By M A Hossain
More than 9,000 Indian medical students are currently enrolled in Bangladesh.
There are many ways a country can lose its moral standing. One of the quietest—and most corrosive—is when students begin to fear walking outside their hostels because of the passport they carry. Bangladesh today is drifting dangerously close to that line.
Consider Karim (recently interviewed by Al Jazeera in a pseudonym), an Indian medical student in Dhaka. Each evening, he locks himself into a hostel room not because of exams or exhaustion, but fear. He listens before opening his door. He avoids markets. He hides his accent. His education—paid for by his father’s life savings—has become a daily exercise in vigilance. What was once a second home now feels, in his own words, like a jail.
This is not an isolated story. More than 9,000 Indian medical students are currently enrolled in Bangladesh, drawn there not by adventure but arithmetic. India produces ambition faster than seats. Over two million applicants chase fewer than 60,000 government medical places each year. Private colleges exist, but at costs that verge on extortion. Bangladesh, by contrast, offers medical degrees at roughly half the price. For thousands of middle-class Indian families, it is not a preference but a necessity.
For years, this arrangement worked. Indian students blended into Dhaka’s urban sprawl, studied alongside Bangladeshi peers, and contributed quietly to the country’s academic economy. Politics remained background noise. That bargain has now collapsed.
The trigger was not the students themselves, but the unravelling of Bangladesh’s political order. Sheikh Hasina’s fall in August 2024, following a student-led uprising and a brutal state crackdown, marked more than a change of leadership. It ruptured Bangladesh’s long-standing alignment with India. Hasina, widely seen as New Delhi’s closest ally in Dhaka, fled to India. Her subsequent sentencing to death in absentia and India’s refusal to extradite her poured fuel onto already simmering resentment.
Anti-India sentiment surged. Not in policy papers or parliamentary debates, but on the streets. And when nationalism hardens, nuance disappears. Students become symbols. Passports become provocations.
The consequences are tangible. An Indian student was assaulted by local goons in December (his phone and wallet stolen, the attack caught on CCTV) sent shockwaves through campuses. The message was unmistakable: vulnerability has a nationality. Since then, students report self-imposed confinement, whispered conversations, and a constant calculation of risk before speaking in public.
History offers grim lessons here. In times of political upheaval, foreigners and minorities are often the first to feel the chill. In post-revolutionary Iran, American students and professionals fled almost overnight. In 1970s Uganda, Asians were expelled en masse as political scapegoats. Bangladesh is nowhere near such extremes—but trajectories matter more than destinations.
What makes the current moment especially fraught is timing. Bangladesh is heading into a national election amid heightened political violence. Law enforcement presence has increased; so has rhetoric. The interim government under Muhammad Yunus insists that order is being maintained, that crime levels remain stable, that foreigners are not under systematic threat. These assurances may be statistically defensible. They are psychologically insufficient.
Fear is not measured in crime graphs. It is measured in curfews moved from 10pm to 8pm. In students checking accents before speaking. In interns avoiding eye contact with patients. In young people lying awake, scrolling news feeds, wondering whether tomorrow’s headline will make them targets.
For Indian Hindu students, the anxiety is layered. Since Hasina’s ouster, attacks on religious minorities (particularly Hindus) have reportedly increased. Dhaka insists these are politically motivated, not communal. That distinction offers little comfort to a student whose examiner’s tone hardens the moment his identity becomes clear. In politics, intent matters less than effect.
Nor can India wash its hands of responsibility. New Delhi’s domestic record matters abroad. A decade of policies widely criticized as discriminatory toward Muslims has shaped perceptions in Muslim-majority Bangladesh. When nationalism becomes selective, it travels. Soft power erodes not with a bang, but with accumulated grievances.
Yet this is not a story of villains and victims neatly divided by borders. Bangladeshi institutions also have much to lose. Indian students bring tuition revenue, academic exchange, and regional goodwill. More importantly, they bring a reminder that education is supposed to be a neutral zone—a space insulated, as far as possible, from political tempests.
That insulation is now cracking. Academic calendars have been shredded by protests, internet shutdowns, and uncertainty. Students who enrolled in 2018 expecting to graduate by 2024 remain stuck, their futures deferred indefinitely. First COVID, then unrest, now fear. Waiting has become a way of life.
The mental toll is severe. Anxiety thrives in limbo. Degrees suspended in uncertainty are not just delayed credentials; they are delayed lives. The longer this drags on, the more damage is done—not just to individuals, but to Bangladesh’s reputation as a viable destination for higher education.
Calls for evacuation are growing louder. Student associations in India have appealed directly to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, urging immediate intervention and contingency planning. Evacuation, however, would be an admission of failure on both sides. It would signal that diplomacy could not protect civilians, and that campuses could not remain sanctuaries.
The better course is harder, but necessary. Dhaka must enforce a zero-tolerance approach to attacks on foreign students, publicly and visibly. Not through generic assurances, but prosecutions that send unmistakable signals. Universities must do more than impose curfews; they must advocate for their students beyond campus gates.
India, for its part, must recognize that sheltering Hasina without a broader diplomatic strategy carries costs. Regional leadership is not exercised by silence. It requires active engagement, restraint in rhetoric, and a willingness to separate people-to-people ties from political disputes.
At stake is more than bilateral relations. South Asia cannot afford another precedent where education becomes collateral damage. When students are treated as proxies for geopolitical anger, everyone loses: host countries, sending countries, and the fragile idea that learning can transcend politics.
Karim says he wishes he had never come to Bangladesh. That is the real indictment. Not of a single government or movement, but of a region failing its young. A medical degree should demand discipline, not disguise. Hostels should be places of rest, not confinement. And no student, anywhere, should have to lock himself in at night, wondering whether tomorrow will still belong to him.
If Bangladesh and India cannot protect students from becoming hostages of history, the cost will be paid long after this election cycle ends—in trust lost, futures derailed, and a generation taught that borders matter more than brains.
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(M A Hossain is a political and defense analyst based in Bangladesh. He can be reached at: [email protected])
The views expressed in op-eds are not necessarily those of The South Asian Times
