Exiled, sentenced, still defiant

   Pushp Saraf

Former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has created a significant South Asian political moment by openly reiterating her intention to return to Bangladesh this December. Speaking at an audio press conference in New Delhi on August 5, she left little room for ambiguity, declaring that she is prepared to face all consequences to be among her people. She had first floated the idea in an interview with Reuters on July 10, but this latest declaration carries far greater weight. It was delivered at a press conference that was widely attended, watched, and heard. It signaled not just a reaffirmation of intent but a strengthening of resolve.

The announcement comes amid an intensely hostile climate at home. Both the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) government and the opposition appear united in their antagonism towards her and her Awami League (AL). Their public discourse around her return is frequently marked by ridicule and anger bordering on hatred, with open calls for her hanging. She was sentenced to death in absentia on November 17, 2025, for crimes against humanity. Yet far from retreating, Hasina seems determined to press ahead.

The reaction from her opponents underscores just how high the stakes are. Even Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, the usually restrained BNP veteran and a senior minister in Prime Minister Tarique Rahman’s cabinet, dismissed her announcement as posturing in an interview with The Daily Star. “I think this is a political stunt by Hasina,” he said. “If she considers what will happen after her return, she may think twice. She will be arrested as soon as she arrives… I do not think she is brave enough to return.”

Fakhrul’s remarks, which preceded the press conference, appear only to have enhanced his party and  government’s irritation once Hasina’s announcement actually came. Rahman’s adviser, Syed Moazzem Hossain Alal, went further, criticising India for reportedly “permitting” the event, despite New Delhi’s insistence that it played no role in facilitating it. “This permission is very harmful and bad for both countries,” he said. The National Citizen Party (NCP), which is made up largely of the youth leaders who spearheaded last year’s July Uprising against Hasina, reacted with even greater alarm. It rushed to convene an emergency press conference to give vent to its reaction.

The NCP directed its anger as much at India as at Hasina and her party colleague, former national cricket captain Shakib Al Hasan, who joined the press conference by audio link. Hours afterward, unidentified assailants attacked Shakib’s family home in Magura with petrol bombs. It is hard not to view the incident as a stark illustration of how combustible the atmosphere around Hasina’s reappearance has become.

Nor did the NCP spare the BNP, accusing it of a diplomatic failure for not preventing Hasina from making political remarks from Indian soil. The party wanted New Delhi’s High Commissioner in Dhaka summoned -, a demand that revealed the depth of its displeasure. It described the press meet as a threat to Bangladesh’s sovereignty and accused India of using Hasina as a “pawn” to unsettle the country’s fragile democratic transition.

Jamaat-e-Islami, another major force in Bangladesh’s reordered politics, harbours no sympathy for Hasina or the AL either. The ideological rift is long-standing. Jamaat’s Islamist politics are set against the AL’s professed liberal, secular outlook. Jamaat, for its part, has never fully shed the accusation that it opposed the 1971 Liberation War, a historic battle in which the AL led the struggle and bore heavy sacrifice.

Seen from Hasina’s vantage point, however, all this hostility only reinforces her stature and that of her party. Barely a significant political statement is made in Dhaka these days without her name, or the AL’s, surfacing somewhere in it. The government and opposition have each accused the other of behaving in the same fascist, arbitrary and disruptive manner they attribute to Hasina’s fallen regime. Fakhrul put it pointedly in one recent remark: “We want to resolve every political crisis through discussion. The opposition must play a strong role in making democracy function effectively. But unfortunately, the opposition has started speaking the language of the Awami League”. He has repeated the charge more times than most can count. Leader of the Opposition and Jamaat Ameer Shafiqur Rahman has returned the favour. He accused the BNP of resorting to the same authoritarian tactics against political opponents that once defined Hasina’s government.

In a statement on Hasina’s press meet,  Jamaat alleged that she was continuing to conspire against the people of Bangladesh from New Delhi. It saw a “gross violation of international norms and diplomatic etiquette” in the event as well as the manner in which India is treating Hasina.

Even as they traded these accusations, government and opposition found rare common cause in easing out President Mohammed Shahabuddin, originally an AL leader. He resigned on July 24 citing health reasons, though his departure came amid mounting political pressure and it severed the last formal link between Hasina’s old political order and the state apparatus.

It is worth asking why so much energy is being spent on a leader and party that officialdom insists no longer matter. Bangladesh Home Minister Salahuddin Ahmed, at a public function on August 7, alleged that the AL was attempting to create instability in the country:  “What is Hasina, what has she become? Sometimes only noise and chatter can be heard. They are trying to create instability in Bangladesh. The people of Bangladesh will never accept their politics.”

The government has gone so far as to urge the media not to broadcast or publish Hasina’s speeches. It invoked the need to respect the spirit of the July Uprising and the sacrifices of its martyrs. And what, in the end, is served by directing so much hostility at India? India has, notably, not permitted Hasina to conduct any political activity on its soil. India’s Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs has noted that New Delhi’s approach to her continued stay is shaped by “its civilisational ethos and humanitarian tradition of offering refuge to individuals facing circumstances of grave distress or existential threat.”

Whether Hasina’s planned homecoming becomes a genuine turning point in Bangladesh’s turbulent politics, or an act of brinkmanship that ends in her arrest at the airport, is impossible to say with certainty. What is already clear is that her declaration has reshaped the terms of political debate in Dhaka months before her expected arrival, forcing government, opposition and Islamist parties alike to define themselves, however awkwardly, against a leader they insist has no place in Bangladesh’s future.

The timing is deliberate. December is no ordinary month in Bangladesh: it was on December 16, 1971 that the country won its independence, and that anniversary is the one the entire nation will be  watching with unusual attention this year. The symbolism runs deeper still. August 5, 2026 marks two full years since Hasina fled into exile.  By choosing that very anniversary to announce her return, she has upstaged the opponents who spent the day celebrating her downfall in 2024, turning their moment of triumph into the backdrop for her own defiant presence in Bangladeshi politics.

(The author is a veteran Journalist and Analyst of South Asian and India’s Border Affairs)