This essay examines why the India-Bangladesh relationship, which New Delhi regarded as stable and deeply aligned until August 2024, broke down so completely and so quickly. Drawing on Brantly Womack’s theory of asymmetric relations, it argues that stability between a larger and a smaller state rests on two reciprocal conditions: the larger state’s acknowledgment of the smaller state’s autonomy, and the smaller state’s deference to the larger state’s core sensitivities.

It traces the relationship through three periods. Until 2008, Bangladesh’s electoral oscillation between the Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) gave India an authentic reading of how its acknowledgment was being received. Between 2008 and 2024, Sheikh Hasina’s capture of the electoral system severed that feedback loop, so that her deference to New Delhi no longer reflected Bangladeshi consent. Since 2024, the pent-up instability has surfaced in Dhaka’s over-assertion of autonomy and in India’s reluctance to recognize the change.

The central argument is that the asymmetry India perceived as stable between 2008 and 2024 was inherently unstable because of two factors: appropriated agency, where the Hasina government’s deference exceeded the mandate Bangladesh’s electorate had given it, and unstable stability, where India’s assessment of its own acknowledgment was corrupted by its reliance on that government’s feedback. A durable relationship now requires India to ensure that such an appropriation of agency does not recur.