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The most significant statement on the recent India-Bangladesh border controversy did not come from New Delhi but from Dhaka.

Speaking at a government press briefing, Bangladesh’s Information and Broadcasting Adviser, Zahed Ur Rahman, offered a reading of the ongoing push-in dispute that was revealing and unusually measured.

While reports of people being forced across the border have inflamed public opinion in Bangladesh, he explicitly rejected the notion that India’s Union government is deliberately seeking confrontation.

“I do not believe that the Indian government is doing this to create tensions with Bangladesh,” he said. Instead, he pointed toward politics in West Bengal. The issue, he argued, had featured prominently during the state’s election campaign, and the recent incidents appeared to be “a manifestation” of promises made to voters.

His remarks suggest that Bangladesh’s government sees the problem not primarily as a product of Indian foreign policy, but as a consequence of Indian domestic politics. That distinction matters because it reveals a growing disconnect between what New Delhi may want diplomatically and what political incentives within India are producing on the ground.

The timing could hardly be worse.

Relations between the two neighbours have been strained since the fall of Sheikh Hasina’s government in August 2024. For more than a decade, India built its Bangladesh strategy around a single political partner. The collapse of that arrangement left New Delhi struggling to adapt to a rapidly changing political landscape. Suspicion replaced familiarity and diplomatic engagement slowed.

Only recently have signs of a cautious thaw emerged under Bangladesh’s new BNP-led........

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