Is the fall of the Hasina government in Bangladesh a setback for India?

The ouster of the Sheikh Hasina-led Awami League government in Bangladesh seems to have caught India off guard, with experts describing the change of regime in the South Asian nation as a major setback for Indian diplomacy.

New Delhi initially responded with deafening silence to the overthrow of an ostensibly pro-India government in Dhaka but later acknowledged that former premier Hasina, 76, had landed in the national capital.

Delhi’s hosting of Hasina came in the wake of her hasty flight from Dhaka after weeks-long violent protests, which were heavily tinged with anti-India sentiments.

The Indian government had to evacuate more than 7,000 students and professionals from Bangladesh last month as protests against the Awami League government took a violent turn.

Analysts say the latest developments in Bangladesh constitute a major setback for India, which has emerged in recent years as a regional powerhouse with global ambitions that match those of China, the largest Asian economy.

India’s economy, estimated at $3.7 trillion, has grown at roughly seven percent a year in the last decade to become the fifth largest in the world. In tandem with its economic might has grown its diplomatic influence in South Asia, even though smaller nations in the region might view New Delhi as an affluent elder sibling they love to hate.

India has enjoyed warm relations with Bangladesh since it midwifed the latter’s birth at the end of a full-fledged war with Pakistan in 1971. Bilateral ties improved to unforeseen levels after 2009 when Hasina returned to power in Dhaka, with the two countries forging a deep economic and security partnership.

But the ouster of Hasina’s government on the heels of an India Out campaign has put the close alliance between the two nations in jeopardy.

“India has suffered a major geopolitical blow in Bangladesh. It’s dealing with something that’s close to a nightmare scenario,” says Michael Kugelman, Washington-based director for the Wilson Center’s South Asia Institute.

Speaking to TRT World, Kugelman says India has long seen Hasina and the Awami League as the “only viable option” for India while viewing any alternative as detrimental to its regional interests.

India would be in a better position today had it tried to develop a relationship with some of the other parties in the anti-Awami League camp, he says.

Hasina and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has been in power since 2014, enjoy a “very close personal relationship” that originated from their similar positions on issues like the handling of opposition and Islamic religious parties.

Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) leader and two-time premier Khaleda Zia—Hasina’s de facto rival who’s widely considered pro-Pakistan—was sentenced to 17 years in prison for corruption in 2018 during the Awami League’s rule.

Another opposition party, Jamaat-e-Islami, also faced repeated crackdowns under Awami League’s long reign, with its top leaders getting capital punishment after controversial trials for alleged war crimes committed during the 1971 war of independence.

‘Losing the region’

Mushahid Hussain Sayed, who served as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee in Pakistan’s Senate, tells TRT World that the recent developments in Bangladesh point to a wider regional trend where smaller countries are spinning out of India’s orbit of influence one after another.

Calling the popular uprising in Bangladesh a “devastating blow” to India, Sayed says New Delhi has lost its closest political, strategic and ideological ally in the region.

“India has not only lost Bangladesh, it’s fast losing the region. [The] Maldives, Nepal, Sri Lanka and now Bangladesh are closer to Pakistan and China than [they are to] India, which has put all its eggs in the American basket,” he says.

India was recently forced by the newly-elected Maldivian government of President Mohamed Muizzu to completely withdraw its soldiers from the island nation. To win the September 2023 election, Muizzu built on the India Out campaign while promising to eliminate India’s political and economic influence in the Maldives.

Similarly, ties between Colombo and New Delhi became strained recently when premier Modi blamed his opposition parties for “giving away” a 285-acre island of Katchatheevu near the coast of Tamil Nadu state to Sri Lanka.

Analysts warn the populist rhetoric by India’s premier holds the potential to blow up, with spill-over effects impacting New Delhi’s standing in the region.

As for Nepal, India has long had an unresolved border dispute with the neighbouring landlocked country. The dispute flared up recently after the Nepali government printed a new currency note that asserted its sovereignty over the three border areas, also claimed by New Delhi.

The supposed ebbing of India’s influence has coincided with China assuming a countervailing role in each of the smaller regional countries. Since 2018, China has committed or invested over $150 billion in regional economies, including Bangladesh, Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka, which makes Beijing the single largest overseas investor in most of these smaller nations.

Setback or not?

Indian analyst Sandip Ghose, however, feels that the perception about India’s neighbours drifting away from New Delhi is wrong, even though China has emerged as a strong player with “hegemonistic designs” in South Asia.

“[The] Maldives is trying to come back to the Indian orbit,” he tells TRT World, adding that New Delhi’s relations with both Sri Lanka and Nepal are also back to normal.

He says India will have to cope with these kinds of “pulls and pressures” as its stature on the global stage grows as a regional power.

“It’s never going to be a unipolar situation where only one country holds its sway. It doesn't happen anywhere anymore. You cannot call any country a vassal state today,” he says.

As for Bangladesh, Ghose acknowledges that the ouster of the Hasina-led government was “certainly not the outcome” that India would’ve liked. But he wouldn’t call it a “setback” for India either.

He also doesn’t believe India could have “actively intervened” to ensure the survival of the Awami League government. “That’s not the kind of style of diplomacy that India does,” he says.

But Zahed Ur Rahman, a Dhaka-based academic and political commentator, disagrees.

India propped up Hasina’s Awami League government for 15 years, which resulted in the “total failure” of its foreign policy in Bangladesh, Rahman tells TRT World .

“India has created a huge population [that’s] very, very angry. We’re about 180 million people. It’s not something anyone can ignore,” he says, accusing New Delhi of ensuring that the Hasina government stayed in power despite rigged elections of 2014, 2018 and 2024.

“The regime sustained exclusively because of India’s support… So definitely [its ouster] is a setback for India,” he says.