On August 22, Bangladesh's State Minister for Foreign Affairs said that there was "no rush" for Prime Minister Tarique Rahman to visit India and that engagement with New Delhi could not come at the expense of Bangladesh's national interests.
"If we reach an agreement based on our national interests tomorrow, we can go [to India] next week, or the week after," said Humaiun Kobir, Bangladesh's State Minister for Foreign Affairs, according to the state-run news agency BSS. "There is no rush here."
India has invited Rahman for both a bilateral visit and to attend the upcoming BRICS Summit in his capacity as chair of the BIMSTEC grouping.
The now-postponed trip of Bangladesh's Prime Minister to India would have been the first such visit since July 2024, when former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina fled to India after a mass student uprising rocked the country and brought down her government.
Since then, relations between the two South Asian neighbours have turned sour, particularly during the tenure of the interim government led by Chief Adviser Muhammad Yunus, with Hasina's presence in India being a major irritant.
However, ever since Tarique Rahman, son of Hasina's longtime arch rival, the late former Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia, was elected Prime Minister in February, he has tried to bridge the gap between Dhaka and New Delhi.
But tempers flared on August 5, when Sheikh Hasina addressed a virtual press conference in New Delhi. The address angered Dhaka, which said it had "vitiated" the atmosphere and that "a propitious environment needs to be created" before Prime Minister Rahman's visit.
With Dhaka now linking a conducive environment for Rahman's visit to its demand for action on Hasina's extradition, the latest standoff has added further uncertainty to an already strained relationship. As Rahman's visit is perceived as crucial for resetting bilateral ties, political analysts believe that the latest deadlock could send ties between the neighbours further downhill.
Sreeradha Datta, a professor of South Asian studies at OP Jindal Global University, told The Decifer, that nobody can question the positive things that Tarique Rahman has said about India, "but he also has a constituency to take care of, especially in the wake of Bangladesh having an opposition after many decades."
"The depth and texture of India-Bangladesh relations cannot be fully captured through trade figures and economic metrics alone," Datta added. "Dhaka's deepening engagement with the US and China, growing defence cooperation with Türkiye, and renewed outreach to Pakistan are only reinforcing the trust deficit that has long beset the neighbours."
According to her, in the last two years, while things haven't been comfortable, it has also shown that India and Bangladesh can survive without each other.
Datta believes that the two neighbours no longer enjoy the erstwhile warmth shared during the Hasina years, but neither side has the luxury of disengagement. "The conditionalities laid down would be seen as an affront in Delhi, while Dhaka does not wish to appear as a weak neighbour intimidated into taking a position," she argued. "This puts bilateral ties in a bind. The impasse needs to be broken, as the alternative is not pretty."
The difficulty, however, goes beyond the immediate question of whether Rahman will travel to New Delhi. His proposed visit was expected to serve as an early signal of whether the BNP government could move beyond the bitter politics of the past two years and establish a working relationship with India. Instead, the dispute over Hasina has followed both governments into what was supposed to be a new chapter, underscoring how difficult it may be for Dhaka and New Delhi to separate their future relationship from the legacy of earlier governments.
According to Shakil Ahmed, a professor of governance and politics at Jahangirnagar University, the postponed visit is significant precisely because it was supposed to be a reset. "The current delay in Rahman's India visit is also largely because of the fact that Bangladesh has a huge youth population that hates India," said Ahmed.
A first visit by a new prime minister normally carries symbolic value, he added; it tells both countries that they are ready to leave the previous chapter behind. "Instead, the fact that the visit itself has become entangled with Sheikh Hasina shows that neither side has been able to escape the politics of the previous government," the professor said.
He explained that the crisis has not necessarily put Bangladesh in a position of choosing China or Pakistan over India. "It is actually Bangladesh trying to create room for manoeuvre. The more Dhaka feels constrained by India, the more attractive alternative partnerships become," continued the professor. "Strategic diversification is therefore not necessarily an anti-India policy; it becomes that only when India leaves Bangladesh with no other perceived option."
Notably, Bangladesh has shown interest in joining the Mecca agreement, which many political pundits see as a serious blow to strategic policy for New Delhi.
"India has to understand that a democratic transition in Bangladesh necessarily changes the political terms of engagement," added Ahmed. "New Delhi cannot expect the privileges of the Hasina era to survive unchanged. At the same time, Bangladesh cannot build a foreign policy around opposition to India. Both countries need to move from a relationship based on political comfort to one based on institutional interests."
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