Will India’s ‘Hasina Gambit’ Fall Apart?
Simonetta Fornasiero
India’s decision to shelter Bangladesh’s ousted ruler Sheikh Hasina is increasingly looking less like a legal dilemma and more like a political liability. A month ago, when Hasina announced plans to return to Bangladesh in December, questions arose over whether she was acting out of personal considerations or pursuing a more sinister scheme to stage a political comeback, despite a Dhaka court ruling that she would be arrested upon arrival. The bigger question is: ~what India hopes to achieve by continuing to harbour a former leader whose increasingly authoritarian rule ended in a student-led uprising, a nationwide revolt and her escape to India?”
By giving Hasina refuge while allowing her to remain politically active, New Delhi appears hellbent on preserving a foothold in a political order that Bangladesh has rejected. The contradiction became impossible to ignore on August 5. Undeterred by opposition to her return, Hasina recently addressed journalists and repeated her pledge to return in December. She also demanded that the ban on her Awami League be lifted and dismissed the charges against her as politically motivated. For many Bangladeshis, particularly the younger generation that drove the 2024 uprising, this reflects the behaviour of a former leader seemingly disconnected from public sentiment and intent on clawing back political relevance.
The press conference was bad optics for the Indian government. Its attempt to distance itself by saying the event was organised by a private media organisation did little to reassure Dhaka. While that may satisfy the legal distinction between the Indian state and a private broadcaster, it does not alter the political reality that Hasina is living in India, speaking from India and using Indian territory to project herself into Bangladeshi politics. Bangladesh’s foreign ministry called the arrangement an affront to its sovereignty, further straining diplomatic ties. Five days later, Prime Minister Tarique Rahman raised Hasina’s extradition directly with Indian High Commissioner Dinesh Trivedi, urging New Delhi to expedite the process.
The PM also called for a “Conducive environment” to improve relations with India. Bangladesh is signalling that it wants a healthy, working relationship with its largest neighbour. But it is also making clear that it cannot rebuild that relationship while India provides political space and protection to the leader whose government was swept from power and whose party is widely discredited. India has reached a fork in the road. New Delhi can continue treating Hasina’s presence as merely a legal matter while attempting to build a new relationship with the BNP government. Or it can acknowledge that harbouring her is itself a political choice with consequences far beyond extradition.
Hasina’s government had already become increasingly authoritarian, with opposition space contracting and allegations of enforced disappearances, torture and extrajudicial killings accumulating over the years. Human Rights Watch described enforced disappearances as a hallmark of repression under Hasina, while a subsequent Bangladeshi inquiry documented more than 1,500 cases between 2009 and 2024. Rights organisations also documented cases in which Bangladeshi dissidents were allegedly abducted and taken across the border into India. For years, many Bangladeshis perceived New Delhi as being invested in Hasina and the Awami League rather than Bangladesh itself.
A subsequent UN investigation found that Bangladeshi security forces committed serious human rights violations during the suppression of the protests and estimated that around 1,400 people were killed. On August 5, 2024, Hasina resigned and fled to India. The anger directed at Hasina and the Awami League should not be reduced to an elite dispute between rival parties. What began as a student-led uprising grew into a nationwide revolt against her government. As Dr. Riaz, Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Illinois State University, points out, “Bangladesh has changed. It is not simply a new government that has come to power. The Indian establishment is misjudging Bangladesh as well as prevailing public sentiment.”
India’s decision to shelter her has reinforced that perception. Yet New Delhi has an opportunity to change it, though doing so will require more than cultivating the new government in Dhaka while maintaining its old relationship with Hasina. The BNP government has not rejected relations with India, and Rahman’s call for a better environment for bilateral ties indicates an interest in rebuilding them. But any reset will involve difficult questions over border management, trade, connectivity, water sharing and Bangladesh’s relationships with other regional powers. The Ganges Water Sharing Treaty, signed in 1996 for 30 years, expires this year, adding another sensitive negotiation to an already crowded bilateral agenda. The BNP government wants a new agreement that better reflects Bangladesh’s interests, making renewal an important test of the relationship.
According to Dr. Riaz, these issues should not be viewed separately. “The relationship with Bangladesh has to be based on dignity and respect,” he says, arguing that unresolved questions, including the border and trade imbalance, need to be addressed. But one issue sits above all the others: Hasina remains in India. Her continued presence has become a symbol of the political order that much of Bangladesh rejected. Bangladesh has formally requested her extradition since December 2024, but India continues to stall. Hasina nevertheless insists she will return in December, seemingly tone-deaf to public sentiment and statements from Bangladesh’s judiciary.
Hasina’s insistence is itself a political act. An ousted former prime minister living under Indian protection and facing serious criminal charges is not an ordinary traveller who can simply return home. Any return would carry enormous political consequences. Riaz argues that Hasina’s return ultimately cannot be hers alone to determine. As long as she remains under Indian protection, India would have a say in the circumstances under which she leaves. For its part, Dhaka has made its position clear. On August 11, the Bangladeshi government said Hasina would receive “full security” if she returns to face the judicial process, along with the legal rights available to her under Bangladeshi law.
Dhaka is therefore offering New Delhi reassurance that Hasina can return and face justice without her physical safety being compromised. The ball is now squarely in New Delhi’s court. There is still no publicly disclosed transfer mechanism, precise return date or indication that India has decided to extradite her. But if Dhaka is demanding extradition while guaranteeing her security on arrival, India will increasingly face scrutiny over how much longer it can leave the issue unresolved. The longer India allows Hasina to remain politically active on its soil, the harder it becomes to convince Bangladesh that New Delhi has genuinely moved on from the political order it helped sustain.
Every intervention Hasina makes from India risks reinforcing the belief that New Delhi remains tied to the order rejected in 2024. That risks making cooperation with India politically more difficult for any Bangladeshi government, not just the BNP. Beyond extradition, the choice facing New Delhi is whether to continue treating Hasina as a valuable political asset or accept that her usefulness may have expired with the political order she represented. As Dr. Riaz puts it, “pressure tactics through Hasina, through other means, are actually not good for India, not good for the region’s stability.”
Tarique Rahman has effectively offered India a path forward: improve the bilateral environment while addressing the issue that increasingly poisons it. Bangladesh does not benefit from permanent confrontation with India. But India cannot simultaneously claim to want a new relationship with Bangladesh while giving political shelter to the person most closely identified with the old one. It remains to be seen whether New Delhi will build its future relationship with Bangladesh around the political reality that exists today or remain tethered to a discredited leader whose political legacy is defined by her notorious record in power, her ouster and the events that led to it.
Simonetta Fornasiero is an award-winning Italian broadcast journalist specializing in international affairs. She has held senior editorial positions at ARD German Radio and Television and Channel News Asia.
