The world does not know Bangladesh as it knows Kashmir. That ignorance is not accidental. Kashmir is governed through visible occupation with soldiers, curfews and emergency laws. Bangladesh, by contrast, until Aug. 5, 2025, has been governed through something quieter and, in many ways, more effective: political alignment, economic dependency, securitized dissent and disciplined silence. What looks like friendship from New Delhi often feels like domination from Dhaka.
For seven years living in Türkiye, I have felt interested in observing Turkish society. Usually in tea stalls or mosque verandas, as an active listener, I follow older people’s discussions about occupied Kashmir or Gaza under Israeli siege. People know how to recognize Muslim suffering when it arrives in familiar forms of occupation, camps, checkpoints and blockades.
Sometimes they grow curious about my own country, Bangladesh. That curiosity is often expressed through common questions: “Is Bangladesh a Muslim country? Do they live in peace?
“Yes,” I reply, “Bangladesh is a Muslim-majority country. But Muslims there are also under oppression, like in Kashmir, or to some extent beyond that.
When I explain that Bangladesh has more than 91% of Muslims, which is proportionally similar to Türkiye, yet Muslims there are also oppressed, the reaction is disbelief.
Then how is repression possible? The answer unsettles easy categories.
Oppression does not always come from a religious majority ruling over a Muslim minority. Sometimes it comes from an authoritarian state that has learned how to weaponize secularism, nationalism and regional alliances. In Bangladesh, repression has not targeted Muslims as a demographic, but Muslims as a political and ethical force, especially when they question India’s dominance or challenge a regime closely aligned with it.
Since 1971, Bangladesh has formally existed as a sovereign state. In practice, sovereignty has been conditional. India frames the bilateral relationship as friendly and cooperative. Bangladeshi governments repeat this framing selectively, depending on who holds power. When a government is explicitly pro-India, repression is narrated as stability. When alignment loosens, the language of extremism rushes in. This is neocolonial power without colonial flags.
Bangladesh has one of the deadliest borders in the world, not because of war, but because of routine shootings. For years, Bangladeshi civilians have been killed by Indian border forces in the name of “protecting the border.” Between 1972 and 2026, according to several human rights reports, roughly 1,963 Bangladeshis were killed by India’s Border Security Force (BSF), an average of about 35 per year. These deaths rarely lead to trials or sustained diplomatic consequences.
The uncomfortable question of how a “friendly” relationship tolerates the habitual shooting of unarmed citizens of one side by the security forces of the other remains unanswered.
Kashmir is policed as a threat. Bangladesh’s border population is treated as expendable and inhumane. Different labels, same logic.
The last 15 years intensified this pattern. Under a government widely described as India’s most reliable partner, opposition politics, especially conservative and visibly religious groups, were not merely marginalized but also securitized.
Abrar Fahad, a university student, was beaten to death in his dormitory by activists affiliated with the ruling party’s student wing after he criticized a water-sharing agreement with India. Ilias Ali, a senior Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) leader who was critical of Indian influence, disappeared without a trace. Journalist Mahmudur Rahman, another outspoken critic of Indian hegemony, was imprisoned repeatedly, and his newspaper Amar Desh was shut down. Jamaat-e-Islami, the country’s largest Islamist political party and one of the most consistent critics of Indian influence, was systematically dismantled, hundreds of offices were demolished, senior leaders were executed through highly contested judicial processes, thousands were arrested, and associated businesses were vandalized or seized. Osman Hadi, founder of Inqilab Mancha and one of the most vocal youth critics of Indian hegemony, was later assassinated, reinforcing the climate of fear surrounding outspoken opposition.
This was not a political competition. It was erasure. Domination did not require Indian soldiers. Bangladeshi institutions internalized the logic themselves.
The pattern became unmistakable after India passed the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act in 2019, against the Muslims in Assam province. Protests erupted across Bangladesh, not against an Indian domestic law alone, but against its symbolizing a regional order where Muslim vulnerability was normalized and Bangladeshi dissent tightly policed.
In 2021, when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Bangladesh, protests followed. Law enforcement opened fire. At least 17 protesters were killed. No meaningful accountability followed. The message, enforced with Bangladeshi guns, was that opposing India’s policies, even symbolically, was a red line.
After the bloodshed of July 2024, ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina left the country and was sheltered in India. What followed was not just a political crisis, but a narrative offensive. Indian media outlets portrayed Bangladesh as having fallen to extremists. The interim administration was framed as a threat to minorities. Muhammad Yunus, a Nobel laureate appointed Chief of the government of the interim regime, was depicted as a figurehead for conservative forces, despite his global reputation as a development economist with no extremist political history.
Inside Bangladesh, the claim collapsed under scrutiny. There was no policy shift targeting minorities, no state-enabled violence against them. In many cases, minorities reported feeling safer than before, as the apparatus that had previously instrumentalized fear weakened. The accusation itself became the instrument.
This inversion has precedent. Few figures illustrate it better than Bangladesh's two-time head of government, Khaleda Zia, the most prominent leader to openly resist Indian dominance. Her punishment of imprisonment, political exclusion and the dismantling of her party sent a durable message that resistance would be penalized through domestic institutions calibrated to enforce loyalty.
The logic extended beyond established politicians to a new generation. Osman Hadi, a young leader articulating a critique of Indian hegemony and cultural subordination, was assassinated. He did not belong to traditional party politics. That was precisely the threat. His killing was not about silencing the past but preempting a future.
When youth voices are eliminated, it is not only opposition that is suppressed, but also imagination.
The same pattern surfaced recently when Bangladesh diversified its defense partnerships, including cooperation with Türkiye and China. Indian strategic commentators openly expressed discomfort. Until recently, such diversification was politically unthinkable. Bangladesh’s defense choices were expected to remain aligned with Indian preferences. “The reaction exposed an underlying assumption in the relationship, namely that Bangladesh may govern itself, but only within limits.
Calling Bangladesh a “Neo-Kashmir” is not to equate suffering or erase Kashmiri realities. It is to name a shared logic: securitization without occupation, domination without formal rule, repression justified through the language of stability and minority protection.
Kashmir is ruled through soldiers and emergency laws. Bangladesh has been ruled through loyalty tests, narrative control, selective justice, and the criminalization of dissent.
Oppression is easy to recognize when it arrives with checkpoints and curfews. It is harder to name when it comes wrapped in diplomacy, development rhetoric, and concern.
That is why the world does not know Bangladesh.
And this is why, in the post-Hasina period, Bangladeshi youth are now heard as sharply and unapologetically anti-Indian. The slogans echoing across campuses and streets are not random bursts of anger; they are compressed political histories. “Delhi na Dhaka? Dhaka, Dhaka” (“Delhi or Dhaka? Dhaka, Dhaka”) rejects external tutelage. “Golami na Azadi? Azadi, Azadi” (“Slavery or freedom? Freedom, freedom”) draws a stark line between subordination and self-rule. “Khomota na Jonota? Jonota, Jonota” (“Power or the people? The people, the people”) opposes authority concentrated above to sovereignty rooted below. And “Aposh na Shongram? Shongram, Shongram” (“Compromise or struggle? Struggle, struggle”) rejects negotiated submission in favor of resistance where dignity is at stake.
For international ears, these chants may sound radical. For a generation that grew up watching dissent punished, sovereignty made conditional, and loyalty rewarded, they are explanatory.
On Feb. 12, 2026, Bangladesh held its first genuinely competitive national election in decades. Nearly 20 million young voters cast ballots for the first time, not merely choosing parties but expressing a broader political mood shaped by years of repression and contested sovereignty. The election did not simply determine a government; it revealed a generational shift. For many young citizens, the question was not only about party alignment but about dignity, autonomy, and the limits of external influence in Bangladesh’s internal affairs.
Anti-Indian sentiment, in this sense, is not hostility toward a people or a culture. It is a verdict on a system. And it is this verdict, which formed in blood, silence, and memory, that will shape Bangladesh’s political future long after the slogans fade.
