THE years following Sheikh Hasina鈥檚 return to power in 2009 marked not merely a political shift but the construction of an entirely new order. What appeared at first as a democratic mandate soon revealed itself as a project of consolidation 鈥� an appropriation of state institutions into the service of dynastic authority. Bureaucracy and the armed forces, traditionally...
THERE are storms you sail into. And there are storms you spend a lifetime watching from the shore 鈥� knowing full well that the sea doesn鈥檛 care whether you鈥檙e a sailor or a spectator. I chose the Navy in 1986, not because I was drawn to the romance of ships or the poetry of the horizon, but because I needed order. Discipline. A world where loyalty was not a transaction...
WHEN Sheikh聽Hasina鈥檚 16-year hold on Bangladeshi politics snapped during the student-led uprising in July-August, 2024, few in South Block were prepared for the geopolitical whiplash that followed. After she escaped to India, the interim government of Bangladesh demanded the extradition of Hasina, which India has so far rejected. This, along with hundreds of other...
ON AUGUST 5, former prime minister Sheikh Hasina boarded a Bangladesh Air Force C-130J military transport in a hurry and fled to Hindon Air Force base, outside Delhi. Her plane was refuelled and reports said that she intended to fly on either to the United Kingdom (her niece, Tulip Siddiq is a minister in the new Labour government), Finland...