Soft power, hard border: The limits of India-Bangladesh relationship

Diplomacy is frequently likened to a bridge, a structure designed to span historical divides and facilitate the smooth flow of commerce, culture and statecraft. When the geopolitical foundations are solid, the decorative flourishes of soft power — student scholarships, food or cloth exhibitions, cricket matches, and cultural exchanges — serve to reinforce the structure.

But when the underlying pillars are cracking under the weight of hard political grievances, stringing fairy lights along the railings does little to prevent a collapse. This is the precise dilemma currently bedevilling relations between New Delhi and Dhaka.

Nearly two years after the dramatic political upheaval of August 2024 that ended the tenure of Sheikh Hasina, both capitals are ostensibly trying to turn the page. Senior bureaucrats have traded visits, border coordination meetings have resumed, and official communiqués are dutifully stuffed with the vocabulary of mutual cooperation.

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Yet, beneath this veneer of diplomatic normalcy, public distrust in Bangladesh remains potent, and the bilateral relationship remains perpetually trapped in a cycle of friction and fragile resets. The fundamental flaw in both Bangladesh’s and India’s approach is a classic miscalculation of statecraft: the belief that soft diplomacy can compensate for a lack of hard political credibility.

This miscalculation is starkly evident in public diplomacy efforts that feel increasingly out of sync with political realities. The current Bangladesh High Commissioner’s energetic attempts to deploy soft power — ranging from the curation of elegant saree exhibitions to the hosting of popular golgappa soirées and celebrated hilsa fish festivals — are yielding no tangible results.

In calmer times, gastro-diplomacy and textile heritage serve as effective tools to cultivate elite goodwill. Today, they are met with indifference or cynicism, treated as trivial distractions from the structural crises that actually define the relationship.

Political scientists have long understood that soft power is an amplifier, not a substitute. Cultural attraction and public diplomacy generate genuine goodwill only when they align with a state’s actual conduct. When a gaping chasm opens between rhetoric and behaviour, soft power ceases to be ineffective; it becomes actively counterproductive, viewed by both the sender and recipient nations as a cynical exercise in perception management.

For India, the currency of trust in Bangladesh has depreciated sharply, and a culinary or cultural outreach can restore its value only when core issues of sovereignty and dignity are addressed. The most abrasive friction point today centres on the border, specifically the contentious issue of alleged “push-ins” of individuals across the frontier. Dhaka has repeatedly and formally protested these actions, sending a dozen diplomatic notes to New Delhi warning that unilateral repatriations bypass established legal channels and severely undermine bilateral ties.

The timing is particularly damaging. While New Delhi professes a desire to open a “new chapter” with Bangladesh, its actions suggest a lingering anxiety regarding Dhaka’s post-Hasina political landscape. This friction is exacerbated by the profound democratisation of foreign policy debate within Bangladesh. The post-2024 political environment is vastly more pluralistic and vocal than that of the Sheikh Hasina era. Issues that were once handled in quiet, elite backrooms have migrated into mainstream public discourse. Today, the Bangladeshi public scrutinises every diplomatic interaction with India through a hyper-sensitive lens of national pride.

Consequently, bureaucratic friction quickly escalates into symbolic crises. A prime example was the airport questioning of Zahed ur Rahman, an adviser to Prime Minister Tarique Rahman, in New Delhi. Though both governments managed the fallout to prevent a total diplomatic rupture, the incident was widely interpreted in Dhaka as a symptom of India’s deep-seated discomfort with Bangladesh’s new political reality.

For India, the strategic calculus must shift. Bangladesh can no longer be pacified through the transactional offering of economic carrots or cultural affinity. Dhaka is increasingly evaluating the relationship through the uncompromising lens of mutual respect. Soft diplomacy is built to attract, but attraction cannot thrive where political resentment is growing.

Conversely, Bangladesh faces its own inescapable geopolitical reality. Geography is destiny, and Dhaka cannot afford a permanent schism with the giant that surrounds it on three sides. Cooperation with India remains vital for regional connectivity, grid transit, trade, and counter-terrorism.

Dhaka must walk a tightrope, balancing these structural dependencies against a domestic electorate that increasingly demands a foreign policy purged of perceived subservience to New Delhi. The resulting paradox is a relationship sustained by mutual necessity rather than mutual trust. Both governments recognise the high stakes of a total breakdown, yet neither seems willing or able to resolve the structural grievances that fuel the enmity. Soft power is an excellent lubricant for an engine that is already running smoothly; it cannot fix a broken motor.

Symbolism has its place in diplomacy, but in the chilly reality of South Asian geopolitics, substance will always dictate the terms of engagement.

(Faisal Mahmud is a Dhaka-based journalist. The views expressed in this piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.)