Relations between India and neighboring Bangladesh reached a perilous new low this week as Indian politicians and Hindu extremists intensified accusations that minority Hindus in Bangladesh are being persecuted.

The two countries were close allies until Bangladesh’s authoritarian leader was ousted in a popular uprising earlier this year. A diplomatic dispute has since erupted as Hindu rights groups in India accuse Bangladesh of complicity in violence against Hindus and as Bangladesh’s government says India has exaggerated the situation to further its own Hindu-nationalist agenda.

The situation has led to growing fears inside Bangladesh of tit-for-tat violence between Muslims, who make up more than 90 percent of the population, and Hindus. It also threatens to derail efforts by Bangladesh’s interim government, led by Muhammad Yunus, a Nobel laureate, to set his country on a new course.

Communal tensions have “inflamed public passions on both sides,” said Smruti Pattanaik, a research fellow at the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses in Delhi, adding that social media had fanned “inflammatory content” from both sides. “This needs to be addressed by the governments and is not conducive to long-term bilateral relations,” she said.

Ties between the two countries have been fraught since Bangladesh’s prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, fled to India in August after the student uprising that led to the overthrow of her government.

In the ensuing chaos, reports of communal attacks on Hindus by Muslims have fomented religious unrest within Bangladesh and across the border in India. Hindu leaders in Bangladesh have said that among the hundreds of people who died in the chaos, only a few were from their community.