A lot will depend on how wisely India handles the bilateral relations 

By Sudeep Chakravarti

Where do India-Bangladesh relations go from here?

The short answer? Anywhere they wish. In 2026 the two countries can go back to building bonhomie. Or remain within the current abrasive, rhetoric- and disinformation-driven envelope that has characterised the relationship since the ouster of Sheikh Hasina from premiership in August 2024 after a particularly murderous burst of misgovernance. Or tank relations entirely, turning eastern South Asia into a mess of further fracture, religious divide, destruction of economic relations, and perpetual paranoia of loss of territory and sovereignty.

For the short-term, the abrasive status quo seems likely; with a medium-term second stage of a practical, if somewhat beady-eyed bonhomie. This is predicated on pressures of domestic politics in both countries.

Let’s first look at Bangladesh, where general elections to the Parliament or Jatiyo Shangsad are scheduled for 12 February 2026.

The ejected Awami League, which ran—and largely weakened the democratic structure of Bangladesh in its increasingly violent run from 2008 to mid-2024—is now prohibited from contesting elections. Indeed, a tribunal in November 2025 punished Hasina, in exile in India, and the former home minister with death sentences for crimes against humanity.

That Hasina was squarely in command during the anti-quota students’ protest over July and August 2024 is not in doubt, and neither is her culpability for the deaths, injuries, torture, disappearances and arrests of several thousand people—including the death of several children. The irony is that the same imperfect due process she used through the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) that her government established to judge and execute those accused of killing her family members and commit genocide in Bangladesh, is the one used to bring her to justice.

To me this judgment was a foregone conclusion. I was in Bangladesh from early 2022 to late 2024 and saw the grand corruption, absolutism, and the violence that Hasina and her government visited upon the country. The violent government pushback in July and August 2024 crossed even that limit. For all her development initiatives she had become the Ceaușescu of South Asia along with the likes of the Rajapaksa political clan in Sri Lanka, and the decades-long stream of inept and corrupted politicians in Nepal. And India stood by her all