In the wake of the July–August uprising and the collapse of Sheikh Hasina’s authoritarian rule, Bangladesh stands at a rare inflection point.

For decades, New Delhi’s grip on Dhaka, cemented through Awami League clientelism, cultural penetration, and security dependence seemed unbreakable. That grip is finally loosening.

Whether Bangladesh now seizes the chance to chart an independent foreign policy or slips back into old dependencies will depend on the clarity of its diplomacy.

That is why Foreign Affairs Adviser Tauhid Hossain’s recent demand for a formal Pakistani apology over the 1971 genocide deserves scrutiny. Memory and justice matter. But foreign policy cannot be built on permanent grievances.

Half a century later, to make Islamabad’s contrition a central diplomatic objective risks substituting historical symbolism for strategic vision.

History itself makes the case for restraint. In February 1974, Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan signed a tripartite agreement: Pakistani POWs held in India were released, Bengalis stranded in Pakistan were repatriated, and Dhaka agreed not to prosecute the 195 alleged war criminals.

India stood witness to the deal, effectively closing the chapter. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman himself endorsed reconciliation. “Bengalis know how to forgive,” he declared before traveling to Lahore for the OIC summit that same year.

Even his infamous handshake with Tikka Khan, the “Butcher of Bengal,” was not naïve sentimentality but hardheaded pragmatism. Mujib knew Bangladesh could not afford isolation, tethered only to India and the Soviet bloc, and needed to reopen the door to the wider Islamic world through Pakistan.

The decision to abandon genocide trials in 1972–74 carried the same logic. The war crimes list omitted the architects of the slaughter–Yahya Khan, Tikka Khan, Rao Farman Ali, A.O. Mitha–and focused only on those captured by India.

Trials became bargaining chips, not sacrosanct obligations. Pakistan, for its part, quietly retired or dismissed some 4,000 officers, including A.A.K. Niazi and Rahimuddin Khan. It was a deeply imperfect justice, but it was the closure Mujib was willing to accept.

As historian Mohiuddin Ahmed recently observed after the Ishaq Dar–Tauhid Hossain exchange, these choices matter today because they show that Mujib himself–once the very symbol of 1971–had already made peace with Pakistan at a political level.

The lesson was pretty clear that Bangladesh must honor its history without allowing it to shackle its future.

Getting facts straight

The historical record also undercuts the claim that Pakistan has never sought forgiveness.

In 1974, Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto stood in Dhaka and, before a hostile crowd that jeered “Murderer Bhutto,” declared: “In the name of the last Prophet, I say touba (sorry) to you.”

He pleaded that his civilian government not be conflated with the generals who had brutalized both Pakistan and Bangladesh, a gesture that, despite the heckling, reportedly moved many Bengalis to tears.

Nearly three decades later, in July 2002, President Pervez Musharraf became the first Pakistani military ruler to formally acknowledge 1971’s atrocities.

At the National Martyrs’ Memorial in Savar, he wrote: “Your brothers and sisters in Pakistan share the pain of the events in 1971. The excesses committed during the unfortunate period are regretted. Let us bury the past in the spirit of magnanimity. Let not the light of the future be dimmed.”

He repeated those regrets at a state banquet, remarks welcomed by the Bangladeshi government but dismissed as inadequate by the opposition–the Awami League, then in opposition, ironically rejecting the very gesture it now demands.

International outlets from The Telegraph to Frontline and Dawn highlighted the significance of Musharraf’s words, even as they noted his attempt to soften blame on Pakistan’s armed forces.

Taken together with Bhutto’s contrition, Musharraf’s acknowledgement, and later conciliatory remarks by leaders like Imran Khan, the point is inescapable: Pakistan has, in various ways, already expressed remorse.

To demand fresh apologies now is less a pursuit of justice than a repudiation of Bangladesh’s own founding leadership–and in today’s climate, it risks serving little beyond India’s geopolitical interests.

This is because for the chessboard is shifting, and for once, it tilts toward Dhaka. India’s image as South Asia’s unchallenged hegemon has fractured. Its attempted proxy confrontation with China has floundered, its influence across the region is fraying, and in Dhaka, the fall of Hasina has punctured decades of political leverage.

Meanwhile, the protectionist tariffs introduced under Trump inadvertently created new space for Bangladesh to position itself as a manufacturing hub, particularly if Dhaka can attract the Chinese investment now seeking alternatives to U.S. markets.

Most critically, the deepening China–Pakistan partnership presents an opening that Bangladesh has long been denied under India’s shadow: security guarantees, economic corridors, and diplomatic counterweights.

Pakistan has managed a delicate balance, remaining a time-tested ally of Beijing while keeping open channels with Washington. That balance is precisely what Bangladesh must aspire to.

Only then can it step beyond its history as a client state and begin to act as a regional power in its own right.

A backward cycle

Revisiting 1971 in endless cycles is a luxury Bangladesh can no longer afford. The strategic calculus is clearer than ever. Pakistan is not a ghost of 1971; it is a partner in waiting.

Access to J-10C fighters and joint training programs could turn Lalmonirhat into a counterweight to India’s chokehold over the Siliguri corridor. Tapping into Pakistan’s growing defense industry and leveraging Gwadar’s logistics corridors would give Bangladesh strategic depth it has never possessed.

On the diplomatic stage, coordinated positions with Islamabad at the OIC and the UN would amplify Dhaka’s influence far beyond its size.

Predictably, the fallen Awami regime and its loyalists will paint any opening to Pakistan as betrayal of the liberation struggle. But geography tells a harder truth: with Pakistan, separated by distance, cooperation is a matter of shared interest, not political union.

With India, bound by porous borders and suffocating dominance, Bangladesh has already learned what it means to be reduced to a client state.

China is the indispensable piece of this puzzle. From the Teesta River project to large-scale textile investment, Beijing offers not only growth but leverage. Its control of rivers from Tibet already constrains India; that leverage can, if wisely managed, bolster Bangladesh in future water negotiations.

At the same time, Chinese exports blocked by U.S. tariffs are looking for new homes. Bangladesh, with its garment sector, is a natural destination–an opportunity India is scrambling to capture.

Seizing it would not only create jobs and foreign currency but force the industrial upgrading Dhaka has long postponed.

Most importantly, a formal alignment with Beijing would serve as a deterrent against Indian adventurism along the border–a shield strengthened further through coordinated defense cooperation with Pakistan.

Diplomacy is not therapy. Demanding apologies from Islamabad may soothe nationalist sentiment, but it risks shutting the very doors that could secure Bangladesh’s sovereignty.

The reality is blunt: without a China–Pakistan anchor, Dhaka remains exposed to India’s coercive tools–water strangulation and political interference. Tauhid Hossain faces a choice.

He can cling to the script of grievance politics, forever demanding reconciliation for wounds half a century old. Or he can pivot to the future, placing Bangladesh at the heart of a China–Pakistan–Bangladesh triangle–a strategic realignment that could finally neutralize Indian hegemony and secure Dhaka’s independence of action.

History shows that nations trapped in the past eventually become prisoners of it. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman understood this. Despite carrying the deepest scars of 1971, he chose pragmatism and closure in 1974.

For Bangladesh now to reverse that logic would be to rub the lemon only to make it bitter–a gesture of self-inflicted pain at the very moment when sovereignty demands clarity, not nostalgia.

Historical context

Other nations have faced worse and chosen differently. Japan, incinerated by atomic bombs and humiliated by unconditional surrender, rebuilt itself under an American security umbrella and became Washington’s most reliable ally in Asia.

France and Germany, after slaughtering each other through two world wars, forged the European project and anchored a continent’s prosperity. Vietnam, which lost millions in its war against the United States, normalized relations in the 1990s and now partners with Washington to balance Beijing.

In each case, nations scarred by unimaginable violence refused to remain hostage to grievance–and in doing so, secured sovereignty, strength, and long-term prosperity.

Bangladesh now faces its own strategic moment. But only if it stops filtering choices through the lens of what serves India.

If Dhaka has the boldness to seize Chinese capital, Pakistani defense cooperation, and the leverage of multipolar partnerships for its own good, it can at last escape the suffocating clientelism that defined the Hasina years.

Even India, rattled by tariffs and geopolitical setbacks, is scrambling to make peace with China, its lifelong rival. For Bangladesh, the opportunity to rise as a sovereign power broker is not theoretical–it is here.

The generational shift makes this moment even more urgent. More than 80 percent of Bangladeshis today were born after 1971. For them, the Liberation War is history, not lived memory.

What weighs on their lives is not the trauma of 1971 but the recent repression of a fallen regime propped up by India’s deep state. When the apology debate surfaced in the 1970s or resurfaced in the early 2000s, it carried heat.

Today it carries far less. A new generation demands sovereignty defined on its own terms, not through the tired India–Pakistan binaries that consumed their parents. They want freedom from hegemony in all directions, the right to build forward-looking independence rooted in Dhaka, not Delhi or Islamabad.

And they have reason to believe it is possible. Bangladesh today stands ahead of Pakistan in economic progress and has greater prospects than a fragile Indian Union increasingly divided against itself.

The question is whether our policymakers–beginning with Tauhid Hossain–will remain hostage to yesterday’s grievances, or summon the courage to secure tomorrow’s independence.

That independence, rooted in sovereignty rather than subordination, is what matters most to the overwhelming majority of this nation.

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Arif Hafiz is a political analyst, cultural critic, and independent columnist.