Dangerous delusions persist on both sides of the Indo-Bangladesh border, with security the ultimate casualty. Bangladesh's interim government is either complicit, negligent, or simply in denial of the atrocities against minorities by home-bred extremists. At the popular level, the call for occupying India’s eastern territories, the narrative of a possible nuclear-weapons deal with Pakistan, and the advocacy of closer ties with the China-Pakistan axis despite a massive geoeconomic dependence on India are indeed delusional. 

On the Indian side, despite reports of Bangladesh’s further slide towards radicalism, its policy bordering on indulgence towards the pro-Jamaat interim government—as seen in the visit of the Foreign Secretary to Dhaka—is seen as lacking in pragmatism. 

For South Block, the present situation in Bangladesh is not new. It is, however, much more insidious for India’s national security, owing to the present complexity of South Asian geopolitics. The latter comprises the encirclement of the region by an irredentist China via the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI); the often detrimental meddling of extra-regional states—from Turkey to the US—into South Asian affairs; the downsides of India’s neighbourhood policy; and the several extant layers of asymmetry comprising insurgents, drug and small-arms cartels, and the perilous nexus between Islamic fundamentalists and violent extremists which exacerbate the already precarious inter-state relations in the region.

Within this context of systemic complexity, it is incumbent upon India to realize that its cultivated strategic ambiguity—perhaps bidding for a favourable time to enunciate regime change—or engagements with an ostensibly anti-India interim government through ad-hoc tactical measures—comprising the mechanisms of coercive diplomacy—may aggravate the insecurity of its already fragile north-east through the strategically significant yet vulnerable Siliguri Corridor. On the contrary, the imminent threat perception from the emergent China-Pakistan-Bangladesh axis—even as one of the nodes of a larger geopolitics—may be redressed through some course corrections in India’s neighbourhood policy.

Threats to India's national security

The chief sources of India’s threat perception emanate from Bangladesh’s potential economic downturn; the machinations of anti-India terrorist outfits with ideological affinities to the Al-Qaeda and Islamic State such as the Hizb ut-Tahrir, Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen-Bangladesh and Ansarullah Bangla Team; the interim government’s challenges to long-standing bilateral agreements; Bangladesh’s pro-China tilt; and the resurgent narrative, underpinned by religious propinquity and historical amnesia, of cultivating stronger ties with Pakistan resulting in the unrestricted ingress of Pakistani vessels into Bangladeshi ports, potentially bearing arms for anti-India rebel groups operating in its northeast.

The militants are enjoying a free rein in Bangladesh, reinforced since the scripted jailbreak of July 2024. Bangladeshi Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) of Turkish origin have also been detected along India’s northeastern borders. Although by a comparison of force structures, India massively surpasses Bangladesh, the killings and attacks on Hindus and UAVs along the international border are not sufficient causes for military adventurism. If pushed, however, India may reserve the right to intervene sub-conventionally—with Special Forces—to wipe out extremist bases within Bangladesh in a rerun of the surgical strikes on Pakistan.

Further, the threat of force as an element of coercive diplomacy is also tactical, and therefore, less likely to bring about long-term changes in the target’s behaviour. Even a rudimentary ‘stick and carrot’ approach involving simultaneous conventional threats and reassurances of rewards for policy reversals can also backfire, triggering as it ma  the interim government’s bid to seek the Chinese or Pakistani nuclear umbrellas for deterring India, thereby turning a bilateral contest into a regional one given the current anti-India and pro-Pakistan/China political tilt being witnessed in Bangladesh.

South Asia as zone of influence

India’s preponderant geo-location in South Asia and its recent strides in foreign and defence policies have cemented India’s pivotal role in South Asian security. As India sustains the subcontinental architectures of crisis management, the moment is ripe for revising the ambit of its ‘legitimate areas of interest’ by defining South Asia as its primary zone of influence. Since Bangladesh’s supply chains in energy and essential commodities run through West Bengal and northeastern states it can ill-afford to deny India’s indispensability to its future well-being.

India’s neighbourhood policy can be tweaked by making conditional every foreign aid, technical assistance, bilateral cooperation and multilateral facilitation. Bangladesh is the largest beneficiary of Indian grants and assistance under the Neighbourhood First Policy. Attaching conditionalities—akin to the Chinese BRI loans— can act as a deterrent to any anti-India adventurism witnessed not just in Bangladesh but in other South Asian countries as well. Not least, a contingent policy can diversify India’s tactical choices in future neighbourhood crises by diminishing the necessities of self-deterrence into a state of calculated strategic ambiguity.

(The author is Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of North Bengal, India. Views expressed are personal. He can be reached at souradeepsen@nbu.ac.in.)