‘Golden Chapter’ over, India hopes for a ‘Silver Chapter’ with BNP-led Bangladesh

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government in New Delhi on Friday moved fast to embrace the new reality in Bangladesh, where the lesser of the two evils for India beat the greater in the 13th parliamentary elections.

Modi called and congratulated Tarique Rahman after his Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) beat its former ally, Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), in the elections, which were held without the participation of the Awami League – the party that had won the last four parliamentary elections in the 54-year-old nation.

New Delhi is likely to invite him for an early visit to India once he takes over as the new prime minister of Bangladesh.

“I congratulated him on the remarkable victory in the elections in Bangladesh. I conveyed my best wishes and support in his endeavour to fulfil the aspirations of the people of Bangladesh,” the prime minister posted on X after speaking to the BNP chairperson. “As two close neighbours with deep-rooted historical and cultural ties, I reaffirmed India’s continued commitment to the peace, progress, and prosperity of both our peoples.”

Notwithstanding the BNP’s close ties with China and the history of acrimony between India and Bangladesh during his mother Begum Khaleda Zia’s stints as the prime minister in Dhaka, New Delhi has been reaching out to Tarique Rahman over the past few months, as most of the polls and the surveys ahead of the elections predicted an edge for his party.

New Delhi rather heaved a sigh of relief as the Islamist JI’s rise was stalled by the BNP, which took over the vacant centrist position in the politics of Bangladesh after the Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government fell in the wake of a mass agitation in July-August 2024, and her Awami League was subsequently banned and barred from contesting the elections.

Modi subtly underlined New Delhi’s expectation from Tarique Rahman’s new government in Dhaka. “India will continue to stand in support of a democratic, progressive and inclusive Bangladesh,” he wrote on X earlier in the day.

New Delhi has been voicing concerns over the rise of the radical forces and the persecution of the Hindus and other minority communities in Bangladesh in the past 18 months. This was one of the irritants between India and Muhammad Yunus’s interim government, which had taken over after the fall of Sheikh Hasina’s government in Bangladesh.

Given the JI’s radical ideology and its historical ties with Pakistan since the days of Muktijuddha or the Liberation War of Bangladesh in 1971, its ascent to power in Dhaka would have been the worst security nightmare for New Delhi.

But, despite its recent outreach to Tarique Rahman, New Delhi is likely to tread cautiously in its engagements with the BNP regime in Dhaka and remain on its toes, particularly in view of the party’s close ties with China, which has long been trying to expand its footprint in the eastern neighbourhood of India.

The BNP had, in the past, joined the JI and other forces in criticising Sheikh Hasina for her and her Awami League’s close ties with India, which was often accused of undermining the sovereignty of Bangladesh, despite funding a large number of infrastructure projects in the neighbouring country.

After the fall of Sheikh Hasina’s government, the BNP leaders had called for a comprehensive review of all agreements signed between New Delhi and Dhaka during her long stint in the office of the prime minister of Bangladesh. A BNP delegation, led by its secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, had visited Beijing and urged China to play a greater role in the development of infrastructure in Bangladesh.

The BNP, even till a few months back, criticised New Delhi for allowing the deposed prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, and other leaders of her Awami League to stay in India and hatch a conspiracy to destabilise Bangladesh.

Dhaka’s relations with New Delhi had come under stress during Khaleda Zia’s stints as prime minister of Bangladesh. Her government had allowed the militant organisation operating in the northeastern states of India to set up camps in Bangladesh.

She had turned down New Delhi’s request to Dhaka for connectivity through Bangladesh between India’s landlocked northeastern states and its mainland. The clashes between border guards of the two nations often escalated tension between the two nations. The bilateral relations returned to a positive trajectory after Sheikh Hasina’s return to power in early 2009.

New Delhi’s silence on the extradition of Sheikh Hasina remained an irritant in its ties with the interim government led by Muhammad Yunus in Dhaka. It may continue to plague the ties as the BNP may come under pressure from the JI and others to insist on the extradition of the former prime minister, who was awarded a death sentence in Bangladesh in November 2025, 15 months after she took refuge in India.

A parliamentary panel recommended that New Delhi’s decision on the request from Bangladesh should be guided by India’s humanitarian tradition of offering refuge to individuals facing existential threats.

Modi had, in March 2020, said that India and Bangladesh had scripted a “golden chapter” in bilateral ties during Sheikh Hasina’s tenure. With the Awami League’s return to politics uncertain, that phase might not come back soon. But, as an official in New Delhi said, India would always be ready to forge a more pragmatic “silver chapter” with a BNP government led by Tarique Rahman in Dhaka.