Why are young Bangladeshis so deeply distrustful of India? This book looks for answers

On February 23, 2024, soon after Sheikh Hasina came to power in Bangladesh, young journalist Saqlaine Rizve wrote a long news report to address a question that had haunted him for years: The two nations are friendly neighbours. Why, then, do Indian troops so frequently use lethal force along the border?

We had met Rizve in Dhaka in January 2024 after the polls, and he told us that with the BNP boycotting the polls and calling it a farce, and the Supreme Court of Bangladesh keeping the country’s largest Islamist party, the Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh, out of the fray, it was a given that Hasina would stomp back to power. But why were the borders still bleeding, he asked.

Rizve said it was not safe to report on an issue as controversial as border killings, but he didn’t care for his safety. The report came out on February 23, 2024, six months before Sheikh Hasina’s fall.

Rizve wrote of a typical day in April 2018, usually the hottest month of the year in Bangladesh. Rasel Miah, a 14-year-old boy from Phulbari Upazila in Kurigram, accompanied his father, Md Hanif Uddin, a farmer, to their field near the Bangladesh–India border, just beyond the 150-yard No Man’s Land. As...

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