After student protests toppled Bangladesh prime minister Sheikh Hasina last year, New Delhi and Dhaka have been at odds. Indian politicians complain about Hindus being mistreated in the Muslim-majority country; Bangladesh’s interim government fears that Hasina may launch a bid to return to power from India.

It’s the latest development in what’s become an extremely complicated environment in what Avinash Paliwal calls India’s Near East: India, Bangladesh (or East Pakistan before the 1970s), and Myanmar (or Burma before the 1980s). As Avinash explains his book India’s Near East: A New History, successive Indian leaders tried to get a handle on international tensions and ethnic conflict—and with a major external threat in China looming in the distance.
Avinash Paliwal is Reader in International Relations at SOAS University of London, specialising in South Asian strategic affairs. A former journalist and foreign affairs analyst, he is also the author of My Enemy’s Enemy: India in Afghanistan from the Soviet Invasion to the US Withdrawal (Hurst, 2017).
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