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When Sheikh Hasina addressed a virtual press conference from New Delhi on Wednesday, marking the second anniversary of the uprising that ended her 15-year rule, Bangladesh’s foreign ministry answered with unarguably the sharpest language it has used against India since her ouster in August 2024.

The former prime minister, speaking via an audio link at an event organised by the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of South Asia, rejected the charges against her, criticised the government in Dhaka and repeated that she intends to return to Bangladesh by year’s end.

Her son, Sajeeb Wazed Joy, joining from the United States, thanked Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for what he called the “utmost respect” shown to his mother.

Dhaka’s statement that night called Hasina an “absconding convicted genocider” and the head of a “mafia enterprise”, termed her appearance “an affront to the sovereignty of Bangladesh” and declared that the country would “never again” be a “client state”.

It repeatedly invoked the “July Revolution”, a firmer framing than the “July Uprising” that had been the government’s default term till now.

Read alone, that statement looks like a turning point – the moment Dhaka’s frustration with New Delhi went from implicit to official. The 48 hours since have complicated that reading considerably.

An old complaint, not a new one

Bangladesh has held India responsible, in some form, for........

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