Two years on from her escape in a military helicopter from Dhaka, Sheikh Hasina was able to do what months of discreet diplomacy by India and Bangladesh's new government had been trying to do to re-enter the conversation. The former PM also spoke with reporters via a live video call from New Delhi on the 5th of August, the same day as her own dismissal, and the thaw between the two capitals had soon turned into a diplomatic stand-off.

The optics have been right on target. The foreign ministry under the government of Bangladesh Nationalist Party, headed by Tarique Rahman, did not beat around the bush. It held that Hasina was spewing venomous rhetoric against the Bangladeshi state and its people and it had even gone further, alleging that she was an absconding, convicted figure who should not be given a live microphone on Indian soil. The statement made by Dhaka said it had issued advance warning on how it would affect New Delhi, and that to hold it otherwise was a cause of hurt to "most people" in Bangladesh and a setback for the two nations in rebuilding trust.

The Indian reaction was measured, even cold-blooded. The ministry of external affairs issued a strong latte that said it had no involvement in the event, which was organised by a private media platform, nor had it endorsed anything said on such a platform. But that's another story in Dhaka. Whether it was the government that booked the venue or Hasina, for a government which came to power through the mass movement against her fifteen-year rule to see her hold court in Indian territory on the exact day her rule came to an end is more of provocation than coincidence.

The timing is especially unfortunate because the relationship had progressed a lot in the opposite direction only a few months prior. The foreign minister of Bangladesh, Khalilur Rahman, had made his first substantive visit to New Delhi since assuming office by the BNP in April to strengthen the bilateral cooperation between the two countries. India had extended an invitation to Tarique Rahman for the BRICS meeting in New Delhi in September. External affairs minister S Jaishankar had gone to Bangladesh at the end of last year to attend the funeral of BNP matriarch Khaleda Zia, where he met the country's post-Hasina leaders Tarique Rahman and presented him with a condolence message from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a move seen as an indication that India has no desire to sour its relationship with the new government. Now all that work hangs in the balance.

The legal and moral dilemma that India has been trying to avoid for two years is at the core of the irritation - how to deal with Hasina. Last November, she was convicted in absentia by Bangladesh's International Crimes Tribunal, which sentenced her to death over the deadly crackdown on student protesters that brought her downfall, according to the United Nations which estimates that nearly 1,400 people were killed during the crackdown. Dhaka has invoked the extradition treaty that the two countries signed in 2013 and updated in 2016, alleging that India has an obligation to extradite her. The office of Tarique Rahman had been pushing India's envoy Dinesh Trivedi again to rush the process in the country's new high-level talks in Dhaka this week, and in a related demand, calling for the killing of Osman Hadi, a participant of last year's uprising be stopped. India's stock response has changed, though, only slightly: The request is under review. Most observers in New Delhi do not think that examination is likely to end in Dhaka's favour anytime soon and scholars in the case have pointed out that the verdict of the tribunal is a result of the political 'settling of scores' by the current dispensation rather than a clean judicial process.

This posturing comes at a tougher economic backdrop, which is seldom mentioned. India continues to be Bangladesh's second largest trading partner after China, and bilateral trade thus far in this financial year (ending November) stands at approximately $7.4 billion a figure that would be closer to $14 billion when informal trade and services are included according to older estimates of the total volume of the relationship. The inequity is significant and ongoing the exports from India to Bangladesh (mainly cotton, machinery, petroleum products and food grains) are about five times the amount that comes from Bangladesh to India (mainly garments and jute). The imbalance provides India with leverage, but it is a two-way street: a complete rupture would carry repercussions as deep for Bangladeshi manufacturers as for Indian exporters, already reeling from the last months of trade restrictions and tit-for-tat tariffs imposed by the Indian government over the past year. Even as the rhetoric grows hot, neither government has the resources to allow politics to take over business.

Now it is not just about Hasina, but about whether Tarique Rahman's government follows through with its promise of not attending the BRICS summit, which would mean that the reset is over, not just hurt or bruised. The lure of resurrecting Hasina's persona as a unifying grievance against India is a reality for Dhaka, where her own Awami League is struggling for relevance while being barred from operation. Between a treaty India isn't likely to keep and an invitation to the summit Bangladesh might yet refuse, the two neighbours are being forced to learn a lesson every regional power has to at some point learn: Geography and trade outlasts government and their enmities.