met senior figures across the Bangladeshi government. Trade continues. Officials continue talking. Neither country has much practical interest in turning political irritation into permanent estrangement.
But the terms have changed.
India earlier possessed advantages in Bangladesh that went beyond geography: political access, security cooperation, cultural familiarity and a government in Dhaka that regarded close relations with Delhi as strategically essential. Some of those advantages remain. The political monopoly does not.
That is why the debate over a visit by Prime Minister Tarique Rahman matters. A visit to Delhi would no longer function simply as diplomatic choreography. In Bangladesh's present political climate, it would need to produce something tangible.
The agenda is already obvious.
The Ganges Water Treaty expires in December 2026. Teesta remains unresolved. Border deaths continue. Trade barriers remain contentious. Bangladesh wants easier connectivity with Nepal and Bhutan and greater access for its exports to the Indian market. India, meanwhile, has legitimate interests in border management, transit, the security of its Northeast, minority protection and preventing Bangladeshi territory from being used by groups hostile to India.
None of these problems requires sentiment. Most require negotiation. That may actually help.
The language surrounding India-Bangladesh relations has long been burdened by history and gratitude. Such language is useful at banquets and increasingly ineffective elsewhere. Countries eventually ask what an agreement does, who benefits and whether it will survive the next election.
Bangladesh's large trade deficit with India gives Dhaka an economic interest in demanding better market access. India's geography gives it an enduring interest in a stable and cooperative Bangladesh. Bangladesh's position between India's mainland and Northeast makes connectivity valuable to Delhi. India's territory separates Bangladesh from Nepal and Bhutan, making cooperation valuable to Dhaka.
This is not friendship in the sentimental sense. It is interdependence.
So, Bangladesh needs a transactional, equitable relationship with India: no hostility, no hollow sentiment. Dhaka has already shown good faith. Since India's new High Commissioner, Dinesh Trivedi, arrived in late June, doors across the government have opened to him. He has met the prime minister, with the foreign minister and the PM's foreign affairs adviser present, as well as the finance minister, health minister and the PM's adviser on education and labour.
Last week, he met the Bangladesh Bank governor, who urged India to buy more from Bangladesh and invest in its industries. All this happened amid a diplomatic chill, even as the prime minister declined to travel to Delhi. Bangladesh has extended its hand. Delhi must decide how to respond.
The first step is to acknowledge the past. From Sujatha Singh's intervention in December 2013 to Hasina's flight in August 2024, India helped deepen Bangladesh's democratic deficit. Bangladeshis have not forgotten it. Nor have the students and young people who faced bullets in July forgotten where the former government's leaders fled.
India does not need to grovel, but it does need to recognise the damage. A signal of regret for its support of an increasingly authoritarian political order would do more for India's standing than another round of courtesy calls.
Delhi should also understand that these are not the demands of one party. Whether Bangladesh's future is shaped by a younger BNP generation, Jamaat or the NCP born of the uprising, India will confront many of the same questions.
First, respect the democratic will of Bangladeshis. End political patronage of Hasina and the Awami League, whether under her leadership, without her, or repackaged with new faces. Bangladeshis should decide the party's future through their courts and ballots, not through arrangements made in Delhi.
Second, respect our courts. Verdicts concerning the July killings, enforced disappearances and the killing of opposition activists should be treated seriously. India should process extradition requests, beginning with Hasina and including anyone accused in Osman Hadi's killing who is sheltering on Indian soil.
Cooperation over fugitives works both ways. Bangladesh handed over people India wanted; Dhaka expects reciprocity.
Third, stay out of our politics. No shadow financing, no sanctuary for sabotage, and no use of the "minority" or "militant" question as an instrument of political pressure.
Fourth, confront the hostility at home. India cannot seek Bangladeshi goodwill while anti-Bangladesh rhetoric flourishes within its own politics. In West Bengal and Assam, "Bangladeshi infiltrator" has become a campaign staple.
More troubling are public calls to carve territory from Bangladesh or seize Rangpur to widen the Siliguri Corridor. Delhi should disown such proposals unequivocally and make clear that Bangladesh's territorial integrity is not open for discussion.
Fifth, end the push-ins. What India calls "pushbacks" have included people forced across the border without proper nationality verification or due process. Between May 2025 and January 2026, the BSF pushed 2,479 people into Bangladesh, at least 120 of whom were later identified as Indian nationals. Since West Bengal's new BJP government took office in May on a "detect, delete and deport" platform, around 5,000 more have been expelled without judicial review.
Human Rights Watch has documented BSF personnel escorting groups through gaps in the border fence at night. Families carrying Aadhaar cards and voter IDs have been pushed across; one was returned only after the Calcutta High Court ruled its deportation illegal. Suspected Bangladeshi nationals should go through formal nationality verification and an agreed repatriation process. A border cannot substitute for due process.
Sixth, clear the road to Delhi. Anti-Indian sentiment is now strong enough that a Bangladeshi prime minister pays a political price for visiting India. Delhi can help change that. Renew the Ganges Water Treaty before it expires on December 12, 2026. Sign the Teesta agreement. Open meaningful transit to Nepal and Bhutan.
Bring border killings to zero in practice, not merely in communiqués. Remove port restrictions, non-tariff barriers and anti-dumping duties on Bangladeshi goods. Each substantive step would make a visit to Delhi easier to defend at home.
Bangladesh should use its leverage on trade as well. A $9–11 billion annual market is not a favour India grants Bangladesh; it is economic leverage Bangladesh possesses. Any comprehensive economic partnership should deliver genuine market access for Bangladeshi goods and safeguards against export restrictions being used as political pressure. If Indian supplies become unreliable, Dhaka should diversify.
In return, Bangladesh should continue addressing every credible Indian security concern. That is the bargain between sovereign neighbours: reciprocity, not dependency.
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Faiz Ahmad Taiyeb served as Special Assistant to the Chief Adviser of Bangladesh's interim government