One of India's geopolitical nightmare scenarios became a reality on August 5. On that day, a student-led, military-backed coup succeeded against neighboring Bangladesh's India-friendly Awami League government, led by Prime Minister (PM) Sheikh Hasina. Following the transition, Hasina fled to India, where she now resides, and New Delhi has since become increasingly concerned about the policies of the interim government, led by Nobel Prize laureate and octogenarian Mohammad Yunus. While Indian worries are reasonable, the challenges certainly are not insurmountable, especially if New Delhi plays its cards right.
From India's perspective, the revolution in Bangladesh creates a number of headaches. For a start, throughout most of its history, Bangladesh—a nation New Delhi helped birth in 1971 when it supported the Bengali people against Pakistani genocide there—had been cooperative and loyal to India, and now, that relationship is tense and even adversarial. Hasina's Awami League government, which had ruled for 15 consecutive years, had been particularly accommodating of New Delhi's wishes. During this self-proclaimed golden chapter, the two sides cooperated on the full range of issues, including trade and regional connectivity, border security, and counterterrorism.
Today, it is far less certain whether such cordial and productive ties will continue. Dhaka, for example, appears to have changed its border policy. Under Hasina, the Bangladeshi border guard was allegedly told to “turn their backs” on violations, but the interim government's home minister recently said “that will not happen anymore.” Following the coup, Bangladeshi border troops prevented Indian forces from building a barbed wire fence. To take another example, the Hasina government cracked down on Islamist groups and jailed Islamic terrorist organizations. The interim government is instead welcoming the main Islamist opposition party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), to once again play a role in domestic politics. The government lifted the Awami League's previous ban of Jamaat-e-Islami, an Islamist group inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood and with close ties to Islamists in Pakistan. It also released Jashimuddin Rahmani, the chief of Ansarullah Bangla Team, which is essentially the al Qaeda of South Asia, raising fears in New Delhi of renewed terrorist attacks.…
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