A New Delhi hall, a full house, and a deliberate title: “Legacy of Relations in the evolving India-Bangladesh Milieu: New Geopolitical Reality & Implications for Regional Stability.” It was Global Strategic & Defence News’ maiden seminar, held at the United Service Institution of India on 6 September 2025, and it treated Bangladesh not as a headline, but as a hinge. (gsdn.live)
Two lines set the tone. First, in July India’s Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Anil Chauhan warned of a “possible convergence of interest” among China, Pakistan and Bangladesh with implications for India’s stability, language built for travel, and now re-centered for policy talk. (khabarkada.com)
Second, Indian coverage leaned on an Economist analysis and ThePrint’s rendering of a stark DG ISPR (Pakistan) line, “We’ll start from the east”- folding Bangladesh into a future conflict map. Whatever one thinks of the sourcing, using it in a Delhi security forum sets the day’s temperature.
As GSDN’s official LinkedIn note records, this was a formal, Army-engaged forum at the United Service Institution of India on 6 September 2025, keynoted by Corps Commander-designate Maj Gen Manraj Singh Mann, acknowledged by Army Chief Gen Upendra Dwivedi (according to their LinkedIn Post), with full proceedings published as Part I and Part II through their LinkedIn page.
What the speakers actually moved into place
Continuity first. The keynote, by a serving major general, stayed with 1971’s inheritance and two steadying claims: solve with data, not noise; keep cooperation central. (All quotes and attributions hereafter from the transcript of the seminar.)
Then the turn. A senior discussant traced Partition with Language Movement then 1971, praised the 2009–2024 security compact with Dhaka, then drew the sharper line: the present is different, China’s footprint is leverage, and India should be prepared “for yet another battle… maybe a war or a conflict in Bangladesh.” The doctrine followed: hybrid war, not just guns—power-grid hacks, electromagnetic denial, long-range drones, information ops—with vignettes from Ukraine and 7 October. The choreography was classic: raise kinetic spectre to set urgency, then normalize a grey-zone toolset as reasonable preparation.
Rights ledgers and the narrative fight. A physician-researcher walked a twelve-month ledger on minority harms with visible caveats: Ain o Salish Kendra (ASK) for Jan–Apr/May 2025, BHBCUC for Aug 2024–mid-2025—and one named case (Chinmoy Prabhu)—to warn against verification bias and politicized datasets. External baselines align: BHBCUC tallied 2,442 incidents (Aug 4, 2024–Jun 30, 2025), while ASK snapshots show dozens to low hundreds depending on the window and method. The point wasn’t spectacle; it was data discipline, especially when numbers are drafted into someone else’s strategy. (Prothomalo)
Borders and the everyday grind. A counter-terrorism scholar mapped the practical terrain: 4,000-km river-riven border, CT units working the stitch-work, and the Rohingya camps as the hardest operating environment. The external record matches the texture: close to one million Rohingya in 33 highly congested camps in Cox’s Bazar (plus ~35,000 on Bhasan Char), with UNHCR counting 1.10–1.14 million registered by spring 2025. (UNHCR Data Portal)
Cut through: what the day actually tells us
One: India’s security community has consolidated a hybrid-first lexicon for the eastern flank. The point is not tanks on the Padma; it’s persistent shaping—information ops, legal pressure, cyber/EW harassment, deniable long-range tools. The seminar normalized that vocabulary—and the case studies to match.
Two: minority harms and Chinese-linked assets are being spliced into one storyline. The first supplies normative cover (“values are at stake”); the second supplies material logic (“dual-use risk”). Combine them and you get a ready-made justification for pressure that still reads as responsible. The Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Tunnel (Karnaphuli), opened in 2023 with Chinese financing and contractors, is exactly the sort of node planners now flag as a lever.
Three: rooms like this launder debate into doctrine. Herzliya in Israel openly pitches itself as a policy-shaping forum; Russia’s Valdai is where the Kremlin routinizes narrative; Asia’s Shangri-La Dialogue previews hardened positions that reappear in white papers and budgets; Munich does the same for Europe’s defense-industrial turn. Delhi’s event fits the lineage: it doesn’t announce a policy; it permissions one. (Reuters)
The reality under the varnish
The conference echoed a preference signal, not a moral pivot. It recast long-known pressures, minority vulnerability, the Rohingya burden, Chinese-financed assets, as urgent “regional risks” only when those files aren’t managed by the Awami League. When they were, the same realities were the price of a profitable partnership. That’s the hinge: the concern is the operator, not the behaviors.
And the room said the quiet part out loud. In Q&A, a discussant planned on the explicit assumption that the “Awami League will come back to power,” and asked what to do “to restore status quo ante of law and order” if/when that happens. Another speaker added the electoral gloss: even if some want the BNP to win, “the Awami League has also huge support… within the population.” These weren’t asides; they were planning assumptions on stage, revealing that the seminar’s “risk” narrative sits atop a preference for the same operator in Dhaka.
Let’s put some light on the ledger:
- Minority harms spiked in notable episodes under AL (2016 Nasirnagar; 2021 Durga Puja violence), yet the bilateral didn’t rupture. (Reuters)
- Rohingya coercive diplomacy met Indian abstentions at the UNGA (2021 arms embargo) and UNSC (2022), a choice Dhaka remembers every time it asks for pressure on Naypyidaw. (Reuters)
- Chinese projects were contracted and opened on AL’s watch at record numbers and speed—then retrofitted as “dual-use risk” once the operator changed.
- Contested mandates drew endorsements from Delhi (joined by Beijing, Moscow, Tehran) when it suited the alignment at the same time when almost the whole world stood against the rigged election. (Reuters)
Read the room accordingly. The vocabulary—“hybrid,” “non-kinetic,” “convergence,” “dual-use”—wasn’t revelation; it was permission architecture for steadier shaping on the eastern flank, wrapped in rights-talk but driven by vendor preference.
Dhaka’s best stance is simple and unblinking: we see the selectivity. Keep the transcript’s own on-record lines and the public baselines in hand; label the pattern without theatrics; and cut through any spin the minute it starts.
How to read the day, from Dhaka
Treat the seminar as Track-1.5 choreography, not a fait accompli. But choreography matters. When veterans, former officials and academics harmonise around the same risk lexicon—“Devil’s Triangle,” hybrid threats, dual-use, minority shocks—they are normalising a wider aperture for Indian action in the east. The job for readers of BDJ is to decode, not deny: what was said; what was staged; and what moves such staging usually precedes.
How rooms like this turn talk into trajectory
These forums align vocabulary and pre-justify shifts:
- Herzliya (budgets): Israel test-drives priorities at Herzliya—and the Knesset soon funds the playlist. (runi.ac.il)
- Valdai (posture: What Putin says at Valdai in Sochi becomes next week’s posture note. (Kremlin)
- Shangri-La (alignment): Allies get their marching orders in Singapore; Beijing counters; the talking points reappear in communiqués, drills, and budgets. (Reuters)
- Munich (industry): From podium to policy: MSC soundbites turn into the EU’s Defence-Industrial Strategy and funding tools within days. (European Commission)
Delhi’s seminar fits that lineage: it conditions the ecosystem in which later moves will be judged “measured.”
A fresh example of rhetoric turning into risk
Days after the Delhi seminar, India’s Army Chief Gen. Upendra Dwivedi used language no professional should use lightly:
“This time we will not maintain the restraint that we had in Operation Sindoor 1.0. This time we will do something that will make Pakistan think whether it wants to retain its place in geography… If Pakistan wants to retain its place in geography, then it must stop state-sponsored terrorism.”
He delivered it at a forward post in Rajasthan, urging troops to “stay prepared.” State and mainstream outlets ran the clip; Pakistan’s military called the remarks “delusional” and warned any “erasure” talk would be mutual. Whatever the internal calculus, “retain its place in geography/world map” is overt escalation by the top uniformed officer—not a stray studio provocation. (Instagram)
The seminar’s real work: fusing morality and method
Three normalizations stood out.
- Hybrid-first for the east. Not bridges and armour, but constant shaping. information ops, legal pressure, cyber/EW, deniable long-range tools—all pitched as the sensible middle between passivity and war.
- A two-strand justification. Strand one is normative (minority harms). Strand two is material (Chinese-linked infrastructure). Bind them and you get “responsible pressure”—de-escalatory language that widens the aperture for action. Parallels abound: see how Cambodia’s Funan Techo Canal debate was reinterpreted across the region as a lever with security consequences long before shovels hit the ground. (Xinhua)
- The quote ladder. A single CDS line about China-Pakistan-Bangladesh convergence becomes the day’s premise; a provocative ISPR (Pakistan) sound-bite sets the temperature. Track-1.5 forums escalate outliers into assumptions. This one did. (khabarkada.com)
Ending note
Strip the varnish. Since May, Delhi hasn’t projected quiet strength; it’s been trying to rebuild face after a bruising exchange with Pakistan, a tariff shock from Washington, and fires at home.
First, May wasn’t a clean win—and Islamabad sold it as the opposite. Reuters’ tick-tock showed initial Indian air losses, a tactical adjustment, and a four-day ceasefire under international pressure. Weeks later, the IAF chief boasted kills; Pakistan claimed Indian jets downed; and U.S. officials told Reuters that Chinese-equipped J-10s shot down at least one Rafale, keeping public scorekeeping muddy. That’s reputational friction, not textbook deterrence. (Al Jazeera)
Then Washington twisted the knife. In August, President Trump hiked U.S. tariffs on a wide swathe of Indian imports—a move multiple outlets called the sharpest downturn in U.S.–India ties in decades. That’s not a cable-news spat; it’s a structural chill. (South China Morning Post)
While that played out, Pakistan’s top soldier twice got the White House. Reuters documented Gen. Asim Munir’s Washington visit(s)—first a solo high-profile stop, then back with PM Shehbaz months later—right after Trump publicly claimed he had brokered the ceasefire. Delhi rejected any mediation line, but the optics were brutal: America’s president platformed Pakistan’s army chief twice in three months. (Bloomberg)
At home, the ground shook. Ladakh saw lethal protests and the arrest of Sonam Wangchuk; Manipur remained a byword for communal carnage, with fresh flare-ups through late 2024 into 2025. None of that reads as “unflappable state”; it reads exposed center. (The Print)
Now, read the USI–GSDN seminar again. It wasn’t a neutral roundup; it was rhetoric prep: take a contested May outcome and recast it as doctrine (“hybrid war,” “convergence,” “dual-use”); fold Bangladesh’s real problems into a moral-security case; and—critically—plan on stage for when “Awami League will come back to power.” That’s a permission structure for whatever “non-kinetic” shove (or deniable kinetic feint) Delhi chooses next on our frontier.
Let’s call a spade a spade. When cornered, the Modi government’s pattern has been to take high-risk turns to rescue the story—even if the cost is domestic shame or operational ambiguity. May fits the pattern: ceasefire after a surge; competing victory claims; and a U.S. president telling the world he helped stop the fight. That isn’t strategic clarity; it’s narrative salvage. (www.ndtv.com)
A government which is absorbing tariff pain, optics losses (Fd. Marshal Munir at the White House not oncebut twice in just three months), and internal unrest will be tempted to manufacture initiative where it thinks the escalatory ladder is shorter which seems to be our border and our information space. The seminar we dissect builds the alibi in advance. If a misadventure comes, expect it to arrive pre-laundered as “hybrid vigilance,” “responsible pressure,” or a “limited contingency.” The antidote isn’t outrage; it’s the ledger you now hold—dates, quotes, votes, and the transcript’s own lines—ready to slice through the spin the minute it begins. (gsdn.live)
Abu Rushd is the Editor-in Chief of Bangladesh Defence Journal and the President of the Institute of Strategy and Tactics Research (ISTR). With over three decades of experience spanning military service, defense journalism, and global intelligence analysis, he is a leading authority on national security and international relations. Famously known for his books written on Indian Intelligence Operations in Bangladesh, Counter-Insurgency & Human rights etc.
Salman Chowdhury is the Head of External Affairs of Bangladesh Defence Journal and Director of National Security & External Affairs at ISTR. An expert in irregular warfare, counter-terrorism, and intelligence analysis, he has over a decade of experience in conflict zones and has significantly contributed to national security strategies and human rights advocacy.