Ungrateful Nation

Even by South Asia’s febrile standards, Bangladesh’s decision to pull the plug on the Indian Premier League (IPL) is a breathtaking exhibition of diplomatic petulance that betrays Dhaka’s deepening insecurity as the country lurches into turmoil.

The ostensible trigger for the ban the so-called ‘Mustafizur row.’ The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) asked for the release of Mustafizur Rahman from the Kolkata Knight Riders squad ahead of the 2026 IPL season owing to the crisis within the country and the anti-India and anti-Hindu sentiment within Bangladesh. The Bangladeshi state chose escalation by responding with a blanket ban on IPL broadcasts, wrapped in the language of wounded national pride. For a country whose citizens avidly consume Indian entertainment, sport and media, the move borders on the absurd.

That absurdity deepens when placed in context. Bangladesh is among the most India-dependent countries in South Asia. India is its largest trading partner in the region, an energy supplier and has, until recently, been its diplomatic shield in uncomfortable forums. Even its cricketing rise has been inseparable from Indian patronage including the IPL itself, which has turned Bangladeshi players into global brands. To theatrically boycott the league now tantamounts to self-harm.

More striking is the sheer ingratitude of this nation. Bangladesh’s very existence owes much to India’s intervention in 1971 in all forms - military, diplomatic and humanitarian. New Delhi bore enormous costs to midwife the birth of a nation that had been brutalised by the Pakistani military. For decades thereafter, India absorbed refugees, stabilised borders and repeatedly extended a hand of cooperation, often despite provocations. While gratitude in international politics rarely lasts forever, such open resentment from a beneficiary towards its benefactor speaks poorly about Bangladesh’s strategic maturity.

Worse, Dhaka appears to be flirting with a familiar and unhappy template of the Pakistan model of grievance-driven nationalism. By asking the International Cricket Council to move its T20 World Cup matches out of India, citing nebulous “security concerns,” Bangladesh has chosen to politicise sport in precisely the way Islamabad has done for years, often to its own detriment. The result could be a de facto cricketing wall between India and Bangladesh, choking bilateral series and isolating Bangladeshi cricket from its most lucrative neighbour.

All this hoity-toitiness might have been easier to stomach if Bangladesh’s moral posture were credible. It is not. As Dhaka lectures India on hurt sentiments, it continues to brutally persecute Hindus and other minorities within its own borders.

When governance falters, governments often reach for symbolic enemies. Cricket, the region’s shared religion, has now become Bangladesh’s chosen battlefield to rail against India. But symbolism cuts both ways. By blocking the IPL, Bangladesh is not humiliating India but depriving its own people of something they enjoy.

States that punch the air usually end up hitting themselves. Bangladesh would do well to remember which path it once hoped to follow and which neighbour it should avoid emulating.