Dhaka on Thursday (April 30) issued a sharp diplomatic protest by summoning India’s acting High Commissioner, Pawan Badhe, following controversial remarks by Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma that Bangladesh says undermine bilateral ties.
Officials at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs called in the envoy, where Director General (South Asia) Ishrat Jahan conveyed Dhaka’s “strong displeasure” over what it described as “disparaging” comments.
The move, the first such summons since the Bangladesh Nationalist Party-led government assumed office in February, signals how quickly rhetorical excess can spill into formal diplomacy.
The immediate provocation is striking for its bluntness. CM Sarma reportedly said he “prays” that relations between India and Bangladesh do not improve, arguing instead that ties should continue to deteriorate. It is rare for a senior elected official in a neighboring country to articulate, so openly, a preference for diplomatic decline.
Dhaka’s response was therefore less about theatrics than about drawing a line: such language, left unchecked, corrodes the foundations of an already delicate relationship.
Yet the episode is not an aberration. It reflects a longer pattern of rhetoric emanating from Assam’s political arena, where Bangladesh has often been cast less as a partner and more as a problem.
Himanta Biswa Sarma has repeatedly framed Bangladesh in security terms — warning of “infiltration”, alleging demographic pressure and invoking threats to India’s northeast. Over time, such framing has seeped into administrative practice, most notably in periodic “push-in” operations along the border.
These push-ins — where individuals alleged to be undocumented migrants are forced across the frontier—have been a recurring irritant. Bangladeshi border authorities have, on multiple occasions, reported groups of people being sent across by India’s Border Security Force without verification of nationality.
In several instances, those pushed in were found to be Indian citizens or long-term residents lacking documentation rather than Bangladeshi nationals. Each episode triggers localized tension, erodes trust between border forces and feeds a narrative in Bangladesh that parts of India’s state machinery view it through a lens of suspicion and expediency.
The political utility of such rhetoric in Assam is not hard to decipher. Migration — real, perceived, and politicized — has long been central to the state’s electoral discourse. Casting Bangladesh as the source of demographic anxiety helps consolidate domestic constituencies.
But what plays well in Guwahati sits uneasily with the strategic calculus in New Delhi. Because, at the national level, India appears to be moving in the opposite direction. There is a growing recognition among policymakers and think tanks that India must “reset” its relationship with Bangladesh.
That reset is, of course, driven by hard interests: connectivity to the northeast, access to transit routes, cooperation on energy and the management of shared rivers. Bangladesh is not a peripheral partner; it is central to India’s eastern strategy.
Recent signals from New Delhi suggest a degree of seriousness about this recalibration. The decision to appoint a politically heavyweight like Dinesh Trivedi as envoy to Dhaka indicates that the relationship is being elevated, not downgraded.
Engagements have focused on trade facilitation, infrastructure connectivity, and maintaining security cooperation along the border. Even amid political transitions in Dhaka, India has shown a willingness to keep channels open.
This creates a dissonance. On one track, New Delhi seeks a pragmatic reset with Dhaka, emphasizing mutual benefit and regional stability. On another, influential leaders in border states continue to amplify narratives that cast Bangladesh as a destabilizing force. The result is mixed signaling — one that risks confusing both policymakers and publics on either side.
The costs of such incoherence are not abstract. Bangladesh and India share one of the most densely populated and sensitive borders in the world. Cooperation is essential to manage everything from river flows to smuggling networks. When rhetoric hardens, operational coordination becomes harder.
Border incidents — whether accidental or deliberate — become more likely. And domestic audiences in both countries grow more receptive to nationalist framing, narrowing the political space for compromise.
There is also a reputational dimension. India has, over the past decade, positioned itself as a responsible regional power — one that values stability and connectivity. Allowing subnational rhetoric to undercut that posture weakens its credibility.
For Bangladesh, meanwhile, the calculus is equally clear: it cannot afford a relationship defined by episodic hostility, but nor can it ignore statements that question the very premise of cooperation.
None of this suggests that disagreements should be papered over. Bangladesh and India have real differences—over trade imbalances, water sharing, and border management. But diplomacy depends on a baseline of respect. Publicly wishing for deteriorating ties crosses that baseline.
Dhaka’s decision to summon the envoy is therefore best read not as escalation but as calibration. It is a reminder that rhetoric matters, that words spoken in one capital reverberate in another, and that managing a complex bilateral relationship requires discipline across all levels of government.
If India is serious about resetting ties, it will need to align its internal messaging with its external objectives. That means reining in narratives that reduce Bangladesh to a security trope and addressing contentious practices such as push-ins with greater transparency and coordination.
For Bangladesh, the challenge will be to respond firmly without allowing such episodes to derail broader engagement. The alternative is a slow drift into mistrust — fuelled not by grand strategy but by the cumulative effect of smaller provocations.
In a relationship as intricate as that between Bangladesh and India, that would be a costly failure of both politics and imagination.
Faisal Mahmud is a Dhaka-based journalist