India’s relationship with Bangladesh touched the nadir this month when its trusted friend in Dhaka, Sheikh Hasina, quit the Prime Ministership and fled to India unable to face the wrath of her people who were denied basic democratic rights during her 15-year rule.
This was the second time that the India-Bangladesh relationship had touched the nadir. The first was in August 1975, when Hasina’s father and Father of the Nation, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, was assassinated by a group of junior military officers aggrieved by Mujib’s dictatorship, his inability to shore up a crashing economy, and his alleged servitude to India, which had helped him establish Bangladesh.
From 1975 till 1996, when Mujib’s daughter Sheikh Hasina came to power as an elected Prime Minister for the first time, Bangladesh was in the grip of an anti-Indian sentiment, despite India’s direct role in establishing Bangladesh.
In this period, the military ruled between 1975 and 1990. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) ruled from 1991 and 1996 and again between 2001 to 2006. Both the military and the BNP were in alliance with the militant Islamist and pro-Pakistan Jamaat-e-Islami.
In 2009, when Sheikh Hasina of the Awami League came to power again, and till she was overthrown in July-August 2024, relations between Dhaka and New Delhi were very good. Most of the ticklish bilateral issues except the sharing of the waters of the Teesta river, were solved. Billions of dollars of Indian investment flowed into Bangladesh.
But while promoting good relations with India and making Bangladesh the new Asian Economic Tiger, Sheikh Hasina became painfully autocratic. She put rivals, including BNP supremo, Khaleda Zia, in jail. Hasina’s Rapid Action Battalion became a byword for extrajudicial killings.
Hasina won elections boycotted by the BNP, imposed an iniquitous quota system for government jobs which benefited only her party persons labelled as “descendants of freedom fighters.”
Finally, when the affected university students rose in revolt, Hasina used brute force to crush it, killing 450 persons in July-August.
Since Hasina’s brazenness was attributed to the support she was allegedly getting from India, anti-Indian sentiments rose to a crescendo, finding expression in vandalism affecting Hindu properties and temples, causing concern in New Delhi and anger among the Hindu majority in India.
New Delhi gave the fleeing Hasina temporary shelter, but it adopted a hands off policy to enable the new Bangladeshi Caretaker Government to settle down.
External Affairs Minister S.Jaishankar told parliament on August 6 that India had repeatedly counselled restraint and urged that the situation be diffused through dialogue. India had also been in touch with political parties opposed to Hasina, he said, indicating that New Delhi had not put all its eggs in the Hasina-Awami League basket.
While raising the issue of Hindus in Bangladesh, which is especially important to the BJP-led government in New Delhi, Jaishankar acknowledged ongoing efforts by some groups in Bangladesh to take care of minorities.
“There are reports of initiatives by various groups and organisations to ensure their protection and well-being. We welcome that,” he said.
“I seek the understanding and support of the House in regard to sensitive issues regarding an important neighbour,” he pleaded, making a case for consensus.
However, New Delhi’s moderation is at variance with the stuff doled out by the media and its expert commentators. These dub the peoples’ uprising against Hasina’s authoritarianism as the handiwork of India’s enemy Pakistan and regional rival China. Some see the hand of the CIA too.
This is viewed with dismay and anger in Bangladesh. Ali Riaz, Distinguished Professor in the Department of Politics and Government at the Illinois State University, wrote in Prothom Alo: “India bound Bangladesh in an unequal relationship to ensure its own trade and geopolitical interests and to keep Bangladesh within its sphere of influence.”
“And the role of its main puppet Sheikh Hasina and Awami League is no secret.”
“This mind-set was not restricted to policymakers alone. To my mind, the perception of those in India who carry out research on Bangladesh, with a handful of exceptions, were more driven by nationalist chauvinism than ignorance,” Riaz said.
“In play behind this perception of Indian journalists and researchers regarding Bangladesh, was the hope that Bangladesh as a state and the people of Bangladesh, generation after generation, would remain eternally grateful to India.”
“This perception was so deeply embedded in the mind of everyone in India, regardless of party, that they did not realise that gratitude is the most painful cross to bear. Sheikh Hasina’s downfall is evidence of the un-substantiality of their policy and mind-set.”
Riaz said that the Indian commentators are spinning a narrative that this mass uprising is a rise of the Islamists.
The Kolkata-based newspaper on 6 August ran a headline which said: “Pro-Jamaat Is on rampage, Hasina resigns and comes to India, Bangladesh in control of army.”
This is not just the stand of one newspaper alone, Riaz said. “For the last few days Indian TV talk shows and YouTube clips have been singing the same tune.”
“It is clear that these issues are being raised in order to question the legitimacy of an interim government in Bangladesh. Such discussions are also an attempt to influence Western countries. By promoting the narrative that there is a government backed by extremist forces in Bangladesh, India could possibly succeed in convincing the West to take time to observe the situation, thus delaying economic assistance. This would undoubtedly lead to instability in Bangladesh,” Riaz reasoned.
He went on to say that the presence of India’s security advisor Ajit Doval at the Hindon airbase in which Hasina landed, and their discussion, indicates that India still gives importance to Hasina and considers her as an actor in Bangladesh’s politics.
“It is nothing new for autocratic leaders to flee and take shelter in other countries in the face of revolutions, mass uprisings, military coups and civil wars. But there is no precedence of such persons being officially accorded a reception at the airport. Sheikh Hasina is the fortunate one to receive such a reception. It is the Indian government that set this example. The significance of this step is obvious from the fact that India did not give asylum to Sri Lanka’s former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and Afghanistan’s former President Ashraf Ghani,” Riaz pointed out.
“Sheikh Hasina did not seek asylum in India. The Indian government said they are giving her time to make a decision. No one knows how long this will be while Hasina seeks asylum in various countries,” he noted.
Given the fact that the UK and US have denied entry to Hasina, Bangladesh could ask India to extradite Hasina to Bangladesh, Riaz suggested.
“This can be done under the agreement signed in 2016 between Bangladesh and India. There is scope to approach the International Criminal Court regarding Sheikh Hasina,” he pointed out.
In a joint statement, five leading citizens from Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka have voiced strong opposition to India’s “interference” in the internal affairs of their countries.
The statement was issued on Friday by Firdous Azim, professor of English and Member of Naripokkho (a feminist organization); Kanak Mani Dixit, writer and founding editor of Himal Southasian; Lakshman Gunasekara, journalist and social activist; Manzoor Hasan of the Centre for Peace and Justice, Brac University; and Sushil Pyakurel, former commissioner of the National Human Rights Commission.
The group criticized New Delhi’s long-standing interventions, arguing that these actions have contributed to political instability and the rise of autocratic regimes in the region.
It called on the Indian government to respect the sovereignty of its neighbours and to abandon policies that undermine the democratic aspirations of the people in South Asia.
“India’s interference weakens the neighbouring democracies and compromises their socio-economic advancement. It contradicts the Panchsheel principle of peaceful coexistence once advocated by India and belies the Narendra Modi government’s much-publicised Neighbourhood First policy.”
“Furthermore, it is detrimental to India’s own interest in seeing South Asia as a whole achieve political stability and peace, which will in turn benefit India’s own economy and enhance its international standing.”
“While Bangladesh’s citizens have been grateful for Indian assistance at the time of Liberation in 1971, in the decades since, New Delhi has sought to guide Dhaka’s politics for its own purposes. These include the diversion of river waters as the upper riparian state, access to the Indian Northeast through Bangladeshi territory, and the use of Bangladesh as a sizeable market for Indian goods.”
“New Delhi actively worked to prop up the autocratic regime of Sheikh Hasina over the last decade and received political and economic concessions in return.”
Speaking general about the impact of India’s South Asia policy, the group said that in each of the countries of South Asia, “there exist politicians and political parties that put self-interest before national needs and have been receptive to New Delhi’s interventionist moves.”
“We are perplexed by the inability of Indian policymakers to appreciate the fact that such interference creates layers of animosity against India that does not dissipate easily. As has happened in the case of Bangladesh, these interventionist plans ultimately fall apart, but New Delhi will move from one folly to the next.”.
Referring to the Indian media and academia, the concerned South Asian activists said: “mistakes are repeated in neighborhood policy because New Delhi’s academia and media tend not to keep independent watch on their government’s assumptions and actions, unquestioningly following the dictates of the external affairs and home ministries.”
China Factor
On the alleged involvement of China in Bangladesh and South Asia, the group said: “New Delhi also seems to fear Chinese involvement in each of our countries, as if there were a coordinated plan at play to encircle India. To begin with, New Delhi must accept the sovereign right of each neighbor to deal with Beijing on its own accord, much as New Delhi does. We find it incongruous that China has become India’s largest trading partner even as New Delhi seeks to prevent the neighbors’ links with Beijing.”
Pakistan Factor
On the Pakistan factor, the group said: “The hostility between Islamabad and New Delhi has been distressing and constant, and it impacts not only the societies and economies of South Asia’s two largest countries but also holds hostage the agenda of uplifting the people across all our countries.”
“We insist that Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka are not and should not be in the sphere of influence of China, India or any other power, and that the alarm in New Delhi is misplaced.”
Policy Audit Needed
The concerned citizens called for a self-audit of India’s South Asia policy.
“A rigorous and introspective study of its South Asia policy, including an evaluation of past misadventures, would benefit India and the entire subcontinent. India’s regional presence would be more benign if New Delhi were to view neighboring countries through the eyes of its own border regions, peoples and economies,” they said.
The activists pleaded with India to understand that South Asian countries wish only the best for India, its government and people.
“Much of the public acrimony directed at India is but a reaction to New Delhi’s interference in internal affairs,” they reasoned.
In conclusion, the group said: “New Delhi can contribute to stable polities and long-lasting peace in South Asia by abandoning its overt and covert interference in the internal affairs of its neighbors. India should be supportive of the democratic aspirations of South Asia’s peoples and let them build their individual paths to the future.”