In a move that has raised alarm across Bharat, Bangladesh and Pakistan have agreed to implement visa-free travel for each other’s diplomats and official passport holders. This policy shift marks the most explicit sign yet of Dhaka’s growing closeness to Islamabad, following the sudden and opaque ouster of Sheikh Hasina in August 2024.

Framed officially as a gesture of “Muslim brotherhood" and “regional solidarity", this development has far deeper—and darker—implications, especially for Bharat. To those familiar with Bangladesh’s liberation struggle, the deal reeks of strategic capitulation and ideological drift. After all, this is the same Pakistan whose military committed unspeakable atrocities in 1971, the very trauma that gave birth to Bangladesh.

The symbolism is unmistakable: post-Hasina Bangladesh is behaving like a Pakistani client state, seduced back into the orbit of the regime it broke free from five decades ago.

And this isn’t without precedent.

What we are witnessing today echoes a disheartening chapter in Bangladesh’s formative years. Just two years after leading a bloody struggle for independence, “Bangabandhu" Sheikh Mujibur Rahman began realigning with Islamabad—a move that stunned Dhaka and Delhi alike.

In 1974, Mujib gave a state welcome to Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, offering him more honours than were extended to Bharat’s President, VV Giri, who had visited Dhaka only days earlier. President Giri’s reception was deliberately subdued—overshadowed by preparations for Bhutto’s visit—leaving even Bangladeshis puzzled.

This contrast wasn’t merely accidental. It was a shift in the ideological........

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