CALCULATED COMEBACK

Tarique Rahman's return to Bangladesh after 17 years in exile is more than a personal political comeback; it marks a defining moment for Bangladesh's internal future and for India's strategic thinking.

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He has returned to a country angry, unsettled and fiercely divided - where anti-India rhetoric has become street capital and where radical elements see instability not as a crisis, but as an opportunity.India's decade-plus comfort of dealing with a predictable Dhaka has evaporated. Sheikh Hasina's regime, for all its controversies, provided New Delhi continuity, security cooperation and a broadly aligned worldview. Tarique represents something fundamentally different: a politician who insists on putting "Bangladesh first," who has little emotional investment in the narrative of a "special India-Bangladesh bond," and who will likely negotiate every engagement with hard domestic calculations in mind. He arrives at a time when the interim government, political flux, and a charged public mood have created a vacuum in authority - one that competing forces, including Jamaat-e-Islami and its ecosystem, are desperate to fill. For India, the central question is not whether Tarique likes New Delhi or not; it is whether he will allow Bangladesh to remain sensible, stable and strategically rational.