Hasina’s August epiphany could hurt India-Bangla ties; needs mature handling

Bangladesh has seen a lot of political upheavals in August. For the former Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina, the month is particularly fraught: her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and most of her immediate family members were murdered on August 15, 1975 and, almost 50 years later, on August 5, 2024, she had to flee from Dhaka to save her life from angry mobs ravaging the streets of that nation’s capital.

After a couple of years in the relative obscurity of exile in India, while trials were being staged against her, Hasina chose the anniversary of her forced August exile to again cause an upheaval in the already unsettled political climate of Bangladesh, while simultaneously throwing a large spanner in the recently troubled relationship between India and her home country.

In an audio address to the media gathered in New Delhi’s Foreign Correspondents Club, the ousted Premier announced she would return to her country in December, a month associated in her mind with victory and good, to stand with the oppressed people of the country she said. Hyperbole and rhetoric aside, Hasina faces a death sentence should she actually return to Bangladesh, after she was tried in absentia by a special International Crimes Tribunal and sentenced to death on November 17, 2025 for committing “crimes against humanity” by ordering a brutal crackdown on anti-government protesters, including a large number of students, resulting in numerous deaths.

For the Tarique Rahman-led Bangladesh government, which came to power after the BNP (Bangladesh Nationalist Party) swept the peacefully conducted election in February, the announcement has thrown government functioning out of gear and relations with India again on a very slippery trajectory, despite India’s assertion that it was not involved with what transpired.

Dhaka has officially expressed outrage at the content, tone and tenor of Hasina’s statements in the one-way interaction with the media in Delhi, terming it “venomous vitriol” from the “absconding convicted genocider” and, again, urged India to hasten her extradition to Bangladesh. As pressure mounted in Bangladesh threatening to completely derail bilateral relations, India’s High Commissioner Dinesh Trivedi, a seasoned politician sent recently to Dhaka to stop the downward spiral in bilateral ties since Hasina’s ouster from office, managed to meet with PM Rahman and offer assurances of India’s deep commitment to the India-Bangladesh partnership and the people of that country. Bangladesh, too, will raise the level of its diplomatic engagement with India by sending the current Foreign Secretary, Asad Alam Siam, as its next envoy to New Delhi.

Trivedi’s hour long meeting has helped assuage some of Dhaka’s concerns on the bilateral front, but the prospect of Hasina’s return has sent alarm bells ringing within the Bangladesh security establishment and seen a churn in the polity, particularly the dispirited Awami League (AL) party which she leads. Hasina’s announcement could well have been intended by her to revive the Party, which has appeared moribund after it was banned as an entity from participation in any future polls.

It remains to be seen whether the likelihood of her return would revive the AL, but the possibility of her being assassinated is real, giving the government nightmares. The optics of such an eventuality would severely tarnish the BNP government’s international standing, while incarcerating her behind bars would provide the AL a focal point around which to rally. It would also provide other opposition parties like the Jamaat-i-Islami, which played a pivotal role in arranging Hasina’s ouster, to revive and intensify their political activity.

With Rahman’s clear electoral victory, parties like the Jamaat have taken a back seat and allowed the new PM to focus on getting the economy back on track. For that to happen, India is a very central part of the equation. China may have deep pockets, but its model of economic assistance has led to disastrous results in neighbouring Sri Lanka, for example. India is the closest neighbour and, despite the communal vitriol spewed about “infiltrators and terrorists” around election season, particularly from administrators in Assam, is still counted as a vital stakeholder in the welfare of the people of Bangladesh. It needs to step up that role by focusing on the people, who remain the primary stakeholders in the relationship.

For New Delhi, hastening Hasina’s extradition is not an option being seriously explored, despite India being identified in Bangladesh as Hasina-centric. Instead, reviving the real people-to-people linkages, such as border “haats’ or trading outposts across West Bengal and the North-Eastern states, providing greater access, particularly for medical care and tourism, and improving ground level connectivity, such as improved power grid and rail links, reportedly close to Rahman’s vision for economic revival, is part of the package of proposals Trivedi carried to Delhi after his meeting with the Bangladesh PM.
These, and incremental measures such as concessions in river waters agreements is what India would be considering in the short term to counter some of the very negative bilateral fallout of Hasina’s August epiphany.

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