India and Bangladesh are moving cautiously to repair frayed ties

Neighbours must seek common ground despite unresolved tensions

The past few weeks have seen a cautious but positive energy in India-Bangladesh relations. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), led by Tarique Rahman, won a landslide victory in the February elections this year. Since then, Delhi and Dhaka have made the right moves to stabilise a crucial relationship with shared history, culture and borders, which had ridden a storm since the student protests in 2024 that led to the ouster of Sheikh Hasina. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was among the first world leaders to congratulate Rahman after his win, despite India’s past ties with Hasina’s Awami League, which was barred from these elections.

The high-level visit to Delhi by Bangladesh’s new Foreign Minister, Khalilur Rahman, has just concluded. A veteran diplomat of measured words with a long-standing career at the UN, he served as National Security Advisor in the interim government led by Mohammad Yunus. He last visited India in November 2025 to attend the Colombo Security Conclave NSA meet, where he held talks with Ajit Doval at a time when anti-India rhetoric was running high in Bangladesh. In politics, it is rare for an appointee of a past government to be retained by a new leader in such a senior role, reflecting the trust placed in him by the Prime Minister.

Accompanying Rahman this time was another senior leader, Humayun Kobir, Foreign Affairs Advisor, who has the ear of the Prime Minister. The two men are at the helm of shaping foreign relations, including with India, the country’s largest neighbour. Interestingly, the visit was described as a goodwill one rather than an official engagement. Both sides refrained from on-camera media remarks, issuing only written statements to allow space for dialogue without the burden of outcomes and rhetoric. “Let us understand each other. Let us start slowly but steadily,” said a senior Bangladeshi official.

“There is widespread consensus that this visit shows a keenness on both sides to reset the relationship. A lot of work still needs to be done, but this visit is definitely a great beginning,” said Shafqat Munir of Dhaka-based think tank BIPSS. Mutual trust remains key to the future of bilateral ties. For Bangladesh, the emphasis is on “equity, fairness and mutual dignity” over and above individual issues of concern.

In his election manifesto, Tarique Rahman promised a “Bangladesh First” doctrine with the slogan “Friend Yes, Master No”, underlining that Dhaka would not be a puppet of any major power and would not interfere in others’ internal matters. For India, Bangladesh’s newfound closeness with the Pakistani establishment and ISI, along with the resurgence of Jamaat as the main opposition with 77 seats in Parliament, remain areas to watch. These issues were also on the table when Bangladesh’s intelligence agency chief, Major-General Kaiser Rashid Chowdhury, visited Delhi just days after Rahman’s swearing-in and held talks with the RAW chief and the Director-General of Military Intelligence.

“India’s security concerns in Bangladesh remain the same — no space for terrorism targeting India; no room for extremist ideologies that target India,” said Indrani Bagchi, CEO of Ananta Aspen. Delhi would not want a new lease of life for radical outfits such as HUJI (Harkat-ul-Jihad Islami) or JMB (Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh), or a repeat of past arms haul incidents aimed at causing security disruptions in India’s Northeast.

It has been learnt that Bangladeshi leaders stressed that Dhaka is “cognisant” of New Delhi’s security concerns, particularly regarding Pakistan, and would not allow them to be “compromised”. In a social media post marking Genocide Day, which commemorates the victims of March 25, 1971, Rahman recalled how Pakistani occupation forces killed Bangladeshis and described Operation Searchlight as “one of the most heinous genocides in history”. The message served as a reminder that the BNP government has not lost sight of the country’s brutal past, even as it renews ties with Pakistan. The government has also maintained that Bangladesh will not enter into security partnerships with any country, including the US or China.

Dhaka insists that the mistakes of the past must not be repeated and that relations should focus on people-to-people ties rather than individuals. The presence in India of Sheikh Hasina and her former home minister, Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal — both sentenced to death by the International Crimes Tribunal in Dhaka — remains a politically sensitive issue. However, the BNP government is engaging with New Delhi without making ties hostage to a single issue, even as their extradition remains a key demand, along with the handover of suspected killers of youth leader Shaheed Osman Hadi, who are currently in the custody of the National Investigation Agency (NIA). “Both sides agreed that the arrested individuals will be returned to Bangladesh in accordance with the procedures laid out in the extradition treaty between the two countries,” said a statement issued by Bangladesh’s Foreign Ministry.

For relations to truly stabilise, both sides will have to control polarising domestic rhetoric that casts a shadow over ties. Former senior diplomat Mohammad Sufiur Rahman, in a recent article in Prothom Alo, wrote: “Bangladeshis resent the unjustified labelling of Bengali-speaking populations as illegal migrants.” He added, “Additionally, the tendency to portray incidents in Bangladesh involving Hindus as religious persecution fuels mistrust.”

India would do well to ease up medical visas and resume cricketing ties with the neighbour once the unfortunate shrill rhetoric over Rohingya Muslims and Bangladeshi infiltrators by the BJP campaigners in Assam and West Bengal calms down. Dhaka is grateful for India’s recent diesel supply amid the global energy crisis driven by the war in West Asia. It is too early to tell if Tarique Rahman can deliver on his security guarantees to New Delhi. The median age of Bangladesh today is just 27 years. We must look at resetting relations today from a new lens of changed realities instead of just the 1971 war prism.

(The writer is a journalist and Visiting Faculty, Kautilya School of Public Policy)