As anti-India sentiments soar in Bangladesh, Indian medical students in the country fear for their safety and degrees.
Every evening around 8pm, Karim* locks himself inside his small hostel room at East West Medical College in Nishat Nagar, on the outskirts of Dhaka, Bangladesh.
If there is a knock on the door, he pauses before opening it, listening carefully first for familiar voices.
Outside the campus, he avoids crowded tea stalls and markets. He does not speak Bangla fluently, and he knows that his accent could give him away as an Indian – an identity he desperately wants to mask these days, if he can.
Karim came to Bangladesh in April 2024 from his home in the northern Indian state of Haryana, after failing to secure a government medical seat in India. At the time, Dhaka felt welcoming. He would go out with classmates, eat at restaurants, and travel outside the college on weekends.
“Those outings helped me release the stress of studies,” Karim said. But in July 2024, when protests erupted against then-Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her government, his routine changed. Fearing that the environment outside was no longer safe, Khan confined himself to his small room.
The college advised him and other Indian students to remain within the campus premises. It has stayed that way since then. Karim says he feels trapped, and the city that once felt like a second home no longer offers a sense of safety.
He is among more than 9,000 Indian medical students currently enrolled in Bangladeshi colleges, at a time when anti-India sentiments are soaring in the country, 16 months after former Hasina sought exile in New Delhi.
Hasina, who was ousted in August 2024 by a popular student-led uprising amid a brutal crackdown by her security forces, has long been seen in Bangladesh as a close ally of India.
In November, a tribunal in Dhaka sentenced Hasina, in absentia, to death for the killings carried out by her security forces in 2024. But despite repeated requests from the interim Bangladeshi government of Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus, India has so far not agreed to send Hasina back, amplifying sentiments against New Delhi on the streets of Bangladesh.
That anger, say Indian students, has left them feeling vulnerable, especially after a recent incident that has sent shockwaves through the community.
Now, that sense of ease has vanished. Vaibhav rarely steps outside, avoids local markets and common spaces, and even inside the hospital, he is cautious while speaking to patients.
He hides his Indian identity. “I think twice before saying anything in public now, one wrong word can make you a target,” he said.
Though he was never interested in politics, he now constantly checks news updates to assess the situation. “Every night, we go to sleep unsure of what the next day might bring,” Vaibhav added.
Each day of the internship feels like time to be endured, as he waits for the moment he can return home.
The lure of Bangladesh
Every year, more than two million Indian students apply for fewer than 60,000 seats in government-run medical colleges in their own country.
India has hundreds of private medical colleges, too, which offer an additional 50,000 seats. But this still means that almost 19 out of 20 aspirants end up without a shot at medical school. And the high fees charged by private Indian medical schools – anywhere between $78,000 and $166,000 for the full course – mean they are out of reach for students like Khan, whose father is a government employee.
Instead, the family opted for Bangladesh, where private undergraduate medical programmes are comparatively cheaper, with total course costs ranging between $38,000 and $55,000.
This also involved sacrifice: Karim’s father spent nearly all of his life savings to get his son into college.
According to Karim, life in Bangladesh was stable when he arrived in early 2024. However, the situation deteriorated rapidly after the protests against Hasina broke out. “We started feeling unsafe. I desperately wanted to go back home,” he recalled.
When internet services were suspended as security forces cracked down on protesters in the summer of 2024, Karim went to Dhaka airport to book a ticket in person. “I spent two nights at the airport. All flights were full,” he said, adding that he eventually managed to fly to Kolkata in eastern India after two days.
Karim stayed in India for several months before returning to Bangladesh in October. By then, he said, everything felt different: classes were disrupted, exams delayed and insecurity lingered. “It felt like something had changed completely,” he said.
Faisal Mahmud, the press minister at the Bangladesh High Commission, said that in recent weeks, the Bangladeshi government had “stepped up its vigilance to maintain law and order, as a national election is scheduled to take place in just over a month”.
“This has included the deployment of the maximum number of law enforcement personnel, alongside members of the armed forces, who were earlier granted magistracy powers to help ensure public security and protect both citizens and foreigners,” he told Al Jazeera in a statement.
But the leadup to Bangladesh’s election, scheduled for February 12, has also seen a surge in political violence, anti-India rhetoric and a growing sense of fear among students.
A brief lull, and a fresh storm
After months of uncertainty, the situation in Bangladesh had begun to stabilise, say students. But the calm was shattered on December 15, when Sharif Osman Hadi, a prominent leader of Bangladesh’s 2024 student-led uprising, who had taken publicly anti-India positions, was killed by bikers. Bangladeshi police have said that Hadi’s killers have crossed over into India.
Since the killing, a Hindu Bangladeshi man has been lynched, and India had to temporarily close down visa services at some diplomatic missions in Bangladesh because of major protests outside.
