India defined its red lines by pulverising terror bases in Pakistan during Operation Sindoor. Now it is time to set a red line on Bangladesh
India has long prided itself as a voice for international law. While its founding Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, saw international law as a largely European construct designed to benefit Europeans, he nevertheless viewed the construct as necessary to protect newly sovereign states. He inserted the necessity to respect international law in Article 51 of the Indian Constitution. Every Indian Minister Narendra Modi has spoken about creating a “new world order” rooted in international law that advances respect for sovereignty, territorial integrity, and peaceful dispute resolution.
Perhaps this is why, when United States Special Forces seized Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on January 3, 2026, India’s Ministry of External Affairs expressed “deep concern”. Opposition parliamentarian Shashi Tharoor was vocal in his condemnation. He condemned the “law of the jungle” and argued the US action contravened the UN Charter, impinged on Venezuelan sovereignty, and lamented the idea that any state should capture another head of state.
While there can be much to debate about US action, and the capture of Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega exactly 36 years before, Indian officials should both be less naïve about international law and less reticent to condemn the US actions given the problems New Delhi now faces in Dhaka.
The basis of this naïveté is that international law, like the norms of diplomacy, only works when all sides equally embrace them. If any US President walked on water, Tharoor would condemn them for never learning to swim, so his usually anti-American invective can be put aside. Rather, the issue is whether India’s real adversaries — countries like Pakistan, China, or the Muhammad Yunus regime in Bangladesh — view international law as an encapsulation of common principles, or whether they approach its citation as an asymmetric warfare strategy with which to selectively stymie India’s own actions.
In the Venezuela case, the heart of the issue is whether Maduro was a legitimate president. The Indian Ministry of External Affairs may be unsure and Tharoor may believe he was, but in this case it is Tharoor who subscribes to the law of the jungle, since Maduro’s claim to the presidency had less to do with the ballot box and more with the barrel of a gun. Russia, China, Cuba and Iran recognised Maduro, but the United States, many European states, and many countries across Latin America did not.
On both issues, Bangladesh provides an important test for India. Yunus may act as “chief adviser” and interim head of state, but he came to power in what, in hindsight, appears more a carefully constructed coup than an organic protest movement. His efforts after Sheikh Hasina’s ouster to ban the Awami League, and his subsequent release of hardened Islamists and terrorists from prison, suggest a predetermined plan. His status as an unelected leader in Bangladesh makes him akin to Maduro, as the former Venezuelan leader also sought to impose his ideological will on society despite a failure to win any credible elections.
If Yunus is more the manifestation of a plot by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency to oust an enemy and redeem Jamaat-e-Islami, a group responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths, then should India restrain itself with an expansive definition of international law if the ISI does not abide by the same constraints?
PM Modi is correct that international law is important, but its adherents must apply it equally. Indeed, international law itself acknowledges this. The protections of the Geneva Conventions, for example, only apply in full to prisoners of war who act according to the laws of war. Terrorists, those who hide among civilians, and those who do not wear uniforms do not receive the same rights as soldiers in uniform. To suggest otherwise simply incentivises and encourages more abuse of international law by suggesting advantages can be gained without suffering penalties for failure to adhere to the law’s requirements. Put another way, until Pakistan or Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh adheres to international law, India should feel no obligation to do so in its interactions with either.
Indeed, rather than blanketly condemning Maduro’s capture as Tharoor did, or expressing unease as Indian diplomats have, Indian strategists should consider a different approach.
Reversing an illegal coup against an elected government conforms with international law. So too would bringing the perpetrators of that coup to justice. In such a situation, Indians should perhaps view Maduro’s “perp walk” at a New York court less as an outrage and affront to international law than as a model and precedent for India to follow. India defined its red lines by pulverising terror bases in Pakistan during Operation Sindoor. Now it is time to set a red line on Bangladesh.
(Michael Rubin is director of policy analysis at the Middle East Forum and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.)
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