In South Asia’s complex geopolitical landscape, Indo-Bangla relations remain a critical case where historical cooperation and political mistrust coexist. From the shared legacy of the 1971 Liberation War to contemporary negotiations over trade, water sharing, and regional security, the relationship has always been shaped by both material interests and symbolic politics. In recent years, however, a new and deeply troubling dimension has emerged: the persistent spread of disinformation and misleading narratives about Bangladesh originating from Indian mainstream and digital media platforms. This phenomenon is no longer episodic or accidental; it has become patterned, systematic, and politically consequential.
According to data compiled by the fact-checking organisation Rumor Scanner, at least 155 instances of disinformation concerning Bangladesh were identified in Indian media and social media in 2025 alone. These figures point to more than journalistic lapses or isolated misinformation. Rather, they reveal a structural trend in which particular narratives about Bangladesh are repeatedly circulated and normalised. In the language of disinformation studies, this reflects a form of ‘persistent narrative construction,’ where repetition gradually embeds a specific perception of a neighbouring state into public consciousness.
Viewed from this perspective, interpreting fake news solely as a failure of journalism is analytically inadequate. While problems of verification and ethical reporting are undeniable, contemporary research shows that disinformation has evolved into a political strategy – a form of political technology used to shape public opinion and manufacture security-related anxieties. The role of Indian mainstream media in constructing narratives about Bangladesh illustrates this shift clearly. When dozens of media outlets publish more than a hundred misleading reports across multiple incidents, disinformation acquires institutional visibility and legitimacy. At that point, the issue is no longer simply about accuracy. It is about power, influence, and narrative control.
Media framing theory helps explain how this process works. Media institutions do not merely report facts. They actively frame events by selecting angles, metaphors, visuals, and emotional cues. These frames determine what audiences perceive as important, how they interpret causality, and whom they hold responsible. In coverage of Bangladesh, Indian media frequently privilege frames of disorder, persecution, and instability, while marginalising context, structural explanations, and countervailing evidence. Over time, such framing does not just inform audiences; it conditions them.
It would be misleading, however, to reduce these frames to simple anti-Bangladesh bias. Their deeper roots lie within India’s domestic political landscape, where questions of identity, nationalism, and minority rights occupy a central place. Securitisation theory offers a useful lens here. When political actors and media frame an issue as a security threat, it is removed from the realm of ordinary debate and placed in a space where exceptional concern and extraordinary responses appear justified. Incidents of communal violence, mob attacks, or minority persecution in Bangladesh are increasingly mobilised within Indian political discourse through this securitised framing.
Through this process, Bangladesh is often portrayed not merely as a neighbouring country facing governance challenges, but as a problematic space where Hindu identity is allegedly under threat. This portrayal resonates strongly with domestic vote-bank politics and identity-sensitive narratives in India. The media, in this context, functions less as an independent watchdog and more as an amplifier of politically useful frames. What emerges is not just a distorted image of Bangladesh, but a narrative that serves internal political objectives while externalising moral judgment.
The ethical breach becomes more pronounced when these securitised narratives are combined with unverified claims, exaggerated visuals, and sensationalist language. From a framing perspective, this produces an emotion-driven narrative structure in which complex social realities are reduced to simplistic binaries – victim versus perpetrator, protector versus oppressor. Such binaries offer audiences moral clarity without nuance, certainty without complexity. Over time, however, they harden stereotypes and erode mutual trust between societies, placing sustained strain on bilateral relations.
Any serious discussion of disinformation, however, must also confront an uncomfortable reality: the effectiveness of these narratives is not produced by Indian media alone. Disinformation studies consistently show that misleading narratives gain traction most easily when they are partially anchored in real events. Bangladesh’s internal political and social conditions provide precisely such anchoring points. The rise of mob violence, recurring communal attacks, and the absence of swift, transparent, and credible state responses create an environment in which exaggerated external narratives appear plausible. In this sense, disinformation does not operate as outright fabrication; it functions as distortion selectively amplifying certain incidents while stripping them of context.
This vulnerability is compounded by the silence or ambiguity of Bangladesh’s own media and intellectual community. When journalists, opinion-makers, and civil society actors fail to articulate clear and principled positions against violence and communalism, the state’s moral authority begins to erode. Academically, this erosion can be described as a legitimacy deficit, where the state gradually loses credibility in the eyes of its citizens. In such circumstances, external media narratives increasingly step in to define internal realities, shaping how events are perceived both domestically and internationally.
The result is a self-reinforcing cycle. Acts of violence occur, state responses remain weak or unclear, media coverage frames these events through securitised and emotionally charged lenses, and these frames then condition audiences to interpret future incidents in even more alarmist ways. Each iteration strengthens the next. Over time, disinformation ceases to be episodic and becomes endemic – a persistent condition that affects not only the information environment but also regional political relations.
Within this broader context, the role of Indian media in disseminating misleading and exaggerated narratives about Bangladesh constitutes a serious ethical failure. Yet this failure is not singular. Ethical responsibility cannot rest solely with journalists across the border. If Bangladesh’s governance structures continue to falter in responding decisively and morally to violence, the conditions that enable securitised and distorted narratives will persist. Disinformation will continue to find fertile ground.
From both academic and policy perspectives, this suggests that combating disinformation requires far more than reactive fact-checking or episodic rebuttals. While such measures are necessary, they are insufficient on their own. What is required is a broader reconstruction of state legitimacy through effective law enforcement, transparent governance, and unequivocal political leadership against violence and communal hatred. Equally important is the cultivation of independent, responsible, and morally assertive journalism within Bangladesh. Journalism that does not retreat into silence when clarity is demanded.
Without these structural interventions, fake news will not remain a temporary irritant in Indo-Bangla relations. It will persist as a long-term structural crisis, reshaping perceptions, hardening identities, and steadily narrowing the space for trust and cooperation between two deeply interconnected societies.
The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author
The writer is an Associate Professor, Communication and Journalism, University of Chittagong, and researcher on New Media and Political Communication
