As Bangladesh prepares to hold its first elections since the overthrow of then-Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her Awami League party in 2024, neighbours India, Pakistan and China are watching closely.
Bangladesh is currently being governed by an interim administration led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus. The two main parties competing for power in this month’s polls are the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and the Jamaat-e-Islami (JIB), both of which began campaigning in late January.
The Awami League, which has historically had close ties with India, has been barred from these elections because of its role in the brutal crackdown on student-led protests in 2024. Hasina, 78, currently in exile in India, was found guilty of allowing lethal force to be used against protesters, 1,400 of whom died during the unrest.
She was tried in absentia by the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) in Bangladesh in November last year – and sentenced to death – but so far India has refused to extradite her.
Hasina has denounced the upcoming elections, telling The Associated Press news agency last month that “a government born of exclusion cannot unite a divided nation”.
Since her ousting, political analysts say, Bangladesh’s geopolitical positions have undergone a “paradigm shift”.
“Bilateral relations with India have witnessed a historic low in contrast to a warm rapprochement with Pakistan. Furthermore, strategic ties with China have deepened significantly,” Khandakar Tahmid Rejwan, lecturer of global studies and governance at the Independent University, Bangladesh, told Al Jazeera
“[Hasina’s] 15-year tenure was marked by several key features that defined the foreign and security policy of Dhaka in terms of external engagement. Significant among these features were developing a close and holistic bilateral tie with India; strategic negligence and diplomatic isolation in terms of bilateral relations with Pakistan; and maintaining a strong but calculated defence, trade, and infrastructure development partnership with China,” he said.
“This predictive and patterned alignment of Dhaka has now been reversed with respect to India and Pakistan or revised with respect to China,” he said.
So, how do India, Pakistan and China see the upcoming elections? Does the election outcome matter to these three nations?
Here’s what we know:
How are India-Bangladesh relations?
Until the toppling of Hasina, India largely viewed Bangladesh as an important strategic partner and ally with respect to maintaining security in South Asia.
India is also Bangladesh’s largest trading partner in Asia. Between April 2023 and March 2024, before Hasina’s ousting, India sold goods, including textiles, tea, coffee, auto parts, electricity, agriculture, iron and steel and plastics, worth $11.1bn and imported readymade garments, leather and leather products, among other items, worth $1.8bn.Since Hasina fled to India, both countries have imposed restrictions on each other’s exports, from land and sea, due to ongoing tensions.
Over the decades since Bangladesh’s independence from Pakistan, which India supported in 1971, their relationship has had ups and downs depending on which political party is in power in Dhaka.
Hasina, who served as prime minister from 1996 to 2001 and again from 2009 to 2024, maintained close ties with India.
“In the last five to six years, India and Bangladesh have scripted a golden chapter of bilateral ties and given a new dimension and direction to our partnership,” India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi stated in March 2020.
But opposition parties in Bangladesh often criticised Hasina for being “very weak” when it came to dealing with India.
According to the Indian daily Economic Times, in 2016, a key BNP adviser called on Hasina to scrap certain joint venture power-sharing projects with India since they could be detrimental to Bangladesh’s environment.
For decades, the BNP has also had an alliance with JIB, Bangladesh’s largest Islamist group that advocates for stronger ties with Pakistan, India’s archenemy, and that opposed Bangladesh’s independence from Pakistan in 1971.
Anti-India sentiment gained momentum in Bangladesh after Hasina’s ousting in 2024 and India’s refusal to return her to the country.
The relationship between the two countries has further soured over the past year, especially after the murder of Osman Hadi, a 2024 protest leader who was vocally anti-Indian, which also led to protests against India in Bangladesh late last year.
India has also alleged the ill-treatment of the Hindu minority under the interim government in Bangladesh.
Last December, a Hindu Bangladeshi man was lynched in the country’s Bhaluka region after being accused of making derogatory remarks against the religion of Islam. The incident took place amid widespread protests after Hadi’s death.
Also last month, the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) requested that all of its team’s ICC Men’s Twenty20 World Cup matches scheduled in India be shifted to Sri Lanka.
But the International Cricket Council (ICC) responded to this demand last weekend by expelling Bangladesh from the tournament instead. In a show of solidarity, the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) swiftly threw its weight behind Bangladesh and, on Sunday, Pakistan said it would refuse to take part in its match against India, scheduled for February 15.
“India suffered a significant strategic loss when Hasina was ousted, and it has been very uncomfortable with the interim government. New Delhi felt that it [Bangladesh] was heavily influenced by Jamaat and other religious actors that, in India’s view, threaten its interests,” Michael Kugelman, senior fellow for South Asia at the Atlantic Council, told Al Jazeera.
However, amid ongoing tensions, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Yunus held their first meeting on the sidelines of a BIMSTEC summit in Bangkok, Thailand, in April last year. Vikram Misri, India’s foreign secretary, told reporters that Modi had “reiterated India’s support for a democratic, stable, peaceful, progressive and inclusive Bangladesh”.
Misri added that Yunus and Modi also discussed Hasina’s extradition. But to date, Hasina remains in India.
How does India view the upcoming elections?
Analysts said the stakes are high for India.
“India is hoping that this upcoming election will produce a government that is willing to engage with India and will not be influenced by the types of actors that India feels threaten its interests,” Kugelman said.
It is unlikely that any new government would ignore worsening tensions with India, said Rejwan of Independent University, even if it includes JIB or other Islamist parties.
“Any government coming to power in Dhaka will find it difficult to neglect its largest neighbour and a regional power like India for the sake of mutual interest regarding nontraditional security threats, trade and food security, cultural and human ties,” he said.
“It is easy to give inflammatory and popular rhetoric against India when you are competing for votes, but when you are in government, the populist posture ultimately changes while dealing with a powerful and influential neighbour.”
Driven by New Delhi’s “Neighbourhood First” policy, which focuses on maintaining friendly relations with neighbours to safeguard India’s security, Indian policymakers have often stressed that the subcontinent needs to maintain a friendly relationship with Bangladesh.
Last month, Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar wished Bangladesh “well” for its upcoming elections. “We hope that once things settle down, the sense of neighbourliness in this region will grow,” he said.
Jaishankar also visited Dhaka in early January for the funeral of former Bangladeshi Prime Minister and BNP leader Khaleda Zia. He later wrote on X that he had conveyed his condolences on behalf of India to Zia’s son, Tarique Rahman, and “expressed confidence that Begum Khaleda Zia’s vision and values will guide the development of our [India and Bangladesh’s] partnership”.
Kugelman said India is likely to be concerned from political and security standpoints if JIB wins the election but would be “comfortable” with a BNP-led government.
“Today’s BNP no longer has an alliance with Jamaat, and the party has expressed its interests about wanting to engage with India,” he noted.
“I think that India will be ready to pick up the pieces of what has been a shattered relationship with Bangladesh. … It obviously would have preferred the Awami League to be leading the next government. But India also recognises that the Awami League is not going to be a political factor for quite some time and is not going to try to push for ways to bring the Awami League back into the mix. It would accept a government led by the BNP and would be willing to work with it,” Kugelman added.
But with polls suggesting the Jamaat and BNP are in a neck-and-neck race, India has been reaching out to both. In an interview this month, Jamaat chief Shafiqur Rahman revealed that an Indian diplomat had met him in December. And the Indian high commissioner in Dhaka, Pranay Verma, met BNP leader Tarique Rahman on January 10.