Behind the boom of Pakistani restaurants lies a darker ideological and geopolitical re-entry that threatens to erase Bangladesh’s secular identity.
Dhaka’s foodies, usually more animated about spice ratios than geopolitics, are suddenly spoilt for choice. The capital’s upscale neighborhoods are seeing a quiet invasion of Pakistani restaurants, Noush, Karachi Dastarkhwan, Peshwarain, Multani Dera, Zaiqa, Lahore by iKitchen, each promising the authentic flavors of the Indus Valley. The nihari is rich, the chapli kebabs perfectly charred, and the biryani rivals any from Karachi. On the surface, it is a delightful expansion of the city’s culinary cosmopolitanism.
But in today’s Bangladesh, nothing, not even food, exists outside politics. The sudden proliferation of Pakistani eateries after the August 5, 2024, coup that ousted Sheikh Hasina isn’t just a coincidence. It reflects a larger and more dangerous undercurrent: Pakistan’s re-entry into Bangladesh’s ideological, cultural, and intelligence circuits. The food, in a grimly ironic way, has become the first soft signal of a deeper infiltration.
After all, Pakistan is no stranger to ruling from afar. From 1947 to 1971, the country’s Punjabi-Urdu elite governed East Bengal, now Bangladesh, across 1,500 kilometers of Indian territory, with contempt for the Bengali language and identity. The Liberation War of 1971 was as much a war for independence as it was a revolt against Pakistan’s attempt to annihilate Bengali culture. That the symbols of that very culture’s oppressors are now returning, quietly and almost fashionably, should alarm anyone who remembers 1971.
The problem, however, goes far beyond culinary nostalgia. Reports from across Bangladesh suggest a rapid expansion of Pakistan’s covert influence. The ISI has allegedly set up training camps in Brahmanbaria, Ambarkhana in Sylhet, the Chittagong Hill Tracts, and other locations. Dhaka itself, sources claim, has been divided into three operational zones, each under a Pakistani handler. Clerics from Lahore and Karachi are arriving regularly, exchanging doctrine and strategy with Islamist groups like Jamaat-e-Islami, Hefazat-e-Islam, Hizbut Tahrir, Islami Oikyo Jote, and Bangladesh Islami Andolan.
These exchanges aren’t theological. They are strategic. They are the veins through which Pakistan’s Islamist ideology is being injected into Bangladesh’s bloodstream. Terror outfits like Jama’at-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh, Ansarullah Bangla Team, and Shahadat-e al Hiqma are once again finding mentorship and money.
The result is unmistakable: the corrosion of Bangladesh’s Bengali identity. The vibrant, syncretic Bangaliana, shaped by Rabindranath Tagore, Nazrul Islam, and Lalon Fakir, is being replaced by a rigid Islamist identity modeled on Pakistan and the Arab world. This is cultural colonization in slow motion. And just as in the pre-1971 era, it is being facilitated by local collaborators, as the new political class aligned with the Islamist-backed interim regime led by Muhammad Yunus.
Meanwhile, Bangladesh’s democratic institutions are collapsing. With Sheikh Hasina gone, the army chief cornered, the president weakened, and the police virtually paralyzed, Jamaat and its affiliates are taking over civic institutions and media networks. The demand for a “referendum” on the July proclamation, ostensibly to legitimize the coup, has paralyzed the election process. What’s unfolding is not merely a transition of power but a full-scale Islamization project.
If this trend continues unchecked, Bangladesh may soon resemble Pakistan in more ways than one. And that poses an existential problem not just for Dhaka but for the entire region. Thousands of radicalized youth, once trained to bring an Islamist regime to power, will be left unemployed — and therefore available for hire. Just as Pakistan’s “mujahideen” later morphed into global jihadists, Bangladesh could soon host its own freelance terror ecosystem.
This is a nightmare scenario for Bharat. An Islamist Bangladesh would not only destabilize the Northeast through porous borders but also embolden extremist networks in Assam and West Bengal. For China, too, the implications are dire. An extremist hub just across the border from an already volatile Myanmar threatens the security of its Belt and Road projects and its sensitive Yunnan province. Even the United States, sensing the coming instability, appears to be pulling out. Republican and Democratic-affiliated think tanks like IRI and NDI have shut their Dhaka offices, and the Rakhine corridor investment plans are being quietly shelved.
Bangladesh’s economy, already under severe strain from falling exports, a plunging taka, and food inflation, cannot afford this ideological adventure. What was once hailed as a model of Muslim democracy could soon be written off as an “irretrievable basket case,” to borrow Henry Kissinger’s infamous phrase.
Yet, not all hope is lost. Bangladesh’s civil society remains among the most vibrant in South Asia. Women more educated and assertive than their counterparts in Pakistan or Afghanistan are unlikely to silently surrender their freedoms. The army, though cornered, has a history of acting decisively when the country’s sovereignty is threatened. And beneath the growing Islamist noise, there still beats a Bengali heart resilient, secular, and fiercely independent.
The proliferation of Pakistani restaurants may seem a harmless culinary fad. But in the wider context of ideological infiltration, it is a metaphor of a nation once again being slowly seasoned, simmered, and served up for foreign control. If Bangladesh’s people do not wake up soon, they might find their table set not for a feast, but for a funeral of their hard-won freedom.
