Bangladesh on the brink of another precipice

Bangladesh’s interim government, headed by Nobel laureate Prof. Muhammad Yunus, is in trouble. Hastily put together in August 2024 — after a popular movement led by students deposed the Awami League government and Sheikh Hasina fled to India — it finds itself pulled in different directions.

Things came to a head on 22 May, when Yunus reportedly expressed his . Already under pressure to call for — regardless of whether his promised reforms were implemented — Bangladesh army chief General Waqar-uz-Zaman intensified the crisis by telling his officers at a closed-door meeting that elections must be held by December 2025, if not earlier, so that the army (which has been given magisterial power) can return to its barracks.

The conversation was leaked and triggered wild speculation about the involvement of a ‘foreign hand’. A lid has been put on it, to prevent the situation from boiling over, but the question over Yunus’s ability to deliver remains.

For India, a restive Bangladesh has sprung several surprises. New Delhi now views Yunus as hostile, while many in Bangladesh — including within the interim government — see India as unhelpful. Dhaka, the BNP and Islamist groups accuse India of backing the Awami League, while Indian leaders have deepened mistrust by raising red flags over the persecution of the Hindu minority in Bangladesh.

Bangladeshi political leaders across the spectrum react sharply to such allegations, pointing to India’s own treatment of its Muslim minority, even as Indian leaders escalate tensions by warning that Bangladesh could face not one, but two ‘chicken necks’.

Both countries are asking some probing questions. Here are a few that seem to feature in many discussions:

Has Yunus’s interim government run its course?

Not yet, not quite. The immediate trigger for the political crisis in Bangladesh can be traced back to the interim government’s 11 May decision to ban all activities of the Awami League, including those in cyberspace, under the Anti-Terrorism Act. According to law advisor Asif Nazrul, the ban was imposed to “ensure national security, protect leaders and activists of the uprising, and safeguard plaintiffs and witnesses involved in the tribunal proceedings”.

Like other bans before it, the decision added Awami League to the list of those who are at the receiving end of the administration’s crackdown on its political detractors, turning the party from predator to victim. From her safe house in New Delhi, Sheikh Hasina called the ban a political vendetta aimed at preventing her party from contesting elections, as and when they take place.

Several theories are doing the rounds on what prompted the General to push for elections. One suggests Waqar acted to preempt a move by a section in the interim government that is keen to replace him with a pro-Pakistan chief — a speculation that has gained currency amid increasing Pakistan–Bangladesh military ties since early 2025.

For the moment, it’s status quo. “We were worried for a few days,” said a retired bureaucrat in Dhaka. “A truce was worked out between Yunus and Waqar and measures were taken. The tension has been defused for now”.

Bangladesh may have temporarily averted a meltdown of its interim government, but not before some of its inherent weaknesses were exposed.

Is Bangladesh any closer to achieving the pluralist state envisioned by its student revolutionaries?

It was the student community which persuaded Yunus to head the interim government, and many are still part of his cabinet as advisors. Leaders like Nahid Islam came from activist organisations like Students Against Discrimination. Some of them, including Nahid, have since moved on to form the Jatiyo Nagorik Party (National Citizen’s Party or NCP) and contest in elections.

A student-led centrist and pluralist party, the NCP has consciously maintained its distance from Islamist organisations like the Jamaat, Hizb-ut-Tahrir or Hifazat-e-Islam. Bangladesh’s major political parties, including the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and the now-banned Awami League, have traditionally been pluralist. With the NCP and BNP getting considerable traction, it appears that the centre of gravity of Bangladesh’s politics is converging around a centrist-pluralist pole.

Where does that leave Bangladesh’s right wing Islamist groups? “The July revolution was a students’ movement against discrimination and not an Islamist movement,” says academic and Bangladesh expert Sreeradha Datta. Datta is certain Bangladesh will deny political space to these groups, despite their growing influence.

Are Islamist elements in the interim government cosying up to Pakistan?

In a first since 1971, the head of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) chief Lieutenant General Asim Malik visited Dhaka on 21 January and was received by Lieutenant-General Muhammad Faizur Rahman, Quarter-Master General (QMG) of the Bangladesh Army. (Lt Gen. Rahman is known for his Islamist leaning within the interim government.)

Beyond the optics of the ISI chief’s visit, Bangladesh Air Force pilots are seen manning China-made fighter planes JF-17 in joint operations. In February, the Bangladesh Navy participated in Aman 2025, a joint naval exercise with Pakistan in the Arabian sea.

Many in Bangladesh believe Islamist elements in the interim government are repeating the mistake that led to the 1971 Liberation War: overestimating the power of pan-Islamism to align ideologically with Pakistan.

“Bangladesh’s Islam is not Arab’s Islam,” says Bangladeshi scholar, political thinker and human rights activist Farhad Mazhar. A Jayaprakash Narayan-like figure, Mazhar has been providing moral, ideological and political direction to Bangladesh’s student leaders.

Has India been reduced to watching the action from the sidelines?

“The July revolution and the subsequent events of August 2024 indicate that Bangladesh has completely changed. It cannot rewind to earlier times,” says M. Humayun Kabir, retired diplomat and president of Bangladesh Enterprise Institute.

Kabir, former Ambassador to the US and Bangladesh’s permanent representative to the UN, seems to suggest that looking at Bangladesh through the familiar lens of the Awami League–BNP (+Jamaat) binary is no longer valid.

What Kabir does not elaborate, however, is whether India was blind-sided by the shift in Bangladesh’s political landscape, leaving it without a credible interlocutor for engagement.

According to Mazhar, a compliant media and irresponsible politicians on both sides of the border amplified this binary narrative, drowning out other voices from Bangladesh.

Will the Jatiyo Nagorik Party (NCP) be a force to reckon with when Bangladesh goes to polls?

The NCP is in the process of organising itself, putting in place internal command and control systems. The numbers tell an interesting story. Each of Bangladesh’s past three election cycles added 10 million new voters. That translates to 3 crore voters — out of a total 12 crore — who are now in the 18 to 35 age group.

Moreover, both the BNP–Jamaat combine and Awami League face strong political headwinds due to their actions since 1990–91. While prevailing opinion and conventional wisdom suggest the BNP will gain traction — with a modest increase in Jamaat votes — Bangladesh’s elections can produce unexpected outcomes, especially if a significant portion of the 25 per cent young and disenfranchised voters cast their ballots en masse.

Sourabh Sen is a Kolkata-based independent writer and commentator on politics, human rights and foreign affairs