Not the ‘Right Environment’: Why Bangladesh PM Tarique Rahman’s India Visit Is on Indefinite Hold

Bangladesh is in “no hurry” to send Prime Minister Tarique Rahman to India, newly appointed State Minister for Foreign Affairs Humayun Kabir said on Saturday, 22 August, confirming that a visit, once treated as a diplomatic priority, has been placed on indefinite hold.Rahman would travel to India “at an appropriate time,” Kabir told reporters, saying Bangladesh wanted positive relations with New Delhi but would not compromise its national interests to arrange the trip. His first visit should be a standalone bilateral engagement with a clear agenda, Kabir added, rather than a meeting on the margins of the BRICS summit or another multilateral gathering. By Tuesday, 25 August, the pause was evident inside Bangladesh’s Foreign Ministry. Officials were no longer discussing dates with the confidence they had shown earlier in August.Several officials who spoke to The Quint said the visit was effectively suspended because Dhaka did not believe that the “right environment” existed. India Cannot Afford a Bangladesh Policy Built Around Sheikh HasinaOne Bangladeshi diplomat said the proposed trip had initially received “top preference.” Officials had begun preparing the agenda for discussions expected to cover trade, connectivity, energy, water sharing, visas and border management. “But after Sheikh Hasina’s press conference, all things were put into a freeze,” the diplomat said.The visit has become the most visible casualty of a relationship that both governments had spent months trying to repair. After Rahman’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) won the February election, India signalled that it wanted to move beyond the tensions that had marked its dealings with the preceding interim government. Political contacts resumed, officials discussed a prime-ministerial meeting, and the Indian media began presenting Rahman’s possible arrival in New Delhi as the start of a bilateral reset. Then Hasina spoke. On 5 August, the second anniversary of her fall, the ousted Bangladeshi prime minister addressed journalists at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of South Asia in New Delhi through an audio connection. She discussed her political future, criticised Bangladesh’s government, and remained unapologetic about her record. She also reiterated her intention to return. India denied arranging the event and said it neither participated in nor endorsed it. But the programme was held by a prominent journalistic institution in the Indian capital, while Hasina has been living under Indian protection since she fled Bangladesh in August 2024. For Dhaka, the distinction between Indian sponsorship and Indian tolerance offered little reassurance. Bangladesh’s Foreign Ministry issued a strongly worded protest, describing the event as damaging to efforts to improve relations. It again urged India to extradite Hasina, who was convicted in absentia over the deadly suppression of the 2024 uprising. Hasina denies the allegations and calls the proceedings politically motivated. Until the press conference, officials from the two countries had been trying to arrange Rahman’s first official visit to India. New Delhi proposed a standalone bilateral trip, with 21 to 25 August discussed as a possible window. Rahman had also received an invitation to attend the BRICS leaders’ summit in September.The planning appeared to reach an advanced stage on 21 August, when India’s Rashtrapati Bhavan announced that its Change of Guard ceremony scheduled for the following day had been cancelled because of a full rehearsal for the ceremonial welcome of the Bangladeshi prime minister. The notice was withdrawn an hour later.India’s External Affairs Ministry said it had “nothing to say” about the visit. Rahman’s press secretary, AAM Saleh, said no decision had been taken. A statement that seemed to confirm the trip instead exposed the absence of an agreement and left officials in both capitals facing questions over whether the visit had been abandoned at the last moment. Bangladeshi officials say the delay should not be mistaken for a broader diplomatic rupture. A second diplomat told The Quint: “It’s not like Bangladesh is deteriorating its relationship with India."Trade and other areas of routine engagement, including visas, were continuing, the diplomat said. By withholding consent for the prime minister’s visit, however, Dhaka wanted to deliver a narrow but unmistakable message: “As long as Hasina keeps speaking from there, Bangladesh will see this as a problem.”The distinction allows Bangladesh to continue practical cooperation while denying India the principal symbol of political normalisation: a formal visit by Rahman, accompanied by a ceremonial welcome and talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. For Rahman’s government, agreeing to the trip without any Indian response on Hasina would carry political risks at home. Her removal followed a mass uprising and a violent crackdown that left deep anger toward both the Awami League and New Delhi, which was widely regarded as Hasina’s closest foreign supporter during her 15 years in power. The extradition dispute has been present since Hasina arrived in India. The interim government first requested her return in 2024, and Rahman’s government renewed the demand after taking office. India says the application is being examined under the appropriate legal procedures but has given no indication that it plans to surrender her. Her continued political activity has made the dispute harder to contain. Hasina regularly speaks to Awami League supporters over telephone and internet calls. Recordings of those conversations circulate widely on Bangladeshi social media, keeping her politically present despite her physical absence. Shafquat Rabbee Anik, a US-based Bangladeshi geopolitical analyst, told The Quint that Hasina’s behaviour in exile differed markedly from that of other deposed leaders sheltered abroad. “We don’t hear much about Bashar al-Assad in Russia,” Anik said. “But Hasina, a fallen dictator, issues one threat over audio to her adversaries and opponents on average per day, which goes viral over social media.” Bangladeshi social media, he said, was filled with recordings in which Hasina spoke to party workers over WhatsApp and sustained expectations of revenge and a political return. “Things came to a head when she was allowed to hold a presser and appeared totally unapologetic...The issue this time was that she dragged her host country along the way, which just could not have enough room to manoeuvre by playing plausible deniability from Bangladesh’s vantage point.”Shafquat Rabbee AnikIndia’s position is that an event organised by an independent journalists’ organisation cannot be treated as an act of the Indian government. But that argument has collided with an earlier assurance to an Indian parliamentary committee that Hasina was not being allowed to engage in political activity from Indian territory. Her New Delhi appearance has, therefore, become part of a broader credibility problem.India says it wants to build a relationship with Bangladesh’s elected government while continuing to shelter the leader that the government wants returned. It says Hasina cannot conduct politics from India, but her speeches and conversations continue to reach Bangladesh from there. India’s new high commissioner to Bangladesh, Dinesh Trivedi, has tried to prevent the dispute from consuming the relationship. After meeting Rahman on 10 August, he said India wanted positive and forward-looking ties. At a reception in Dhaka, Trivedi said Modi wanted Rahman’s eventual visit to be “memorable.” He acknowledged that the past could not simply be forgotten but urged the two countries to resolve old disagreements while continuing to move forward. Not everyone in Dhaka believes delaying the visit will help achieve that goal. Munshi Fayez Ahmad, a former Bangladeshi diplomat and chairman of the Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies, said Hasina’s presence in India was affecting relations but should not be allowed to dictate them. “If we want good relations with India and believe that our engagement with the wider world should move forward, we will have to look beyond that issue. She is there, and she may remain there, but we must advance our relationship.” Munshi Fayez AhmadHe said Bangladesh had more to lose if resentment prevented sustained engagement with its largest neighbour. “If we can build a smooth relationship with India despite that problem, we will be able to move forward,” Ahmad told The Quint. “If we sit here feeling offended or resentful, it is Bangladesh that will suffer.” Ahmad also described the government’s successive statements about India and the visit as evidence of indecision. “The Bangladesh government’s inconsistent responses—saying different things at different times—indicate a considerable degree of indecision,” he said. “As a result, it has been unable to determine precisely what it should say.” He argued that Hasina’s presence and activities should be discussed during direct negotiations rather than made a barrier to those negotiations. “But if we remain here and keep saying, ‘We will not go unless this happens,’ India will not come forward to make the visit easier for us,” Ahmad said. (Faisal Mahmud is a Dhaka-based journalist. He was posted as the Minister (Press) of Bangladesh High Commission during the interim government’s period.)

BECOME A MEMBER

No ‘Right Environment’: Why Tarique Rahman’s India Visit Is on Indefinite Hold

Not everyone in Dhaka believes delaying the visit will help achieve the goal of future bilateral engagement.

Read Latest News and Breaking News at The Quint, browse for more from news and world

Topics: Bangladesh Members Only