Dear Bangladesh, Blame India If You Want, But Fix Your Politics First
Grief has a way of demanding villains before it demands facts. In Bangladesh today, that villain is once again India, summoned reflexively even as the most basic questions remain unanswered at home.
Let us put one thing on the table immediately and without diplomatic sugarcoating. India is not in the business of killing mosquitos abroad. It does not micromanage the political irritants of neighbouring countries, nor does it run a foreign policy driven by impulse, street slogans, or emotional theatre. The idea that India wakes up to swat minor agitators across borders may satisfy outrage, but it does not survive scrutiny.
Sharif Osman Hadi’s death is serious. It deserves investigation, transparency, and accountability. A life has been lost, and that fact alone warrants restraint before accusation. But Hadi was not an Indian political actor. He was not created, nurtured, or deployed by New Delhi. He emerged entirely from Bangladesh’s own political ecosystem, shaped by internal agitation, domestic rivalries, and a protest culture that has repeatedly collided with authority.
Yet instead of interrogating those domestic dynamics, the narrative was quickly exported.
India has no motive here. None. Turning a Bangladeshi activist into a martyr serves no Indian interest. Destabilising a neighbour already struggling with protests, legitimacy questions, and governance stress is strategically irrational. India is not in the business of killing mosquitos abroad, especially when doing so would invite chaos rather than control.
This is where clarity matters. India is fully capable of conducting precision operations beyond its borders. No serious observer doubts that. Capability, however, is not the same as compulsion. States do not deploy their most extreme tools against every irritant. They reserve them for threats that genuinely matter. By any strategic measure, Sharif Osman Hadi was too small a fish to fly. Elevating him to the status of a target worthy of extraordinary action is not analysis, it is self flattery by those desperate to externalise blame.
If motive is the starting point of any honest inquiry, then the uncomfortable questions point inward, not westward. Was Hadi becoming a burden for Muhammad Yunus and his administration? Had his activism crossed from usefulness into inconvenience? Had his rhetoric begun to embarrass, destabilise, or complicate governance? These are not allegations. They are legitimate questions that Bangladesh’s leadership owes its own citizens. Before accusing a foreign power, ask who inside Bangladesh found Hadi expendable.
Instead, accountability was outsourced.
Street chants are not evidence. Social media campaigns are not investigations. Thus far, there has been no official finding, no completed probe, and no substantiated claim linking India to Hadi’s death. Repeating India’s name does not transform suspicion into proof. It merely delays justice.
The narrative then took a more reckless turn. Dragging India’s Northeast into Bangladesh’s internal political crisis is not protest, it is provocation. India has deliberately stayed out of Bangladesh’s domestic politics, exercising restraint even when blamed without cause. But India’s territorial integrity is not a rhetorical toy to be waved around when internal politics spiral.
India’s silence since Hadi’s death is being deliberately misread. Silence is not guilt. Restraint is not fear. Serious states do not respond theatrically to every accusation born of political turbulence. India does not chase mosquitos abroad, and it certainly does not announce imaginary hunts when it does not.
The real tragedy is that Sharif Osman Hadi’s death is being used rather than examined. Instead of asking who pulled the trigger, who failed to protect, and who stalled accountability, Bangladesh’s political discourse has chosen the easier route. Blame India and move on.
That route leads nowhere.
If Bangladesh wants justice for Hadi, it must start by questioning its own power structures, its leadership, and its political incentives. Chanting India’s name will not answer those questions. It will only bury them deeper.
India is not interested in Bangladesh’s internal politics. It is not in the business of killing mosquitos abroad. But it will not accept being turned into a convenient villain, nor will it tolerate its sovereignty being dragged into someone else’s political collapse.
Justice begins at home. Everything else is evasion.
