Bangladesh First and Prime Minister Tarique Rahman’s Visit to India

Prime Minister Tarique Rahman’s possible visit to India is fast becoming a defining test of Bangladesh’s foreign policy.

Days after taking office in February, he received a bilateral invitation from Indian Premier Narendra Modi. Bangladesh has separately been invited to the outreach session of the 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi on 12-13 September — not as a bilateral guest, but as BIMSTEC’s current chair.

The two carry different weight, yet public debate has entangled both with a third, far more charged question: Sheikh Hasina’s extradition.

Dhaka has said a ‘‘propitious environment’’ is needed for the visit, while pressing New Delhi to expedite Hasina’s extradition.

India says the request is under legal review. Foreign Minister Khalilur Rahman has tried to keep the two invitations distinct, but the bilateral visit, the extradition demand, and Bangladesh’s BIMSTEC role are increasingly treated as one question.

This is where the real diplomatic question emerges: should extradition be made a precondition for the visit, or should the visit itself become a diplomatic instrument for advancing that demand? The choice is not whether to travel. It is which path best serves Bangladesh’s national interest.

What ‘‘Bangladesh First’’ Really Means
‘‘Bangladesh First’’ is not an analytical device invented for this debate. It is a slogan that BNP chairman Tarique Rahman has repeatedly invoked as a guiding principle of his party’s foreign policy.

How the government handles the India visit and the extradition question is therefore a test of whether that principle can guide policy in practice.

A Bangladesh First policy should serve as a decision rule: protect Bangladesh’s core interests, preserve and expand its bargaining space, and judge diplomacy by the tangible outcomes it delivers.

It means neither blind allegiance to India nor reflexive opposition, but assessing each choice against Bangladesh’s sovereignty, security, and long-term interests. Extradition, the bilateral visit, and Bangladesh’s BIMSTEC role in BRICS outreach should therefore be judged by that same test, not treated as separate issues.

Extradition: A Firm Demand, Not a Precondition
Bangladesh and India have had an extradition treaty since 2013. Bangladesh has formally sought Hasina’s extradition; India acknowledges the request is under legal review — not purely a matter of political will, since most extradition treaties, including this one, carry a political-offense exception India could invoke. Bangladesh’s case must therefore be built on the legal track as rigorously as the political one.

There is no reason to retreat from this demand — it touches on judicial accountability and Bangladesh’s own justice process. But holding firm to a legitimate demand, and turning it into a precondition for the entire relationship, is different things. Staying firm is Bangladesh’s right; choosing the method most likely to secure that outcome is simply good statecraft.

Treating a prime ministerial visit as a concession misreads how diplomacy works. A high-level visit is itself a negotiating instrument, not a reward. Nixon visited China in 1972 with Taiwan unresolved, opening a path to normalization; Vajpayee’s 1999 trip to Lahore came with Kashmir just as unsettled, yet built a framework that outlasted the Kargil conflict which followed.

The lesson: an unresolved dispute and a suspended dialogue over it are not the same thing. Engagement is often most necessary precisely when a dispute remains open — sometimes it is to break a stalemate and place one’s own demands at the centre of the table.

The logic here is linkage without lock-in. Extradition should remain explicitly linked to the broader relationship because it bears directly on political trust, but it should not lock Bangladesh into a single-issue strategy that constrains progress on water, trade, energy, connectivity, and border management.

India should hear clearly that progress on extradition is important for rebuilding political trust, while parallel progress is expected on other core bilateral interests. This allows Bangladesh to remain firm on principle without sacrificing its wider negotiating space.

Bangladesh’s Larger Stakes: Water, Trade, and Regional Leadership
Bangladesh’s relationship with India rests on deep economic and strategic interdependence, not politics alone. The 1996 Ganges Water Treaty expires this December, with renewal talks already underway; the Teesta and other shared rivers remain unresolved.

Trade runs deep but badly imbalanced — in FY2024-25, bilateral merchandise trade stood near $11.4 billion, with Bangladesh’s exports at only about $1.76 billion against imports of roughly $9.62 billion.

Energy, power, and connectivity involve mutual interests on both sides. The diplomatic goal should not shrink to whether India returns Hasina; it should be how to make this interdependence more reciprocal.

The BIMSTEC chairmanship adds a further dimension. The BRICS outreach invitation went to Bangladesh as BIMSTEC’s current chair, not to Tarique Rahman personally. Staying away would forfeit a direct opening with BRICS leaders and weaken Bangladesh’s standing as chair, signalling reluctance to its regional partners.

Bundling the bilateral visit with BIMSTEC-BRICS participation into one bargaining package is a mistake; the two belong in separate diplomatic tracks.

Strategic Firmness: Turning the Visit into Leverage
Firmness means holding the objective constant; rigidity means allowing the method of pursuing it to become fixed. Bangladesh should remain firm on extradition, but it need not make the bilateral visit conditional on immediate progress.

‘‘No extradition, no visit’’ would mean closing an important channel by Bangladesh’s own hand; holding the demand firm while using the visit for wider negotiation is the more strategic posture.

If the visit goes ahead, it should not be reduced to a courtesy call, but backed by a focused negotiating package covering Hasina’s extradition; a fair renewal of the Ganges treaty; progress on the Teesta and other shared rivers; an end to border killings; expanded market access and withdrawal of the 2025 land-port restrictions; measures to narrow the trade deficit; energy cooperation; and reciprocal benefits from connectivity.

The objective is not to subordinate the broader relationship to one contentious issue, but to use the extradition demand as part of a wider effort to secure a more balanced relationship. That is what ‘‘Bangladesh First’’ would mean in practice.

Conclusion
There is no reason for Bangladesh to retreat from its extradition demand. But turning it into a rigid precondition that forecloses direct, high-level negotiation would not be wise.

Bangladesh should show neither blind allegiance toward India nor reflexive hostility, nor adopt a posture — purely to appear firm — that narrows its own room to negotiate.

‘‘Bangladesh First’’ means the national interest is the final measure of every decision: extradition matters, but so do water, trade, energy, border security, connectivity, and regional leadership.

The policy that follows is simple — firmness on the demand, pragmatism in negotiation, national interest as the outcome: attend the BRICS outreach now as BIMSTEC chair regardless of the bilateral question, and sequence any prime ministerial visit around demonstrable progress on water, trade, and the extradition review. Let the demand stand, and let the door to diplomacy stay open — success is measured not by what Bangladesh demands, but by what it ultimately secures.

(The author is Professor and Chair of the Department of Economics,
International University of Business Agriculture and Technology (IUBAT), Dhaka and a political analyst. He can be reached at golam.grasul@gmail.com)