India is losing Bangladesh to China and Pakistan—And It could get worse

It is hard to be optimistic about the future of India-Bangladesh relations. Since the student-led transition to an interim government in Dhaka on August 5, bilateral ties have been in freefall. New Delhi had been friendly with the previous Awami League government despite its authoritarian trampling of human rights and democracy. India now harbours former prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who the new leader of Bangladesh, Nobel laureate Mohammad Yunus, says must be extradited to Dhaka.

New Delhi has growing concerns about the interim government’s release of Islamic extremists and terrorists from its jails, raising fears of renewed terrorist attacks. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has also highlighted the need to protect the ethnic Hindu minority living in this Muslim-majority country as they have reportedly been the victims of communal attacks. While acknowledging some attacks, Bangladesh rejects that this is happening on a large scale; rather, Dhaka believes India is actively sowing disinformation and misinformation to inflate threat perceptions amongst its people.

In the most recent and worrisome flare-up, last month Bangladeshi police arrested Chinmoy Krishna Das, a Hindu monk and supporter of Hindu minority rights in Bangladesh, on charges of sedition. Das’ arrest sparked a communal riot. In response, Hindu protesters breached the Bangladeshi High Commission office in Agartala, capital of the northeastern Indian state of Tripura, and Dhaka seeks their prosecution. Thousands of main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) supporters rallied in Dhaka in response to this action as well as alleged desecration of Bangladeshi flags in India.

The ongoing tit-for-tat amongst previously close neighbours prompted Indian Foreign Secretary, Vikram Misri, to visit Bangladesh last week. While in Dhaka, he met with Yunus and both sides agreed to clear the “clouds.” It remains unclear whether this reset will work.

For India and its close strategic partner, the United States, getting India-Bangladesh ties right will be important to the security of both nations and the broader region. Because if bilateral relations continue to bottom out, then China and Pakistan will continue to expand and deepen their influence in Bangladesh, which critically sits astride South Asia and Southeast Asia.

To be sure, India has already been on the losing end of these geostrategic dynamics. Shortly after the interim government came to power, Chinese ambassador Yao Wen began making the rounds with Yunus and other interim government officials, the BNP, and even the chief of Jamaat-e-Islami—an Islamic extremist group supported by the Muslim Brotherhood and Pakistani Islamists. Beijing’s willingness to engage government and opposition figures alike in Bangladesh is likely to prove a strategic advantage, especially if the BNP or Islamic extremists perform well in future elections.

By contrast, India has only selectively interacted with Bangladeshi counterparts. Although Misri met with Yunus, India has been more cautious. Notably, after holding a phone call with Yunus in August about ensuring the safety of Hindu minorities in Bangladesh, Modi had the opportunity to follow up with him in-person on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in late September, but decided against the idea. And while New Delhi has also engaged the BNP, it occurred only after China’s interactions and it was likely quite uncomfortable doing so. Moreover, India is yet to engage—and likely will not engage—Jamaat-e-Islami because of its overtly Islamist affiliation. The problem, from Yunus’ perspective, is that New Delhi perceives “everybody is Islamist…and [they] will make this country into Afghanistan.”

India should also worry about maintaining investment and infrastructure projects in Bangladesh in the face of Chinese alternatives, and the potential for Beijing to eventually leverage these projects for geostrategic purposes. While Hasina was in power, she at times chose China over India, but it was always understood that India was the preferred economic partner. A good example was Hasina’s selection of India to finance the reservoir of the Teesta water project.

But this is no longer the case. Bangladesh has reportedly accumulated $500 million in unsustainable debt from a Hasina-era deal with Adani Power that supplies coal-generated electricity to the country from India’s Godda plant. Yunus has complained about the opaqueness of the agreement and plans to re-introduce competitive bidding. Although Chinese deals are also under review, Beijing could hold an advantage given that political ties are on solid footing and it has far more funds to invest.

Beijing has further sought to develop numerous Bangladeshi ports, including Chittagong, Mongla, and Sonadia ports, to achieve a maritime presence in the Bay of Bengal. Enhanced access to any or all of these ports could substantially add to Beijing’s “string of pearls” strategy to hem in India in the Indian Ocean.

A related worry for New Delhi is the warming ties between Bangladesh and Pakistan. Islamabad has begun providing ammunition to Bangladeshi security forces, and for the first time in five decades, a Pakistani cargo ship docked at Chittagong port in Bangladesh. Dhaka has waived customs inspections for Pakistani imports as well as security clearance requirements for Pakistani citizens seeking a visa to enter Bangladesh, heightening Indian concerns that Bangladesh is increasingly becoming a terrorist harbouring state, like Pakistan or Afghanistan. Additionally, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif held a warm meeting with Yunus at the United Nations—in stark contrast to Modi’s decision to shun the opportunity.

Pakistan’s support to Bangladesh is likely to only strengthen, based in part on mutual antipathy toward India, but also their growing Islamist connections and robust strategic ties to China. According to one recent commentary, India should be wary of the revival of a West Pakistan-East Pakistan axis. Although highly exaggerated, the piece nevertheless is probably reflective of how New Delhi, for the first time since the birth of Bangladesh out of East Pakistan in 1971, has to once again worry about the prospects of dealing with three separate fronts: Pakistan, Bangladesh, and China.

Bangladesh under Hasina was already the second largest importer of Chinese weapons, and if Dhaka now sees New Delhi as a threat, then Beijing could further bolster its security posture there. For decades, China has built strategic ties with Pakistan in part to keep India contained in South Asia, but Beijing never had Bangladesh to enlist on India’s eastern flank as well. Now, it may.

If India-Bangladesh relations unravel, then the United States will be negatively impacted as well. Escalating tensions that risk war between India and Bangladesh, potentially involving China or Pakistan, would be a very unwelcome development as Washington tries to maintain focus on the eastern side of the Indo-Pacific to deter conflicts in the Taiwan Strait, East China Sea, South China Sea, and on the Korean peninsula. Even sustained tensions would detract American attention from its preferred subregion of the Indo-Pacific.

At a minimum, China’s expanding footprint in Bangladesh will increasingly challenge Washington’s desire to maintain a “free and open” region, especially if Dhaka provides additional port access in the Bay of Bengal.

Going forward, India and the US are likely to closely cooperate on all manner of challenges, including Bangladesh. During his campaign, Trump condemned “barbaric violence against Hindus, Christians, and other minorities” in Bangladesh and characterised it as being in a “total state of chaos.” Yunus, who did not support Trump in 2016, may believe that a second Trump administration could favour Modi’s policies.

But not all is lost. Yunus has signaled he wants better India ties, but New Delhi must return Hasina and quit exaggerating the scale of violence against Hindus. India wants to see greater protections in place for Hindus and limits on Islamic extremist activities in Bangladesh. Indeed, it seems possible to reach agreement on these points.

If the two sides can mend ties, then it will go a long way toward complicating China and Pakistan’s productive engagement with Bangladesh—an outcome that both India and the United States would significantly benefit from in the years to come.

(The author is a senior defence analyst at RAND.)
(Views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author.)