[🇧🇩] Indo-Bangla Relation: India's Regional Ambition, Geopolitical Reality, and Strategic Options For Bangladesh

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BNP will prioritise ending 'India's hegemony': Mirza Fakhrul

Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir has said that if his party comes to power with the people’s mandate, it will place special priority to the issues of Farakka and the Teesta. He said they would stress on fair water sharing and border killings will...

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BNP will prioritise ending 'India's hegemony': Mirza Fakhrul
Staff CorrespondentChapainawabganj
Published: 15 Nov 2025, 16: 27

BNP secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir speaks to newspersons after paying visit to the rubber dam built over the Mahananda River in Chapainawabganj. Prothom Alo.

Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir has said that if his party comes to power with the people’s mandate, it will place special priority to the issues of Farakka and the Teesta.

He said fair water sharing and border killings will receive greater emphasis, and the party will give stronger priority to stopping what he described as ‘India’s hegemony’ over Bangladesh.

The BNP secretary general made the remarks while speaking to newspersons following a visit to the rubber dam built over the Mahananda River in Chapainawabganj.

Mirza Fakhrul further said India is a neighbouring country and can easily maintain good relations with Bangladesh if it chooses to.

He added, “India helped during the 1971 Liberation War. They need to support Bangladesh much more. But unfortunately we have seen the opposite. The Modi government has pressured Bangladesh. They have taken everything and given us nothing.”

Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir came to Chapainawabganj to join a public rally organised as part of the ‘Save Padma, Save the Country; Bangladesh First’ movement.

The rally will be held on Saturday afternoon at the grounds of Nawabganj Government College.​

 

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How India and Bangladesh are reinforcing each other’s extremes

When Sheikh Hasina's long reign finally ended in 2024, Bangladesh found itself at an uncertain crossroads not just of leadership but also of identity.

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How India and Bangladesh are reinforcing each other’s extremes

VISUAL: ANWAR SOHEL

When Sheikh Hasina's long reign finally ended in 2024, Bangladesh found itself at an uncertain crossroads not just of leadership but also of identity.

The void she left behind has seen the familiar symbols of Islamic politics resurface with increasingly assertive confidence. What was once confined to the periphery of religious activism is now finding its way into mainstream political conversation. And while this development owes partly to fatigue with what some view as Hasina's secular authoritarianism, it also carries the shadow of a larger regional transformation: the rise of Hindutva in India.

To understand this resurgence, one must first understand the paradox of Hasina's secularism. During the course of her rule, Awami League "transformed" secularism from an ideal of freedom into a rhetoric of control. It came to be associated with censorship, patronage, and the systematic weakening of any political opposition. When power became synonymous with a single party, the moral authority of its secular project collapsed. Into that disillusionment stepped those who could offer moral clarity, or at least the illusion of it. Islamist groups, with their grassroots welfare networks and uncorrupted image, provided a counter-narrative: faith as justice, religion as purity, and politics as moral restoration. But this internal crisis has been quietly amplified by what has been happening across the border.

As India wraps itself in the saffron robe of majoritarian nationalism, the ideological heat radiates beyond its territory. Bangladesh is often receptive or vulnerable to Hindutva's language of cultural supremacy, which asserts that India's soul is "intrinsically" Hindu and that minorities must either adapt or fade. Here, it stirs both anger and anxiety. Each time an Indian leader invokes the term "Hindurashtra," or a television channel in Delhi debates "Bangladeshi infiltrators," the emotional boundary between the two nations hardens. And in that tightening, the call for Islamic identity in Bangladesh finds further strength.

For many young Bangladeshis, the contrast feels almost inevitable. If India is unashamedly Hindu, why should Bangladesh not be proudly Muslim? If our neighbours can blend faith with nationhood, why must we keep away from our own religious heritage? These are not militant questions; they are identity questions, but they are precisely the kind of questions that Islamist politics thrives on. The danger is not in the question itself, but in the answers that populists are waiting to provide. The politics of reaction has long been a South Asian trait; we define ourselves by what we are not or what we stand against. In the 1970s, Bangladesh defined itself against Pakistan's theocracy. Today, it risks defining itself against India's Hindutva.

The two stances mirror each other more than either side would admit.

Each claims to protect faith from persecution, and each uses that fear to consolidate power. The saffron in Delhi feeds off the green in Dhaka, and vice versa. The border has thus become a mirror reflecting their extremes.

Social media has intensified this cycle. Hindutva-linked accounts amplify stories of "Hindu persecution" in Bangladesh, often distorted or fabricated, to fuel outrage at home. In response, Islamist voices in Bangladesh share clips of Indian mobs attacking Muslims, portraying them as proof that secularism is a lie and that only an Islamic order can ensure dignity. Each side validates the other's deepest suspicions in a digital duet of resentment.

None of this is to absolve Bangladesh of its responsibilities. The rise of Islamic politics here is rooted, to a large extent, in domestic discontent emanating from unemployment, inequality, corruption, and the absence of credible secular leadership. But to ignore the external dimension is to miss half the story. Majoritarianism, like any ideology of exclusion, is contagious.

When a community asserts religious supremacy, its neighbours feel compelled to do the same. In South Asia's fragile mosaic, identity insecurity spreads faster than ideology itself.

The tragedy is that both nations once shared a vision of pluralism where faith coexisted with freedom, and culture transcended creed. Bengal's history is full of saints, poets, and reformers who championed a syncretic ethos that bound Hindu and Muslim communities in a shared cultural life.

Today, however, the bridges built over centuries are being dismantled, and increasingly replaced by walls of rhetoric and flags of faith. But identity imposed by fear and intimidation is no identity at all.

For Bangladesh, the path ahead is delicate. It cannot afford to let the failure of one secular elite hand victory to another form of absolutism. Nor can it remain blind to the ways regional politics shape domestic sentiments. True secularism must be rebuilt from within through justice, accountability, principled politics, and respect for faith, but without surrendering to it as a state.

For India, too, there is a warning. Hindutva's triumphalism may rally votes, but it corrodes the region's delicate balance. The more India defines itself by exclusion, the more it empowers its neighbours' exclusionary politics in return. A Hindu India and an Islamist Bangladesh are not opposites; they are reflections of the same insecurity, dressed in different colours.

South Asia does not need another partition of the mind. What it needs is an honest reckoning with the dangerous symmetry that has emerged across its borders. Until both nations learn that faith cannot be the foundation of citizenship and that pride cannot replace pluralism, the crescent and the saffron will continue to glare at each other, serving neither nation's future.

Arman Ahmed is a research analyst specialising in geopolitics and international relations.​

 

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National security advisor off to Delhi a day early

A senior official from India's National Security Council Secretariat welcomed Khalilur Rahman at the Indira Gandhi International Airport in India.

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National security advisor off to Delhi a day early
Diplomatic Correspondent Dhaka
Published: 18 Nov 2025, 20: 21

National Security Advisor Khalilur Rahman Prothom Alo

National Security Advisor Khalilur Rahman was scheduled to go to Delhi on Wednesday to attend the meeting of National Security Advisors of the Colombo Security Conclave (CSC).

Abandoning that plan, he went to the Indian capital today, Tuesday.

An Indian diplomatic source informed Prothom Alo that Khalilur Rahman arrived in Delhi after 6:30 PM.

A senior official from India's National Security Council Secretariat welcomed him at the Indira Gandhi International Airport in India.

Diplomatic sources in Dhaka and Delhi told this correspondent that the seventh conference of the CSC National Security Advisors will be held next Thursday (20 November) at Hyderabad House in Delhi.

The alliance's security advisors' meeting will start in the morning and conclude after lunch. Khalilur Rahman is scheduled to leave Delhi for Dhaka in the afternoon of the same day.

National Security Advisor Khalilur Rahman went to Delhi at a time when the International Crimes Tribunal has sentenced the ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, convicted of crimes against humanity, to death. The interim government has already requested India to hand over Sheikh Hasina, who is currently sheltered in Delhi, to Bangladesh.

Foreign Affairs Advisor Md Touhid Hossain told reporters that a letter is being sent to India requesting her repatriation in accordance with the extradition treaty.

All in all, there is curiosity about whether National Security Advisor Khalilur Rahman will discuss the relationship between the two countries with his Indian counterpart, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, during his stay in Delhi.

Ajit Doval invited Khalilur Rahman last month to attend the Colombo Security Conclave National Security Advisors' conference. His visit marks only the second visit by an advisor of the interim government to India in over a year. Earlier this year, Energy Advisor Muhammad Fouzul Kabir Khan visited India in February to participate in the India Energy Week.​

 

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Khalilur Rahman holds a meeting with Ajit Doval in Delhi

Bangladesh’s National Security Adviser Khalilur Rahman has held a meeting with India’s National Security Adviser Ajit Doval in Delhi. Khalilur Rahman, visiting Delhi to attend the National Security Advisers’ conference of the Colombo Security Conclave (CSC), met with the delegation led by Ajit...

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Khalilur Rahman holds a meeting with Ajit Doval in Delhi
Diplomatic Correspondent Dhaka
Published: 19 Nov 2025, 19: 59

Bangladesh’s National Security Adviser Khalilur Rahman and India’s National Security Adviser Ajit Doval. Khalilur Rahman is visiting Delhi to attend a conference at the invitation of Ajit Doval.

Bangladesh’s National Security Adviser Khalilur Rahman has held a meeting with India’s National Security Adviser Ajit Doval in Delhi.

Khalilur Rahman, visiting Delhi to attend the National Security Advisers’ conference of the Colombo Security Conclave (CSC), met with the delegation led by Ajit Doval along with his own delegation.

During the meeting, discussions were held on the activities of the Colombo Security Conclave as well as various important bilateral issues between Bangladesh and India.

On Wednesday evening in Delhi, the Bangladesh High Commission shared this information on their official X handle.

Khalilur Rahman extended an invitation to Ajit Doval to visit Bangladesh.

Khalilur Rahman went to Delhi on Tuesday to attend the seventh conference of National Security Advisers of the Colombo Security Conclave (CSC).

He will participate in the conference tomorrow, Thursday, at Hyderabad House in Delhi.​