The Re-emergence of Bangladesh as East Pakistan: Between Memory and Mirage, A West Pakistani Design?
Nations don’t always fall with a bang—sometimes, they quietly forget why they rose. Bangladesh, born of defiance and dreams, now flirts with the forces it once defied. Fifty years ago, it tore itself from the spine of West Pakistan.
For the newly emerged Bangladesh, the tearing off was an arduous journey that the Bangladeshis who lived in those times would never forget. It was drenched in their blood. It was driven by language, identity, and liberty.
Today, in silence and subtlety, shadows of that old dominion creep back—not through conquest, but through compromise. While the guns have gone quiet, the battlefield has merely changed its shape.
The Likely Impact On Kashmir
The ripple effects of Bangladesh’s ideological drift won’t stop at its borders—they will inevitably seep into the already volatile landscape of South Asia, particularly Kashmir. Bangladesh is now aligned more closely with pan-Islamist sentiments and soft-power overtures from Pakistan. This is likely to embolden extremist narratives across the region.
Kashmir, where insurgency remains a live wire, could see renewed ideological fuel and digital propaganda routed through Dhaka-based networks or diaspora channels. Indian intelligence has long warned of a multi-nodal strategy from Pakistan, where ideological vectors from outside the traditional theatre—like Bangladesh—serve to destabilize internal harmony.
In this sense, the East Pakistan illusion isn’t just a historical echo. It is a clear and present danger – a contemporary security hazard which seems poised to amplify fault lines far beyond Bengal.
Militant groups, already operating in the shadows of Kashmir, could find new recruitment pools and logistical support funneled through an ideologically compromised Bangladesh. The risk is not just of sympathy—but of operational synergy between distant yet ideologically aligned actors.
Is Bangladesh Sleepwalking Back Into The Very Paradigm It Once Shattered ?
History in South Asia has a peculiar habit—it seldom stays buried. It returns, cloaked in new forms, whispering old narratives through modern tongues. Bangladesh, which birthed in the dawn of its unique identity, now flirts with a disturbing déjà vu.
Half a century after it tore itself free from the grip of West Pakistan, the young nation, born in blood and baptized by sacrifice, stands at a strange crossroads. And in the shadows, an unsettling question looms: is Bangladesh sleepwalking back into the very paradigm it once shattered? What was once a rupture—loud, violent, and permanent—now seems to be healing into a scar too easily forgotten.
The spirit of 1971, a revolution etched in language, liberty, and identity, is slowly being smothered by newer allegiances, softer invasions, and ideological erosion. The methods are different now—no gunfire, no air raids. Instead, it’s a careful, calculated encirclement: economic entrapment, ideological manipulation, and digital colonization. And behind it all, the spectre of Pakistan’s old game lingers—quiet, patient, and disturbingly familiar.
A Familiar Shadow Cloaked in Trade Numbers
The new battlefield is no longer the rice fields and river deltas of Bengal. It is in trade corridors, port contracts, textbooks, and trending hashtags. Consider this: Bangladesh’s trade volume with China skyrocketed by over 42% in just five years, surpassing $25 billion in 2024. The trade deficit is massive and widening. Chinese capital is now embedded in Dhaka’s bridges, power grids, and mobile networks—and quietly, in its national psyche.
On the other end, Pakistan, once the brute occupier, now appears in the soft silhouette of religious solidarity and digital diplomacy. Between 2021 and 2024, four high-level diplomatic exchanges occurred under the veil of “Islamic unity.”
But the timing is no coincidence. Alongside these, a rising tide of pan-Islamist narratives—carefully curated, slickly produced, and pushed through anonymous channels—has seeped into Bangladesh’s youth culture.
A 2023 study by a Dhaka-based think tank revealed a troubling figure: 27% of university students were actively consuming pro-Pakistan or pan-Islamist ideological content online. These aren’t mere curiosities—they are seeds. Pakistan, which once ruled East Bengal through suppression, now seeks to seduce it through shared sentiment. And while it drapes this strategy in the robes of religion and brotherhood, the endgame is unmistakable: a Bangladesh ideologically softened for geopolitical reintegration—if not formally, then cloaked in references to religion.
In an even more pointed development, Pakistani spy agency ISI’s Director General of Analysis, Major General Shahid Amir Afsar, along with other senior officials, reportedly visited Bangladesh in January 2025. Though couched in the language of “regional consultation,” the visit raised red flags in intelligence circles across South Asia. What purpose could such a high-level intelligence outreach serve, if not to deepen influence networks, map soft targets, and quietly coordinate long-term ideological strategy? The visit was no stray thread—it was another stitch in a quilt of creeping encirclement.
The warning signs aren’t abstract. Media gagging has intensified. Secular voices are muffled. The country has dropped 32 spots in the Press Freedom Index between 2019 and 2024. Civil liberties are on a slow drip, and the space for dissent shrinks by the day. One could mistake this for a typical post-colonial authoritarian slide, but the historical echoes are deafening: this is how it began under West Pakistan—first the censorship, then the silencing.
Vital Outreach By India At This Crucial Crossroad for Dhaka
Just when the ship seemed poised to drift irretrievably into a Chinese harbour—both economically and ideologically—India intervened. Prime Minister Narendra Modi played a quiet and critical role as a regional strategist. With one eye on history and the other on the horizon, PM Modi saw what many chose to ignore: that Bangladesh’s drift was not a regional shrug—it was a strategic tremor.
Through the careful weaving of economic threads—$8 billion in soft credit, cross-border electricity exports crossing 1,200 MW, and infrastructure revival through the Maitri Setu—Modi sought not to control Dhaka but to anchor it. India’s diplomacy was not a sledgehammer; it was a lifeline. While Beijing brought chequebooks, New Delhi brought a memory. And memory, as it turns out, still matters in the subcontinent.
Bangladesh is now aligned more closely with pan-Islamist sentiments and soft-power overtures from Pakistan. This is likely to embolden extremist narratives across the region.
Then came 2025, a moment both symbolic and pivotal. On a humid Friday in Thailand, at the BIMSTEC Summit, Prime Minister Modi met Bangladesh’s Chief Adviser Muhammad Yunus. Officially, it was a sideline engagement. Unofficially, it was a warning shot and an olive branch—wrapped in one.
The meeting wasn’t about trade figures or joint statements. It was about trajectory. Insiders report that Modi spoke candidly—about ideological infiltration, about the rekindling of West Pakistan’s agenda through backdoors, and most importantly, about the cost of forgetting one’s founding principles. It was, by all accounts, a diplomatic intervention staged just in time. Modi, to his credit, played the role of the lighthouse—not the captain steering the ship, but the signal in the storm.
India followed up with cultural initiatives, academic exchanges, film collaborations, and grassroots youth programs. The message was clear: Bangladesh doesn’t need to sell its soul to build its future. There is an alternative—a sovereign, plural, and dignified path. But time is running thin.
Between Memory and Amnesia
The tragedy of nations is not that they forget, but that they forget too soon. Bangladesh today stands dangerously close to a political amnesia that may cost it everything it once bled for. Yes, its GDP has surged—a robust 7% growth in 2023. Yes, it has cut poverty down to 13% from a staggering 44% in 1991.
But what is development, if the soul of the republic is quietly traded away?
Pakistan’s strategy is elegant in its simplicity: if you can’t reclaim land, reclaim minds. Do it slowly. Do it through sentiment. Through faith. Through familiar grievances repackaged with digital polish. And most crucially—do it while the world is too distracted to notice. The line between East Pakistan and today’s Bangladesh is no longer geographic. It’s ideological. And that line is starting to blur for the first time in decades. The risk is no longer war—it’s withering. A slow, silent re-colonization by sentiment. Yet all is not lost. Beneath the smoke and mirrors, Bangladesh’s spirit still stirs. Student movements, underground media, women’s rights coalitions, digital activists—they are the embers of that 1971 fire. India’s challenge—and opportunity—is to fan those embers without overreaching. To inspire without interfering. To remind, not to command.
Bangladesh must now answer its existential question: will it walk forward as the nation it chose to become—or slide backwards into the one it once fought to escape? For if East Pakistan rises again, it won’t be through tanks and rifles. It will rise through textbooks rewritten, dissent extinguished, and silence is mistaken for peace. And when that happens, history will not shout. It will whisper: you were warned!
Dr. Toseef Ahmad formerly served as an Associate Research Fellow at the International Centre for Peace Studies (ICPS), Delhi. The views expressed herein are solely his own.
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