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India’s hegemonic impulses risk pushing its neighbours into adversarial alliances and fragmenting a once-promising regional architecture, writes Abdullah A Dewan

THIS article critically examines India’s expanding regional hegemony, characterised increasingly by domination rather than genuine partnership. Under diplomatic rhetoric, this posture undermines the core democratic values India professes to uphold, including pluralism and regional cooperation. Focusing on India’s sixteen-year dominance over Bangladesh, the article analyses how this influence compels ruling powers to actively or passively align with Indian interests, thereby eroding the principles India claims to defend.

The piece argues that resisting this hegemonic bullying — often disguised as ‘big brotherliness’ — should not be mistaken for anti-Indian sentiment. Rather, the critique targets hegemonic policies, particularly highlighting New Delhi’s enabling role in sustaining a fascist-leaning kleptocracy in Bangladesh, which poses grave dangers to regional stability and democratic integrity.

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From ally to enabler

SINCE 1971, India’s approach to Bangladesh has been defined less by partnership than by control. Water sharing has been manipulated in its favour, with the Teesta and other river accords left to decay while upstream withdrawals cripple our agriculture. Energy trade terms and tariff barriers tilt against us, undermining industrial competitiveness as Indian goods flood our markets.

Since 2009, India has extended unwavering strategic, political and rhetorical support to the now-deposed Awami League government in Bangladesh — a regime that methodically dismantled democratic institutions, captured the judiciary, criminalised dissent, manipulated elections, and turned state agencies into instruments of lootopoliticraft. This is not a neutral alliance. It is a regional power abetting domestic tyranny for geopolitical convenience.

More damaging has been New Delhi’s interference in our politics. By propping up the Awami League, it has helped entrench a party-state that dismantled democratic institutions and normalised kleptocracy — a system where elites loot domestically in exchange for compliance with Indian interests. India remained silent as every major opposition party was systematically weakened through mass arrests, politicised court cases, enforced disappearances and relentless harassment.

New Delhi hailed Bangladesh’s elections in 2014, 2018, and 2024 — despite overwhelming evidence of electoral engineering, vote rigging and the effective exclusion of credible opposition forces. India celebrated the Awami League’s ‘stability’ while ignoring that such stability was manufactured by crushing dissent, co-opting institutions and institutionalising a bureaucratic-mafia alliance.

Such silence is deafening. What kind of neighbour chooses silence — or worse, applause — as democracy collapses next door? India’s endorsement sends a dangerous signal: that power and control trump principles.

In the 18 months since Sheikh Hasina’s ouster and her absconding to India, the only favour India has inadvertently done for Bangladesh is sparing the nation the chaos of street riots that might have erupted over her hanging or execution in a gas chamber. Indian media and government have been untiringly involved in machinations to make Bangladesh unstable to reinstate her in power — despite the fact she no longer has any official address to return to other than a maximum-security undisclosed prison building.

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Kleptofascism with Delhi’s blessing

THE regime India continued to support was not simply authoritarian — it was kleptofascist, a system where crony capitalists and party elites siphon national wealth, often shielded by public-private partnerships and politically sanctioned monopolies. Security forces and intelligence agencies operated with impunity, torturing, disappearing and intimidating critics. Elections became spectacles, not expressions of public will, serving merely to reproduce power structures.

India has seen all this — and endorsed it with open acquaintance. Why? Because Delhi’s calculus is cold: it prefers a compliant Bangladesh over a democratic one. A regime that grants overland transit, suppresses anti-Indian sentiment, opens ports and airspace, and aligns its foreign policy with India’s — even at the cost of its own sovereignty — is useful.

This is a transaction of convenience, not a partnership. The price of this utility? The slow, deliberate suffocation of 170 million people’s right to self-determination, justice and dignity.

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Breaking promises

THIS complicity is compounded by India’s consistent breaking or delaying of critical bilateral agreements affecting Bangladesh’s sovereignty and welfare. Agreements on water, energy and trade are broken or stalled when convenient to Delhi; connectivity projects serve its advantage while deepening our dependencies.

One glaring example is the long-pending Teesta River water-sharing agreement. Despite promises over decades, New Delhi refuses to finalise this crucial pact, citing political obstacles in West Bengal and domestic opposition. The result is profound water shortages in northern Bangladesh during dry seasons — devastating farmers and communities, fostering deep mistrust and stalling regional development.

Energy cooperation reveals similar contradictions. Bangladesh has sought Indian assistance for energy imports and infrastructure, yet agreements are delayed, conditional or limited in scope, while India pursues energy diversification elsewhere. This leaves Bangladesh vulnerable to shortages and dependent on Indian goodwill, undermining its energy security.

Trade relations are no less problematic. India frequently imposes non-tariff barriers, arbitrary customs inspections and fluctuating regulations that disrupt vital Bangladeshi exports. While India demands open access to its own markets, its protectionist practices towards Bangladesh demonstrate a double standard that stifles economic growth and regional integration.

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Strategic servility: a manufactured dependence

INDIA’S policy towards Bangladesh is not partnership but strategic servility. It ensured Dhaka’s ruling elite remain dependent on New Delhi’s blessings, and in return India extracts trade concessions favouring its north-eastern states, controls water diplomacy by withholding agreements like Teesta, militarises borders with impunity (where Bangladeshi civilians have routinely been killed by India’s Border Security Force), and cultivates a docile media narrative that suppresses criticism of India within Bangladesh.

Furthermore, India’s growing military cooperation with Bangladesh — while justified as regional security — comes with strings attached, serving to maintain influence over Dhaka’s defence and intelligence apparatus. The asymmetry of power renders Bangladesh vulnerable to coercion disguised as collaboration.

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A partnership of paradoxes

INDIA claims to uphold democratic values globally. It participates in forums like the Quad and BRICS, preaches the ‘rules-based international order,’ and positions itself as the Global South’s voice. Yet, in its own neighbourhood, it is the chief enabler of despotism.

In 2008, Bangladesh held one of its last genuinely competitive elections. Since then, under the Awami League’s unbroken reign — fortified by Indian backing — we have witnessed the near-total collapse of judicial independence, the rise of party-based oligarchs, normalisation of extrajudicial executions, erosion of parliament into a rubber stamp, and bureaucratic colonisation by politicised loyalists.

How could India — which fought colonialism — help entrench a postcolonial autocracy on its eastern border? The answer is simple: geopolitical utility outweighs moral consistency. Bangladesh under Hasina’s regime did India’s bidding. For New Delhi, democracy is expendable.

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Regional disintegration: cost of complicity

WHEN I say, ‘Back off or face disintegration,’ I mean not just India’s internal fissures — though Kashmir, Assam and northeast unrest are serious — but the broader unravelling of South Asian cohesion. Regionally, India’s hegemonic posture — from the Northeast to its hardline stance towards Pakistan — fuels mistrust and instability, leaving Bangladesh squeezed by pressures on multiple fronts. Many neighbours now explore deeper ties with China’s Belt and Road Initiative or regional alignments like BIMSTEC and the Bay of Bengal Cooperation.

Meanwhile, India’s moral credibility erodes as it undermines the very values it touts abroad — democracy, secularism, pluralism. This hypocrisy corrodes diplomatic capital and soft power. Crucially, India’s heavy-handedness in the region accelerates diplomatic disintegration, fraying trust and opening strategic gaps that rivals can — and do — exploit.

Nowhere is the risk of actual fragmentation more palpable than in India’s own north-eastern frontier. The Seven Sisters remain politically fragile, economically underdeveloped and ethnically volatile. Movements for autonomy, insurgency and cultural independence have simmered for decades, recently reignited by ethnic violence in Manipur and border tensions between states.

These regions, more culturally tied to Southeast Asia than the Indian mainland, perceive Delhi’s neglect and centralisation with growing resentment. India’s aggressive foreign posture — while trying to project unity and strength — may thus mask and worsen its own fault lines. Unless Delhi pursues genuine federalism at home and principled cooperation abroad, it risks catalysing the very disintegration it seeks to prevent.

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Contradictions of Indian policy

INDIA presents itself as a democratic champion internationally but enables autocracy next door. It advocates sovereignty and non-interference while routinely intervening in neighbours’ domestic affairs. Economically, it pushes both liberalisation and protectionism, geopolitically balancing military confrontation with China alongside economic cooperation, and courting the US while engaging Russia for energy.

This dissonance weakens India’s credibility and undermines regional trust. It raises fundamental questions: Can a country that champions pluralism at home and abroad justify supporting kleptofascist regimes at its doorstep? Can it reconcile its democratic aspirations with hegemonic ambitions?

India’s policy appears torn between its rising great-power ambitions and the principles it once espoused, leaving neighbours caught in the crossfire. This delicate balancing act risks alienating crucial allies and destabilising India’s own growth trajectory. Moreover, the inability to decisively choose between competing global blocs may undermine New Delhi’s ability to influence regional outcomes effectively.

Step back or risk disintegration, not by force, but through erosion of trust, legitimacy, and history. The South Asian region’s future depends on respect for sovereignty, democratic norms and mutual trust. India’s hegemonic impulses risk pushing its neighbours into adversarial alliances and fragmenting a once-promising regional architecture. This is a moment for New Delhi to reflect: does it wish to be remembered as a liberator and partner, or as an overlord whose shadow hastened disintegration? The choice is India’s. But make no mistake: those who choose domination over dignity sow the seeds of their own undoing.

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Dr Abdullah A Dewan is a former physicist and nuclear engineer at the BAEC and professor emeritus of economics at Eastern Michigan University, USA.