Bangladesh’s insistence on the extradition of Sheikh Hasina and others as a precondition for the proposed India visit of its Prime Minister Tarique Rahman will pose a daunting challenge to South Block mandarins in New Delhi.
The other knotty, equally politically sensitive issue is the extradition of persons, as per Dhaka’s claims, involved in the killing of Sharif Osman Hadi, a prominent radical activist of Bangladesh’s 2024 student-led uprising.
Dhaka has been pressing for the extradition of ousted former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who fled the country and was allowed to stay in India. The demand escalated once a Bangladesh court convicted her in absentia and awarded a death sentence for crimes against humanity. India has been dodging the issue. But things took a dramatic turn when Hasina addressed the media and announced her intention to return to Bangladesh in December, saying she wants to put the country back on track. Predictably, Dhaka did not take kindly to it, and the Bangladesh Foreign Ministry expressed outrage that she was allowed to do so, that too on the anniversary of the July Revolution.
India faces a grave dilemma and has been struggling to find a way out of the mess relating to the extradition request. On the one hand, New Delhi needs to strengthen its bilateral ties with Dhaka as China has been eyeing a deeper partnership and going out of its way to woo the new leadership. But at the same time, it cannot be seen as letting down Sheikh Hasina, who was a trusted friend and a vital strategic partner when she was at the helm. It appears that the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) government now wants to try its luck in pushing the envelope. It has cleverly linked the official visit to its preconditions and thus put the ball in New Delhi’s court.
India has adopted a pragmatic approach and tried not to get tangled in Bangladesh’s internal political rivalries. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, who was in Dhaka as an official representative at the state funeral of former Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia, set the ball rolling. India’s proactive outreach did send the right signals.
Bangladesh, on its part, has to balance its assertion of sovereignty and its keen desire to deepen ties with India given the trade and economic partnership benefits. Energy security is another area where the two countries have significant interests. But there are some thorny issues such as management of the long but porous border, sharing of water from common river sources, and trade restrictions or economic friction. Both nations are aware that these are longstanding issues, and in the medium term the challenge is to manage them and gradually move towards solving them in the long run.
The issue that is too sensitive to deal with is the impact of domestic political games on bilateral ties. India has legitimate concerns over the rising anti-India sentiment and anti-Hindu rhetoric that degenerates into violent attacks. Similarly, Dhaka has been apprehensive about BJP’s political rhetoric against Bangladeshi immigrants, which peaks during election campaigns, especially in eastern states. The BJP’s historic victory in West Bengal has the potential to lead to a situation of confusion confounded, and therefore the onus will be on party leadership and government to manage it deftly.