This article is based on an exclusive interview with Dr. Khalilur Rahman conducted with Dr. Pinaki Bhattacharjee on June 1, 2025. Its objective is to critically examine the collapse of the Hasina regime, probe deeper currents that powered Bangladesh’s democratic resurgence, and assess the implications of foreign intervention—primarily, India’s intervention—in shaping the nation’s trajectory. Employing the lens of Dr. Bhattacharjee’s observations, this article aims to shed light on the path toward a renewed, sovereign, and responsible republic.
There is a wind of Change long in coming blowing through Bangladesh—powerful in velocity, unyielding in purpose. The political upheaval of the last several months is not so much a smooth transfer of authority but the break-up of a deeply entrenched autocracy that, for over a decade and a half, choked democratic institutions to death, twisted the rule of law, and reduced the sovereignty of a proud nation to a pawn piece.
This is not a political story; it’s the emancipation of a nation. A revolution of human beings that did not spring from chaos but from focus of intent, not from vengeance, but from a non-negotiable concept of justice and self-respect. It is a reckoning—and a renaissance.
In a humble and introspective interview, Dr. Khalilur Rahman speaks with Dr. Pinaki Bhattacharjee, a renowned public thinker, relentless human rights campaigner, and co-ideologue of the 2024 Monsoon Uprising—a radical civic revolution that overthrew South Asia’s longest-standing autocracy. Dr. Bhattacharjee refers to this political transformation as “Bangladesh’s second liberation,” an era that recalls 1971 but sets a path towards a future founded on peoples’ power, institutional integrity, and national self-respect.
From the perspective of Dr. Bhattacharjee, the collapse of the Sheikh Hasina regime in July 2024 was not the end of a prime minister alone—it was the end of an absolutist regime founded on dynastic dictatorship, press repression, judicial compromise, and economic nepotism. Her hasty and undocumented journey to India—without possessing a valid passport, visa, or legal status of asylum—has now emerged as a symbol of a failed regime fleeing away from its history of repression and failure of governance.
But this instant of pause, as the interview illustrates, was no lucky accident. It was the product of decades—if not centuries—of effort: from the recalcitrant cries of student protesters to the courageous revelations of whistleblowers, from reporters in exile to grieving mothers who never stopped asking about their disappeared sons. It was a movement of the people fueled by fear and forged in hope.
Yet, even as Bangladesh exercises its agency, foreign interference remains a lurking presence in the background. Dr. Bhattacharjee warns India against “strategic overreach and moral miscalculation” in providing relentless support to the Hasina regime—most glaringly in backing flawed elections and suppressing dissent—undermining regional trust and democratic legitimacy. His rebuke is biting, not to provoke enmity, but to seek mutual respect and sovereign equality in South Asian diplomacy.
What one finds from this interview is not a tale of retaliation but of accountability. Dr. Bhattacharjee does not talk as a winner but as a custodian of national conscience and memory. He reminds us that the victory is not of any group or individual but of the millions of everyday Bangladeshis who—through silence, hardship, and sacrifice—did not give up.
This article, then, is not simply a chronicle of regime change. It is a meditation on renewal. A manual of institutional reform, public consciousness, and deliberate autonomy. A call to see a republic remade—but redeemed.
India’s Strategic Overreach and Diplomatic Miscalculation
In the interview, Dr. Pinaki Bhattacharjee offered a pointed and unflinching critique of India’s role in Bangladesh’s political crisis, arguing that New Delhi’s sustained support for the now-deposed Hasina regime reflected not diplomatic foresight but a profound strategic miscalculation. “India must understand,” he stated with clarity and resolve, “that Bangladesh is not its vassal state. The era of imposed governments is over.”
At the heart of this complaint is India’s controversial action of extending asylum to Sheikh Hasina—a former head of state who has been accused of brutal human rights violations, including the military-led massacre of July 2024, which, according to confirmed reports by the United Nations and Human Rights Watch, resulted in over 1,400 deaths and over 20,000 injuries, some of them students and unarmed civilians.
Dr. Bhattacharjee acutely criticized the moral and legal logic of India’s action: “Would New Delhi welcome the same scenario if Dhaka gave asylum to a Kashmiri separatist leader charged with crimes against the Indian state?” The action, he emphasized, flagrantly contravenes the India-Bangladesh extradition treaty signed in 2013 and contravenes the moral order of respect that should exist between equal neighboring sovereigns.
More broadly, the asymmetrical nature of the India-Bangladesh relationship—one marked by unequal leverage, selective diplomacy, and coercive soft power—has long been a point of contention in Dhaka. For Dr. Bhattacharjee and many others within Bangladesh’s democratic movement, the problem is not cooperation with India per se but New Delhi’s recurring tendency to treat Bangladesh as a dependent backyard rather than an equal partner.
India’s Strategic Interests in Bangladesh: A Complex Web of Motives
India’s sustained investment in the Hasina regime cannot be divorced from its broader strategic calculus. In addition to Dr. Bhattacharjee outlined several core interests the author added more issues that have driven New Delhi’s posture toward Bangladesh in recent decades:
- Security and Counterterrorism
India has repeatedly cited concerns over cross-border insurgency, particularly in its northeast, where several separatist groups once operated out of sanctuaries in Bangladesh. The Hasina government’s crackdown on these groups, including the handing over of ULFA (United Liberation Front of Assam) leaders, earned Delhi’s enduring gratitude and strategic loyalty.
- Water Resource Management
The transboundary position of major rivers like the Teesta, Ganges, and Brahmaputra puts Bangladesh at a strategic disadvantage. India has attempted to maintain its upstream advantage through water-sharing treaties—most of which are still pending, particularly the Agreement on the Teesta River Water, which was suspended following domestic opposition in West Bengal.
- Transit and Connectivity
India has traditionally wished to reach its landlocked northeastern areas through Bangladeshi territory. Under Hasina’s administration, Delhi secured overland transit rights for merchandise, rail linkages, and maritime passage using the Chattogram and Mongla ports, enhancing logistical efficiency and regional trade.
- Energy and Infrastructure Access
Bangladesh serves as a strategic hub for the regional integration of India and energy connectivity. Indian enterprises have invested in power plants, transmission lines, and cooperative infrastructure projects, such as the Bangladesh-India Friendship Pipeline, which supplies diesel to northern Bangladesh from Assam.
- Geopolitical Buffer Against China
As Beijing expands its influence across South Asia under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and infrastructure diplomacy, India has gazed at Bangladesh as a buffer state. Hasina’s equidistance—remaining India and China at arm’s length—was preferable in Delhi to a tilt towards an all-out Sino-Bangladeshi alignment.
- Cultural and Political Influence
It has sought to influence public opinion and elite sentiments in its favor through media, intellectual interaction, and the presence of a vast Indian diaspora within the Bangladeshi cultural sphere. However, such soft power has typically been viewed as political patronage under the cover of partnership.
Despite these interests, Dr. Bhattacharjee asserted, India’s only backing of one political leader—regardless of her increasingly autocratic regime—was self-defeating and ultimately a failure. “New Delhi got confused between loyalty and legitimacy,” he added. “And in the process, they alienated the people of Bangladesh.”
He emphasized that India needs to reorient its Bangladesh policy, shifting from personality diplomacy to institutional partnership. “We seek partnership, not patronage,” he stated. “Friendship must be mutual, not transactional.”
Briefly, Dr. Bhattacharjee warned that until India accepts and adjusts to the new politics of Dhaka—a popularly mandated government, not political engineering—its regional standing will remain in disrepute. “This isn’t just about Bangladesh,” he went on. “It’s about what kind of neighbor India wants to be in the 21st century—an equal partner, or a post-colonial power that can’t break with old ways.”
A History of Interference, Unveiled
India’s interference in Bangladesh’s democratic process dates back at least to the 2014 national polls, which were boycotted by all of Bangladesh’s major opposition parties and in which over half of the seats in parliament went uncontested. The Indian High Commission in Dhaka openly took part in supporting that election—just as there were eyewitness accounts recorded of ballot stuffing, voter intimidation, and coordination with the police.
One AL candidate in Khulna openly boasted, ‘I am a candidate of Hasina and of India.’ And that was not a speech far from it, it was a moment of revelation,” said Dr. Bhattacharjee.
This foreign-designed status quo generated an unparalleled erosion of civil rights. Under Hasina’s rule, enforced disappearances became regularized, extrajudicial killings were legalized by the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), and black sites such as Ayenaghar operated with impunity. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the U.S. State Department regularly condemned these acts, but they went unremedied under India’s complicit silence.
The Economic Cost of Captured Sovereignty
Apart from the human rights violations, the Hasina regime presided over a decade of unrestrained kleptocracy. Over $50 billion have been siphoned out of the country by regime cronies via trade-based money laundering, offshore banking, and bogus development contracts, as reported by Dr. Bhattacharjee and corroborated by data presented by Transparency International Bangladesh.
“By 2023, our foreign exchange reserves declined to less than $17 billion, evoking IMF conditionalities,” Dr. Bhattacharjee said. “We could have built 20 Padma Bridges with the loot money.”
This loot was not a coincidence—it was systemic. “It wasn’t corruption; it was state-sponsored extraction,” he went on. Dr. Bhattacharjee called for the establishment of a sovereign Anti-Kleptocracy Task Force with prosecutorial authorities, including asset recovery functions and foreign forensic support.
Misrepresenting a People’s Revolution
To counter attempts by some sections of Indian media and BJP-sympathetic analysts to characterize the rebellion as an expression of Islamist extremism, Dr. Bhattacharjee was unambiguous: “This revolution was initiated by students, civil society, women’s collectives, minority groups, and trade unions. The discourse on extremism is a colonial fantasy aimed to disempower popular sovereignty.”
The protests were notable for their diversity and civic restraint. Interfaith marches marched abreast, and protesters waved aloft slogans of secular democracy, accountability, and human rights. Interim Prime Minister Dr. Muhammad Yunus has explicitly and repeatedly set out his government’s zero-tolerance approach towards both extremism and authoritarianism.
Forging a Foreign Policy of Dignity and Balance
Dr. Bhattacharjee argued that Bangladesh’s past foreign policy philosophy—”friendship to all, malice toward none”—should be transformed into an era of principled pragmatism. “Neutrality without reciprocity is appeasement,” he asserted.
Bangladesh, with a population of over 175 million and a GDP of $460 billion (World Bank, 2023), is no longer a marginal state. It overshot India’s per capita income for a fleeting instant in 2021, a testament to the unspoken strength of its economy. “We have to now start behaving like the middle power we are,” Bhattacharjee urged.
He requested that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs establish an integrated strategy council comprising contributions from the ministries of defense, commerce, information, and disaster management to ensure overall policy coherence.
New Republic, New Responsibilities
The fall of the Indian-backed administration has created an active strategic vacuum. “The vacuum will entice China, the U.S., the EU, the Gulf, and Russia to vie for influence,” cautioned Bhattacharjee. “Bangladesh must possess a doctrine of multipolar interaction with national interest being its sole compass.”
He also demanded a reduced four-year election cycle, a return to proportional representation, and civic education in public schools as a mandatory subject to establish strong and active citizenship.
Resilience, Bhattacharjee emphasized, “is not only about national defense—it is about civic preparedness, media literacy, and institutional memory.”
Toward a New Social Contract
“This is not a change of guard, it is the birth of a republic,” concluded Dr. Bhattacharjee. “We require a new constitutional moment. One where no unelected or foreign-imposed authority can ever again mortgage our sovereignty for personal or geopolitical gain.”
The caretaker administration, headed by an above-party leadership led by Dr. Yunus, has a historic chance to reshape the republic. It entails electoral reform, judicial autonomy, protection of digital rights, and legislation promoting public accountability.
“The world is looking at us. But more importantly, our people—who marched, bled, and died for this moment—are watching too,” Bhattacharjee reminded.
This is not a political handover in itself. It is Bangladesh’s second struggle for freedom—this time against domestic betrayal and external domination. And if the ambitions voiced in this interview are any indication, the new republic will not give birth peacefully. It will give birth in the storm of a nation finding its voice.