Is Islamic Extremism Taking Over Bangladesh?

The Diplomat

Bangladesh experienced the ouster of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League government on August 5, 2024, dismantling a fifteen-year security apparatus that strictly suppressed religious extremist factions. This political collapse raised immediate regional alarm, particularly in India, over potential cross-border terrorism and safe havens for radical Islamist outfits on its eastern border.

During her tenure, Hasina utilized aggressive state security mechanisms to systematically neutralize organizations like Jamaat-e-Islami, enforcing political dominance under the premise of regional counterterrorism. By August 2026, two years after her removal, Jamaat-e-Islami has completed a dramatic return to parliamentary politics while radical groups mobilize and violent attacks against religious minorities escalate across the country. Although these developments reflect a rapid resurgence of Islamist political influence and heightened regional security risks, the emerging domestic landscape underscores complex ideological reconfigurations within the post-Hasina order rather than an unchecked, absolute takeover by extremist factions.

Partition 1947: PARTITION or UNITY? BENGAL in 1947

The Daily Star  |  Sugata Bose

Sarat Chandra Bose and Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy led a final, failed effort in May 1947 to preserve Bengal's unity through an equitable power-sharing arrangement between religious communities. Backed initially by Mahatma Gandhi and Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the proposal was ultimately vetoed by Jawaharlal Nehru and Vallabhbhai Patel, prompting Lord Mountbatten to execute the June 3 partition plan.

On June 20, 1947, East Bengal legislators rejected partition 106 to 35, while West Bengal members approved it 58 to 21, ratifying territorial vivisection under colonial provisions. Subsequent border demarcation by Sir Cyril Radcliffe—announced on August 17, 1947, two days after independence—ignited widespread sectarian violence, causing nearly two million deaths and displacing fourteen million refugees across newly carved borders. This territorial division prioritized centralized state power in post-colonial India and Pakistan over regional federalism, creating long-term center-periphery friction and leaving complex enclave disputes unresolved until the 2015 Land Boundary Agreement.

US citizenship revocation: Indian-origin Narinder Singh among 25 in biggest denaturalisation drive

India Today | Divya Bhati

The United States government has launched its largest-ever denaturalisation campaign, targeting twenty-five individuals for citizenship revocation, including an Indian-origin man named Narinder Singh. This sweeping legal effort, publicised on 4 August 2026, aims to strip naturalised status from individuals who allegedly bypassed legal requirements during their immigration processes.

The systemic crackdown reflects a tightening of federal enforcement protocols and a renewed focus on integrity within the naturalisation system. By targeting these specific cases, federal authorities seek to address historical anomalies in the immigration system while reinforcing the legal boundaries of citizenship. Legal experts suggest this precedent-setting campaign could signal a broader, more aggressive policy shift toward retroactive audits of naturalised citizens. The ongoing judicial proceedings against these twenty-five individuals will likely test the constitutional limits of denaturalisation power and carry significant implications for diaspora communities.

India’s Cockroach Party Protests Have a Powerful Precedent—and It Isn’t the Arab Spring

Council on Foreign Relations | Sadanand Dhume

India’s Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) youth protests, sparked by systemic exam leaks and high graduate unemployment, have triggered a major political confrontation in Delhi, forcing the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. Led by activist Abhijeet Dipke, this rapidly growing movement has mobilized millions of disaffected Gen-Z citizens demanding structural reforms to secure their economic future.

This domestic unrest mirrors India's mid-1970s protest wave led by Jayaprakash Narayan, which ultimately prompted Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to declare a national state of emergency. Today, nearly 40 percent of Indian graduates under twenty-five remain unemployed, exacerbated by a compromised National Eligibility cum Entrance Test, as detailed in a recent investigation, and artificial intelligence threats to the technology sector. While the decentralized nature of India's political and financial power makes a sudden regime collapse highly unlikely, the escalating friction presents a formidable long-term challenge to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's administration.

Why India Was Left Out of the China-Style Wealth Boom: The Invisible Asymmetry

Thoughtful Observer

India suffered severe economic and technological isolation during the Cold War as Western powers redirected capital and critical dual-use technologies to China. This asymmetric treatment, highlighted by the 1971 deployment of the USS Enterprise to intimidate New Delhi, locked the world's largest democracy out of the foundational decades of globalised manufacturing wealth.

The geopolitical divide deepened after India's 1974 and 1998 nuclear tests, which triggered punitive US sanctions and blocked access to aerospace and supercomputing components. While Beijing leveraged Deng Xiaoping's 1978 market reforms and state-subsidised infrastructure to absorb global supply chains, New Delhi remained constrained by rigid pre-1991 industrial licensing. Although the 1991 liberalisation eventually enabled a services-led boom via the General Agreement on Trade in Services, the lack of deep-water ports and manufacturing infrastructure limited broader economic transformation. Today, this historical divergence drives India's push for strategic autonomy and self-reliance to counter its neighbor's state-controlled economic dominance.

Build, Not Buy: The Semiconductor Lesson that Indian AI Experts Must Learn

Carnegie India  |  Konark Bhandari

The India AI Mission, despite assembling 38,000 graphics processing units by late 2025, faces severe strategic vulnerabilities due to its heavy reliance on imported hardware and foreign frontier models. This dependency exposes the domestic ecosystem to sudden geopolitical disruptions, such as United States export controls and restricted access to advanced models like Anthropic’s Claude Mythos.

Historically, national technology strategies have underestimated the risks of single-vendor supply chains, assuming global access to computational infrastructure would remain permanently open and unhindered. However, rising technology nationalism and strict export regimes threaten to inflate the costs of digital public infrastructure, rendering application-only strategies economically unsustainable. To mitigate these vulnerabilities, domestic policymakers are shifting focus toward advanced packaging and high-bandwidth memory to secure self-reliance. By building indispensable hardware capabilities rather than merely procuring foreign compute, the nation aims to establish leverage within the contested global technology supply chain.

Why Japan Is Now the Most Important US Ally in Asia

National Interest  |  Jagannath Panda

The United States Department of Defense's decision on June 16, 2026, to rename US Indo-Pacific Command to US Pacific Command signals a major strategic pivot that demotes India as Washington's premier regional partner. This command restructuring coincides with India's refusal to sign a joint statement reaffirming the 2016 South China Sea arbitration ruling against China.

As bilateral tensions between Washington and New Delhi mount, Japan has emerged as the primary anchor for American containment efforts against Chinese maritime expansion. Tokyo is actively backing the Trump administration's "Peace through Strength" doctrine, supported by a record-high defense budget exceeding $58 billion and expedited revisions to its national security documents. With Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi securing public support for a stronger deterrence posture, the archipelago's critical geography will remain central to securing commercial access in a Pacific region that drives 60 percent of global economic growth.

Science as a Substitute for Geography: The Army’s High-Altitude Advantage—Altitude as a Strategic Asymmetry in Great-Power Competition

Military Review  |  Karl E. Friedl, Pierre A. Fabries, Beth A. Beidleman

The US Army is leveraging scientific research at its Pikes Peak High Altitude Research Laboratory to engineer physiological countermeasures against hypobaric hypoxia, securing a strategic advantage in high-altitude great-power competition. By developing predictive monitoring systems and testing rapid-acting pharmacological interventions, the military aims to preserve combat readiness during rapid expeditionary deployments without requiring long acclimatization periods.

This scientific approach directly addresses the severe physiological limitations exposed during historical mountain conflicts like the 1962 Sino-Indian War. While the Indian Army relies on a conservative, time-based tiered acclimatization doctrine to protect rotated forces along the Line of Actual Control, the People's Liberation Army utilizes permanent Tibetan plateau residency, genetic adaptations, and extensive oxygen-supply infrastructure. Consequently, the American strategy bypasses these geographic and garrison constraints through targeted medical innovations, including a 2026 study on hypoxia-inducible factor proteins designed to compress acclimatization timelines and optimize warfighter performance in extreme environments.

Over-Centralization Is The Root Cause Of Examination Chaos In India

Eurasia Review  |  P. K. Balachandran

The Indian government's establishment of a high-powered reform committee following widespread National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET-UG) paper leaks has intensified domestic debates over educational federalism. The National Testing Agency (NTA) faced severe criticism after systemic failures during the May 2026 examinations disrupted the careers of 2.4 million candidates, triggering nationwide protests and ministerial resignations.

This crisis stems from the over-centralisation of national entrance exams, which critics argue systematically disadvantages rural, state-board, and non-English-medium students while favouring wealthy urban applicants with access to commercial coaching. Led by Tamil Nadu, several states including Karnataka and West Bengal have passed legislative resolutions demanding the abolition of NEET in favour of state-level admission systems. However, the National Medical Commission Act of 2019 and constitutional provisions grant overriding powers to the central government, leaving states legally constrained despite growing political resistance. Meanwhile, the newly appointed Nandan Nilekani-led reform committee, dominated by technocrats, is expected to reinforce centralization rather than address federal concerns.

India’s Drone Army

Real Clear Defense  |  Liam Collins, John Spencer

The Indian Army is rapidly accelerating the acquisition, production, and integration of unmanned aerial systems and counter-drone technologies following lessons from Operation Sindoor in May 2025. This massive modernization effort includes a $2 billion accelerated drone procurement program and a $3 billion investment in integrated detection and interdiction systems.

To bypass traditional multi-year acquisition cycles, New Delhi is leveraging emergency procurement powers that allow the military to spend up to 15 percent of its capital budget on fast-tracked technologies. Under the "Eagle on the Arm" initiative launched by Chief of the Army Staff General Upendra Dwivedi, the service aims to distribute drones to every soldier while establishing 26 dedicated drone regiments. Furthermore, tactical units are utilizing 3D printers to manufacture components locally, shortening the loop between battlefield requirements and operational deployment. This bottom-up adaptation represents one of the most ambitious military modernization experiments outside of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

India’s Undersea Nuclear Turn Is a Warning to China and Pakistan

Frame the Globe News

India is transitioning its nuclear deterrent from stored capability to active undersea deployment, signaling a major posture shift aimed at China and Pakistan. This quiet operational transition establishes a continuous at-sea nuclear deterrent, significantly altering the strategic balance in South Asia. By moving nuclear warheads from central storage to active deployment aboard ballistic missile submarines, New Delhi is establishing a survivable second-strike capability.

This shift directly addresses regional vulnerabilities, particularly the growing naval presence of China in the Indian Ocean and Pakistan's tactical nuclear posture. Consequently, the deployment introduces a permanent undersea nuclear presence that complicates the strategic calculations of both Beijing and Islamabad. As these maritime patrols become routine, the risk of miscalculation increases, forcing regional rivals to adapt their anti-submarine warfare capabilities. This development marks a critical evolution in India's nuclear triad, cementing its long-term maritime deterrence posture in the Indo-Pacific region.

India: Maoist Arms Caches And The Unfinished War

Eurasia Review  |  Deepak Kumar Nayak

Indian security forces have recovered substantial CPI-Maoist arms, ammunition, and explosives from at least 45 hidden caches since the Union Government’s March 31, 2026, deadline for eliminating Left Wing Extremism. These persistent recoveries across states like Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, and Odisha reveal that the insurgency's material infrastructure remains active despite severe degradation of its organizational structure.

Historically, the Maoist movement relied on highly compartmentalised local committees to bury weapons like INSAS and SLR rifles in waterproof forest dumps. This decentralised storage strategy allows residual cadres and splinter groups like the People's Liberation Front of India to retain latent mobilisation capabilities. To counter this, the Odisha State Police recently initiated inter-state coordination to trace 1,540 weapons looted since 1992, highlighting the cross-border nature of the threat. Complete stabilisation now requires transitioning to a structured disarmament strategy that mandates full disclosure of caches as a precondition for rehabilitation benefits.

Comment

The persistent recovery of INSAS assault rifles and improvised explosive devices across the Red Corridor indicates that the internal security threat from CPI-Maoist cadres remains a long-term stabilisation challenge for New Delhi. This material survival complicates the Ministry of Home Affairs' efforts to declare affected districts entirely free of Left Wing Extremism. Furthermore, the cross-border movement of these weapons across states like Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand demonstrates how intelligence silos between state police forces hamper the complete neutralisation of these networks. The Odisha State Police initiative to trace over a thousand looted weapons exposes the scale of the accounting deficit that continues to sustain these residual insurgent factions.

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Mizoram’s Chin Refugees From Myanmar

Eurasia Review  |  Sifra Lentin

Mizoram is currently hosting approximately 40,000 Myanmar Chin refugees fleeing post-2021 coup violence alongside 1,000 Bangladeshi tribals, straining local resources and altering demographic balances in India's remote northeast border state. This massive influx, representing up to five percent of the state's total population, has triggered significant local security and economic anxieties.

Ethnic kinship, shared Presbyterian Christian faith, and historical ties motivate the local Mizo community, led by the Young Mizo Association, to coordinate informal humanitarian relief alongside the state government. However, the prolonged displacement has fueled a surge in Golden Triangle drug trafficking, prompting the state to launch Operation Jericho in 2025 to curb cross-border narcotics smuggling. Additionally, the inflow of US-based refugee remittances is rapidly driving up local land prices, while New Delhi's 2025 reimposition of the Protected Area Regime restricts foreign mobility, complicating India's broader Act East policy objectives.

Comment

The influx of Chin refugees into Mizoram exposes the operational limitations of relying on the Assam Rifles to police a border characterised by deep-seated ethnic contiguity. New Delhi's 2025 reimposition of the Protected Area Regime (1958) reflects a growing federal anxiety over unregulated cross-border migration and its associated shadow economies. This regulatory shift directly impacts the local execution of India's Act East policy, as security-driven restrictions on foreign mobility clash with regional economic integration goals. Consequently, the federal militarisation of border management risks alienating the Mizo population, whose cross-border kinship networks with Chin communities historically bypassed formal state boundaries.

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Where Does India’s Cockroach Movement Go From Here?

Time  |  Richard Hall

India’s burgeoning youth-led protest movement, known as the Cockroach Movement, recently secured a major political victory following the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. This massive mobilization erupted after the country’s Chief Justice publicly compared unemployed youth to parasites, triggering widespread outrage and spontaneous demonstrations among the urban middle-class demographic.

This unrest exposes deep-seated anxieties regarding systemic youth unemployment and the perceived integrity of the national examination system. Historically deferential demographics are now openly challenging the political authority of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, utilizing highly provocative slogans that disrupt the ruling party's traditional support base. While the government alternates between police detentions and conciliatory gestures, the leaderless nature of the Cockroach Janta Party makes its long-term trajectory highly unpredictable. Ultimately, the crisis reveals how economic anomie among salaried Hindus can rapidly transform localized academic grievances into a broader existential challenge to state power.

Comment

Disruptions within the National Testing Agency in New Delhi expose vulnerabilities in India's domestic stability framework. Protests at Jantar Mantar indicate that economic grievances among  people can erode the political capital of the Bharatiya Janata Party. This friction threatens to divert federal focus away from security initiatives like the modernisation of the Indian Armed Forces. Consequently, internal cohesion remains a primary variable in New Delhi's capacity to project power across the Indian Ocean Region.

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Geographical And Geopolitical Ramifications Of The Upper Siang Multipurpose Project In A Sino-Indian Border State

Eurasia Review  |  P. K. Balachandran

India's proposed 11,200-megawatt Upper Siang Multipurpose Project in Arunachal Pradesh is being positioned as a geostrategic safeguard against China's upstream Yarlung Tsangpo dam. New Delhi intends for the 14-billion-cubic-metre reservoir to protect downstream water sovereignty against potential unilateral water diversion or sudden releases by Beijing. This ambitious defensive strategy faces severe operational and physical constraints, given that the project is located in a highly seismic Himalayan zone prone to earthquakes and landslide-induced hazards.

The decade-long construction timeline leaves unfinished works highly vulnerable to upstream surges, a risk underscored by the catastrophic 2023 collapse of the Teesta III dam in Sikkim. Locally, the indigenous Adi communities, represented by the Adi Bane Kebang, are fiercely resisting the project due to the projected displacement of over 16 villages and the loss of ancestral lands. Consequently, critics are calling for an immediate pause to conduct independent basin-wide cumulative impact assessments before further construction surveys proceed.

Comment

Deploying the Upper Siang reservoir as a defensive hydrological shield against China's Yarlung Tsangpo cascade couples India's downstream flood control directly to Beijing's transboundary telemetry sharing. In the absence of binding bilateral water treaties, Indian engineers cannot reliably model the sudden-release scenarios required to safely manage the 14-billion-cubic-metre storage capacity. Furthermore, the vulnerability of temporary diversion works during the projected ten-year construction window invites targeted grey-zone exploitation along the Line of Actual Control. This operational exposure transforms the Brahmaputra's primary Indian channel into a zone of acute vulnerability during the critical decade before the dam achieves structural completion.

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Trump Plans to Impose 100% Tariffs on Generic Drugs Starting in 2028. What Would That Do to Prices?

Time | Chantelle Lee

U.S. President Donald Trump announced plans to impose a 100% tariff on imported generic drugs starting in August 2028, escalating to 200% after one year to force pharmaceutical companies to reshore manufacturing to America. This aggressive trade policy aims to protect domestic consumers but risks triggering severe medication shortages and driving up healthcare costs.

Currently, the American healthcare system relies heavily on foreign suppliers, with India providing approximately half of all generic medications and China supplying 80% of the active pharmaceutical ingredients used by Indian manufacturers. Industry experts warn that while generic drugs make up over 90% of prescriptions filled domestically, sudden tariffs could compel manufacturers to abandon the U.S. market entirely. Although the Food and Drug Administration notes generics are significantly cheaper than brand-name alternatives, doubling their prices would exacerbate existing affordability crises for the nearly 50% of American adults struggling with healthcare costs.

Comment

The proposed tariff structure exposes the deep systemic vulnerabilities of the American pharmaceutical supply chain, which relies on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to regulate a market heavily dependent on foreign active pharmaceutical ingredients. Attempting to reshore generic drug manufacturing to domestic facilities within a tight four-year window overlooks the capital-intensive nature of chemical synthesis plants. Consequently, sudden trade barriers on imports from major hubs like Gujarat or Zhejiang risk triggering severe domestic shortages of critical therapies before American manufacturing infrastructure can achieve operational scale.

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Can IMEC Survive the Iran War?

National Interest | Harsh V. Pant, and Dharminder Singh Kaleka

The India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) faces severe operational paralysis as the 2026 Iran war and Houthi maritime strikes disrupt critical trade chokepoints. This vulnerability forces a shift toward a hard-security architecture to safeguard the multimodal route. Consequently, participating nations are transitioning from purely commercial planning to active naval cooperation.

The initiative was originally designed to bypass vulnerable maritime arteries like the Suez Canal and the Strait of Hormuz. However, the northern rail segment through Jordan to the Israeli port of Haifa remains blocked due to stalled Arab-Israeli normalization and Saudi Arabia's insistence on a Palestinian state. To counter these political and physical bottlenecks, a defensive maritime arc linking India, Israel, and Greece is emerging to protect critical infrastructure, undersea cables, and energy pipelines. While bilateral trade between India and the United Arab Emirates exceeded $101 billion in fiscal year 2025–26, the corridor's long-term viability depends on establishing robust security frameworks and digital interoperability to withstand ongoing geopolitical shocks.

Comment

India's maritime strategy is expanding beyond the Indian Ocean into the Mediterranean. Access to the Souda Bay naval facility in Greece provides the Indian Navy with a vital logistical node. This footprint complements New Delhi's commercial presence at the Israeli port of Haifa, securing the projected IMEC sea lanes. Anchoring this trilateral arc allows India to project hard power directly into European waters to protect its digital and energy assets.

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Is India Planning an Exchange of Territory With Myanmar?

The Diplomat  |  Rajeev Bhattacharyya

An official Indian government proposal dated May 26, 2026, outlines a plan to exchange 1.4 square miles of territory with Myanmar to resolve a decades-old boundary dispute in Manipur's Chandel district. This proposed swap, contiguous to Myanmar's Kabaw Valley in the Sagaing Region, aims to complete the demarcation between border pillars 65 and 68 within three months.

The expedited demarcation is driven by New Delhi's urgency to construct a comprehensive border fence and patrol track along the entire 1,643-kilometer frontier. The Manipur government and central authorities have previously struggled to resolve disputes in sensitive zones like Molcham, Moreh, and Choro Khunou. To secure this porous boundary against illegal immigration, cross-border crime, and insurgent movements, India has sanctioned $3.22 billion for the physical barrier. This strategic initiative seeks to finalize the work of the Joint Boundary Commission, which was established under a bilateral agreement signed in 1967 but left several sectors highly contested.

Comment

The proposed territorial exchange in Manipur's Chandel district reveals how unresolved border demarcations from the 1967 India-Myanmar Boundary Agreement continue to hinder New Delhi's contemporary security infrastructure plans. Finalising the boundary between border pillars 65 and 68 is a prerequisite for the construction of the planned 1,643-kilometre border fence. This territorial adjustment reflects a pragmatic shift in Indian border management along the Manipur sector, prioritising physical sealing over long-standing cartographic disputes to mitigate Naga and Meitei insurgent movements. By addressing these legacy anomalies, India seeks to eliminate the legal and administrative ambiguities that have historically exploited the porous Sagaing Region frontier.

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Indian police cracked down on 'cockroach' protesters. They went home and made memes about it

BBC News  |  Zoya Mateen

Tens of thousands of Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) supporters marched toward the Indian parliament in New Delhi, demanding the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan over exam paper leaks. Indian security forces responded with tear gas and baton charges, injuring numerous demonstrators and prompting a localized mobile internet shutdown.

This confrontation highlights a growing friction between state authorities and a highly connected, youth-led accountability movement. Rather than suppressing dissent, the digital-native demonstrators bypassed the communication blackout to flood social media platforms with highly coordinated, satirical memes and first-person video dispatches. By utilizing self-directed humor and viral trends to cope with police violence, these activists are redefining modern political mobilization. This shift suggests that future state efforts to control public narratives through physical force and digital blockades will face persistent, decentralized resistance from a generation that seamlessly integrates political activism with online culture.

Comment

The Delhi Police deployment of tear gas and internet blackouts against the Cockroach Janta Party at Jantar Mantar exposes a critical vulnerability in state-directed information control. By converting physical baton charges into viral Instagram reels and satirical 'fit checks', these Indian demonstrators bypassed communication blockades to maintain narrative dominance. This adaptation demonstrates how decentralized, peer-to-peer satire can rapidly delegitimise formal security responses, rendering traditional kinetic deterrence counterproductive in urban Indian protest theatres.

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Modi’s Great Anglo Paradox

Foreign Policy  |  C. Raja Mohan

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is aggressively pursuing a domestic campaign of cultural decolonization to purge British and Western linguistic, cultural, and intellectual influences. This nativist ideological drive, championed by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party since 2014, seeks to fundamentally redefine India's national identity and intellectual framework while navigating complex global alignments.

Historically, the deep-seated institutional legacy of the British Raj has shaped the nation's administrative, legal, and educational systems, creating a persistent post-colonial tension. However, this domestic rejection of Western cultural inheritance paradoxically coexists with an unprecedented diplomatic and strategic push to deepen partnerships with key Western democracies. New Delhi is actively strengthening security, economic, and technological ties with Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. This dual-track approach highlights a highly pragmatic foreign policy that decouples domestic cultural nationalism from external strategic imperatives in the Indo-Pacific.

Comment

New Delhi's dual-track approach of domestic decolonisation and external alignment manifests clearly in high-technology defence partnerships. The U.S.-India Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology (iCET) serves as the primary vehicle for this decoupling, driving co-production of military jet engines. By anchoring its technological modernisation in Western ecosystems, the Indian state secures critical capabilities without compromising its nativist political narrative at home. This structural separation allows India to absorb advanced Western military technology while systematically dismantling the intellectual and cultural remnants of the British Raj.

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