A Dream Was Born in Dhaka

The idea for the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) did not arise from wounded national egos or bureaucratic jingoism. It was a correction, an attempt to counter the tragedy of South Asia’s partition. The region is indivisible as a matter of geography, history, culture, rivers, trade, and blood spilled through decades of conflict, yet permanently and traumatically divided by suspicion and asymmetry of power. The idea for SAARC, at least as it was initially envisaged, came from Bangladesh’s President Ziaur Rahman.

Zia was a realist; in his vision, South Asia could not continue to be the least integrated region in the world.

He called for South Asian states to come together in an organization modeled loosely on ASEAN, with an emphasis on economic cooperation, development, and people-to-people ties. Bilateral disputes would not be on the formal agenda. For smaller states, SAARC offered a safety valve, strategic breathing space in the shadow of a single South Asian hegemon.

SAARC was born at a summit in Dhaka in 1985. It had a limited, modest promise. Regional trade and cultural exchange. Regional education and connectivity. Gradual mutual confidence-building. For a moment, it seemed possible to look beyond the zero-sum politics that defined South Asia.

India Joined SAARC, But Never Believed in It

New Delhi looked at the organization through deep, long-standing suspicion. Indian policymakers instinctively feared SAARC would be a platform for smaller neighbors to “gang up” on India. This instinct was telling less for its realism than for what it revealed about India’s image of itself: not a partner among equals, but a natural overlord of the region, whose authority should go unchallenged.

India also pushed from the beginning for a critical clause in SAARC’s charter: no bilateral and contentious issues. This was a self-serving condition in disguise: it protected India’s comfort zones by neutering SAARC. South Asia’s most controversial and sensitive issues, Kashmir, water sharing, border management, and trade barriers, were the very matters SAARC was designed to sidestep.

But even with these self-inflicted constraints, SAARC could have worked. At the margins, informal India-Pakistan diplomacy at SAARC summits contributed to de-escalation at several points. Visa facilitation, South Asian University, and technical cooperation were steps in the right direction, if no more.

India never let SAARC become more than a talking shop. Whenever regional cooperation threatened to challenge New Delhi’s primacy or constrain its unilateral freedom of action, India applied the brakes.

SAARC Taken Hostage by India-Pakistan Relations

India ultimately killed SAARC by refusing to separate regional cooperation from its bilateral hostility with Pakistan. As India-Pakistan relations worsened, SAARC became hostage to New Delhi’s paranoia.

The last SAARC summit took place in Kathmandu in 2014. The next one was to be held in Islamabad in 2016, but India unilaterally boycotted it in the wake of a terrorist attack. Several other states aligned with India followed suit, effectively paralyzing the organization. The SAARC secretariat in Kathmandu was left with ceremonial responsibilities but no mandate. SAARC’s vision for South Asia was quietly abandoned.

This was not accidental neglect; it was strategic suffocation. India decided that a functional South Asian multilateral platform that included Pakistan was not in New Delhi’s interest.

BIMSTEC: Regionalism Sans Pakistan

India’s alternative to SAARC is the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation, or BIMSTEC. This grouping links South Asia’s eastern flank with Southeast Asia while conspicuously excluding Pakistan. This exclusion is not incidental; it is the group’s core attraction.

BIMSTEC offers India an opportunity to shape regional leadership without the inconvenience of Pakistan’s presence as a regional political equal. It helps redefine South Asian regionalism away from the realities of the subcontinent’s history and geopolitics, toward a broader Indo-Pacific narrative of global partnerships that is much closer to India’s evolving global ambitions.

Yet for all its glossy vision documents and connectivity master plans, BIMSTEC does not have what SAARC once did, and failed to create since: regional legitimacy. BIMSTEC is a technocratic exercise defined by Indian strategic priorities and their potential to catalyze development in India’s neighborhood, not a South Asian idea or vision. It is good on connectivity; bad on trust. It has institutions; no conflict-resolution mechanism. Smaller states engage, but with caution and a clear sense that BIMSTEC is no neutral platform, but an Indian-curated space.

The irony is not lost: India strangled SAARC for being politically inconvenient, then complained when other regional alignments began to take shape outside its control, like a Bangladesh-China-Pakistan dialogue.

India and the Challenge of Accepting Neighbors

India’s discomfort with SAARC is a symptom of a historical problem: its inability to accept its neighbors as sovereign equals.

At Partition, almost 500 princely states were entitled to decide which nation they would join. Indian intervention, pressure, and, in some cases, open military action coerced most of them into acceding. Hyderabad, Junagadh, and Goa. Sikkim, a former Indian protectorate, was tactfully annexed in 1975. Kashmir was absorbed in a manner that has never been uncontested internationally.

Today, India has formally ended Kashmir’s autonomy and openly discusses incorporating PoK into its union. Maps proudly displayed by the ruling BJP feature “Akhand Bharat,” a civilizational claim that includes Nepal, Bangladesh, and parts of Pakistan.

Such symbolism is not harmless political rhetoric. It signals a direct message to South Asia’s smaller neighbors: India does not merely want a sphere of influence; it wants historical absorption.

Bangladesh: From Strategic Partner to Pressure Point

Bangladesh’s experience with India is the exemplar of this pattern. Despite friend-in-need rhetoric, Dhaka has repeatedly been on the receiving end of Indian pressure. Water sharing, border killings, trade barriers, transit arrangements, tariff differentials, political alignment—no area is outside the purview of Indian dissatisfaction.

Bangladesh’s strategic partnership with India has deepened after the change of government in 2024. However, New Delhi’s increasingly visible discomfort with Dhaka’s recalibration of relations with Pakistan and China reveals India’s deep expectation of obedience rather than partnership. Autonomy is rebuked as instability; diversification is labeled a security threat.

This is the same environment that made SAARC necessary. And this is why India killed SAARC. It could not tolerate the possibility of a multilateral space that might provide strategic breathing space to its neighbors, especially the smaller ones.

Is India Behaving Like a Great Power or an Insecure One?

India behaves as if it is a superpower in waiting. Great powers do not fear multilateralism. Insecure powers do. Great powers build institutions; insecure ones hollow them out. Great powers reassure neighbors; insecure ones intimidate them.

India, despite its size, economy, and military capacity, has failed one of the most basic tests of leadership: regional consent. China, for all its regional assertiveness, invests heavily in regional institutions and economic integration. ASEAN, despite its internal fissures and differences, functions because its most prominent members know how to exercise self-restraint.

India, by contrast, seeks dominance without responsibility. Regional centrality without compromise. Deference, not dialogue.

The Way Forward: Regionalism Beyond Indian Vetoes

SAARC may be on life support, but the spirit that gave rise to it is not dead. South Asia still needs a regional platform built for the realities of the region, not the anxieties of one state.

If India cannot embrace inclusive regionalism, others will explore alternative spaces. Bilateral, trilateral, or minilateral initiatives that bypass New Delhi will be a logical choice in such an environment. The emergence of discussions among Bangladesh, Pakistan, and China is not a provocation. It is a consequence.

India has a choice. It can rediscover the spirit of SAARC: respect, restraint, and shared prosperity. Or it can continue down the road of exclusion, coercion, and strategic loneliness. SAARC died a premature death. It is not the idea, but India’s attitude, that is at fault.