Relations between India and Bangladesh have reached a new low, with recent remarks by Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar highlighting growing frustrations in New Delhi with Dhaka’s interim government and its shifting stance on bilateral relations, analysts have said.

“Every day, someone in the interim government stands up and blames India for everything,” Jaishankar complained during a public function in Delhi on Monday.

“You cannot, on the one hand, say I would now like to have good relations with you, but I get up every morning and blame you for everything that goes wrong.

“They have to make up their minds on what kind of relationship they want to have with us, going forward,” the Indian foreign minister said, adding that the two countries had a very close relationship going back to 1971.

Jaishankar’s comments came about a week after his meeting with his Bangladeshi counterpart, Touhid Hossain, in Muscat.

Hossain was quoted by Bangladesh state-run BSS news agency responding to Jaishankar’s comments, saying: “India also needs to decide what kind of relationship it wants with Bangladesh.”

Bilateral relations have been strained ever since former Bangladesh prime minister Sheikh Hasina took refuge in India after student-led protests toppled her regime in August.

Bangladesh’s interim government, led by Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, has struggled to maintain peace and stability. Delhi has expressed particular concern over reports of attacks on Hindu minorities in the Muslim-majority country.
Bangladesh gained independence from Pakistan in 1971 after a war of liberation that was supported by India. It was previously known as East Pakistan and had been part of colonial India before the partition in 1947.

India’s concerns about Bangladesh’s new dispensation have been heightened by Dhaka openly engaging with Islamabad over the past few months, while having limited outreach to Delhi, analysts have said.

“While any country is free to engage with another, the signalling and the optics is something that India is not pleased about,” said Sreeradha Datta, international-relations professor at Jindal Global University in Haryana.

Members from Bangladesh Nationalist Party, the country’s only major political party besides Hasina’s deposed Awami League, have been coming to Delhi, but meetings have only been taking place at informal levels.

“This is because the ground reality in Bangladesh is that nobody likes India now. On the other hand, India feels that you [Bangladesh] can risk talking openly to China and Pakistan, so why not with India,” Datta said.

Arch-rivals India and Pakistan have fought three wars and built up their armies but also developed nuclear weapons.

Relations between India and Pakistan have gone through periods of thaw but have been largely frozen since they downgraded diplomatic ties in tit-for-tat moves in 2019 following an attack by a Pakistan-based militant group on a military base in Indian-administered Kashmir.

For Bangladeshi officials, “it is a very sensitive issue for them to openly say we are engaging with India”, Datta said. “However, there are some positive points in the relationship with India as Bangladesh has started giving tourist visas to Indians and India may reciprocate the gesture soon.”

According to analysts, Delhi is worried Bangladesh may cede ground to Pakistan-based militant groups, who may use the territory to open another front against India.

Those fears have been exacerbated by the continued domestic instability in Bangladesh that Indian officials feel could become a breeding ground for such militant groups.

Residents in southern Bangladesh on Monday attacked an air force base following an altercation, prompting soldiers from the base to open fire, killing at least one person and injuring several others, local media reported.

“There is clearly a straight breakdown of the law and order situation in Bangladesh, which is evident from the attack at the Bangladesh air force base and there are also videos being circulated of people barging into stores, taking money and threatening people,” Datta said.

“The Bangladesh police and security forces are not able to come to grips in restoring law and order. Things are just not settling down.”

Priyajit Debsarkar, a London-based author who specialises in writing about Bangladesh, said the souring of diplomatic relations had plumbed to new depths.

“The law and order situation in Bangladesh has almost crumbled. We see repeated targeting and atrocities directed especially towards the minorities,” he said.

Debsarkar cited incidents such as the gang rape of female passengers aboard a bus during a robbery, and acts of violence and arson directed at shops and establishments in the lead-up to the holy month of Ramadan for the country’s majority Muslims.

“A point of no return may soon be breached as India also has red lines which cannot be crossed,” he said. “The interim government [in Bangladesh] must not only appreciate, but also enforce [stability] when it comes to [managing] bilateral relationships.”

The domestic instability was exacerbated by economic woes, which had worsened as a result of Washington’s recent suspension of funding from the United States Agency for International Development that used to support a plethora of welfare programmes, analysts added.