Bangladesh's BRICS snub signals deeper India tensions over exiled PM Hasina

When India convened its BRICS summit in New Delhi earlier this month, Bangladesh's Prime Minister Tarique Rahman did not attend. The Indian government extended two separate invitations: one to participate in an outreach session as chair of BIMSTEC, a regional grouping of nations around the Bay of Bengal, and another for a bilateral visit. In Dhaka, however, the distinction felt deliberate. Rahman was not invited as prime minister to the summit itself, only in his capacity as a regional chair—a departure from how India had treated his predecessor, Sheikh Hasina, who received invitations as premier to previous BRICS events despite Bangladesh not being a member state.

The episode reflects a relationship that has deteriorated sharply since Hasina's ouster in 2024 following massive protests and a violent government crackdown. She fled to India, where she has remained in exile. Last year, a Bangladeshi court convicted her in absentia of crimes against humanity related to the state's response to the uprising and sentenced her to death. Hasina has rejected the verdict as politically motivated. For Bangladesh, her presence in India represents an unresolved wound. The government has demanded her extradition so she can face trial, a demand India has not met.

The bilateral relationship entered its worst period in years after Hasina's departure. India curtailed visa services. Disputes multiplied over her asylum, the management of the shared border, and allegations that Indian authorities were forcibly returning undocumented Bengali-speaking migrants—mostly Muslim—across the frontier without proper legal process, a practice Bangladeshis call "push-ins." When Rahman's Bangladesh Nationalist Party won elections in February, some thaw began. India resumed tourist visas in June and appointed a new high commissioner. A bilateral summit is being discussed for November. Yet Hasina's exile remains the central obstacle to genuine normalization.

Former Indian diplomat Ajay Bisaria told reporters that Bangladesh had "missed a trick" by staying away from the BRICS gathering, losing an opportunity to engage not just with India but with other global powers. He suggested the damage was recoverable if both sides managed what he called the "irritant" of Hasina's presence in India. A successful bilateral summit later this year could reset the relationship. But Bangladeshi analysts and former officials painted a more complicated picture. Humayun Kabir, a former Bangladeshi diplomat, said the relationship had fundamentally shifted. "Ties were one-sided before the uprising, and Dhaka is now looking for something different," he said. "There has to be dignity and equality." He argued that New Delhi must create conditions for Rahman to visit with confidence, which means restraining Hasina from making inflammatory statements and acknowledging the court verdict against her.

Zafar Sobhan, a Bangladeshi political analyst, framed the BRICS absence as a statement about Bangladesh's new terms of engagement. "Bangladesh will now engage only on equal terms," he said. He noted that both countries are constrained by hardliners on their respective sides, limiting room for compromise. The failure to manage Hasina, Sobhan argued, is read in Dhaka as an act of unfriendliness. Shanthie Mariet D'Souza, a strategic analyst, called the BRICS snub "clearly" intentional, even if Dhaka cited procedural grounds for the absence. She situated it within a broader pattern: the unresolved Hasina question, stalled negotiations on the Ganga Water Sharing Treaty set to expire in December, and Bangladesh's deepening ties with China and Pakistan. "The BNP is clearly on its way to diversifying its relations," D'Souza said, describing it not as a pivot away from India but as a "recalibration toward hedging and greater autonomy."

China's role in this recalibration is substantial. Beijing has spent a decade building economic and strategic presence in Bangladesh through infrastructure, energy, trade, and defense partnerships since Dhaka joined the Belt and Road Initiative in 2016. China is now Bangladesh's largest trading partner and a major defense supplier. Beijing has also pledged support for the Teesta initiative, a long-delayed river-management project to control flooding and improve water supply on the Teesta River, which flows between India and Bangladesh—a project that India and Bangladesh have failed to formalize through a water-sharing treaty despite years of negotiation. When Rahman made his first overseas trip as prime minister to Beijing in June, he secured agreements spanning trade, investment, infrastructure, and defense. D'Souza warned that heavy-handed pressure from India could push Bangladesh further toward China, and she advised New Delhi to separate the bilateral agenda from the Hasina question, offer Rahman concrete proposals on water, trade, and connectivity, and maintain firm red lines against Chinese military presence near sensitive areas like the Siliguri corridor and the Bay of Bengal.

Yet the relationship remains asymmetrical in ways that cut both directions. Bangladesh and India share a 4,096-kilometer border—the longest either country has with any neighbor—and 54 rivers. Bangladesh depends on India for trade routes, transit, electricity, fuel, medical travel, and regional connectivity. Those dependencies are real and enduring. But they are also sources of friction: the Ganga Water Sharing Treaty expires in December, the Teesta dispute lingers unresolved, and allegations of Indian push-ins of undocumented migrants continue to inflame public opinion. Shahab Enam Khan, a Bangladeshi scholar of international relations, argued that India has more to lose from deterioration than Bangladesh does. India maintains a trade surplus and depends on Bangladeshi goodwill for its own security. He said India treated the 2024 uprising "as the loss of a client rather than a neighbour's political transition," pointing to suspended visas, closed land ports, and shelter for Hasina. "Bangladeshis took it as a message that Delhi's goodwill depended on who held power in Dhaka," Khan said. Rebuilding trust, he argued, requires ending Hasina's political activity in Delhi, resolving bilateral disputes, and lifting post-2024 trade restrictions. The real question may not be whether India is losing Bangladesh outright, but whether it is losing its old ability to shape the relationship unilaterally with an increasingly assertive neighbor.