The Dr B S Harishankar Memorial Lecture, Bharatiya Vichara Kendram, Trivandrum, 27th August 2024.
A Malayalam version of this has been published by Janmabhumi newspaper at https://janmabhumi.in/2024/09/01/3258051/varadyam/geo-political-implications-for-bangladesh/
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It was startling to hear from retired Ambassador G Sankar Iyer on Asianet’s program with Ambassador TP Sreenivasan that the celebrated Malayalam author Vaikom Mohammed Basheer (once nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature) said in 1973: “In Bangladesh, we have created yet another enemy.” With his novelist’s insight, Basheer understood that the Two-Nation Theory held sway among certain sections of Bengalis.
In the current crisis situation in 2024, the ongoing pogrom against Hindus (amounting to a virtual genocide) and the forced resignation of teachers, police officers and other officials based only on the fact that they are Hindus (there are videos that show them being beaten and humiliated even after resigning) suggests that anti-Hindu feeling is running rampant in Bangladesh. It is another kristallnacht.
This is coupled with anti-India feeling. For instance, the current floods in Bangladesh are being blamed on India opening a dam in Tripura after torrential rains, although the Indian government has said that it provided all the hydrological data that it always has.
The fact of the matter is that the departure of Sheikh Hasina is a blow to India’s geo-political ambitions. It now appears as though India erred in “putting all its eggs into one basket” by cultivating only her Awami League, and not the Bangladesh National Party of her arch-rival Khaleda Zia.
The indubitable fact that Indian influence in Bangladesh has now been supplanted by forces inimical to India raises the question of who might be behind the regime change operation. Beyond that, there is the question of whether it was indeed a popular uprising based on the suppressed ambitions of the people that led to the ouster of Sheikh Hasina.
The third question is what this means for Bangladesh, India and the region going forward, especially as climate change may alter the very geography of the area. It is predicted that as much as 11% of the land area of Bangladesh could be underwater by 2050. This could displace 18 million people, which would lead to unprecedented migration of their population into India.
Regime Change operation: Who benefits from it?
Cui bono? Who benefits? That Latin phrase is used to consider who might be motivated to commit a crime (the other part is who has the means to commit it). In this case of regime change in Bangladesh, there are several entities who might benefit.
Obviously Pakistan. That country has never lived down its balkanization in 1971, and it had a number of its sympathizers already in place at that time. There were many who collaborated with the Pakistani Army in identifying Hindus and facilitating their killing or rape or ethnic cleansing, and also Muslims who were their political opponents. These are the people Sheikh Hasina referred to as “razakars”, and they are essentially in control now.
China is a clear winner whenever something happens that hurts India’s interests. There is the perennial issue of the Chicken’s Neck, that narrow strip of land that connects the Seven Sister states of India’s Northeast to the Gangetic Plain. It is a permanent threat to India that somebody (most probably China) will cut this off and truncate India, with the Northeast then becoming part of a Greater Bangladesh, with associated genocide of Hindus and Buddhists.
Former Ambassador Veena Sikri spoke to Ambassador TP Sreenivasan about something very odd indeed: Sheikh Hasina made a state visit to China in mid July, and she was thoroughly humiliated there. Xi Jingping refused to meet her; and she cut her visit short by one day and returned to Dhaka. This is an unheard-of protocol violation for a State Visit; what it suggests is that China had decided that Sheikh Hasina was on the way out. This is in sharp contrast to a Xi visit in 2016 when he made grand promises about Belt and Road Initiative investments.
The United States also has interests. Sheikh Hasina had alleged two things:
An unnamed Western power wants St Martin’s Island (aka Coconut Island) off Cox’s Bazaar as a military base to keep an eye on both China and India,
An unnamed Western power intends to form a new Christian Zo nation (for Mizo, Kuki, Chin) just like Christian homelands were carved out in East Timor and South Sudan.
The implication was that the unspecified Western power was the US.
It is not entirely clear that the US benefits greatly from a military base in the Bay of Bengal but there has been a long-running Great Game initiated by the British to keep India down as a supplier of raw materials and a market for their products. The US may have inherited this mantle.
Intriguingly, the US Deep State and its proxies in the Western media had built a narrative around Sheikh Hasina as a model leader for developing Asia, a woman who also succeeded in improving the economic status of her country. That Bangladesh’s per capita GDP had overtaken India’s, and that its garment industry was doing well were used to mock India’s own economic achievements. The switch to Hasina being a ‘dictator’ was a sudden change in narrative.
There is, therefore, enough circumstantial evidence to suggest that there was a foreign hand in the happenings in Bangladesh, although we will have to wait for conclusive evidence.
Was this indeed a regime-change coup or a true popular uprising?
It is true that Bangladesh under Sheikh Hasina’s fifteen-year rule was not a perfect democracy. But there are mitigating factors, including a violent streak that led to the assassination of her father and independence hero Sheikh Mujibur Rahman just four years after the bloody birth of the new State after the Pakistan Army’s assault on its Bengali citizens. The toppling and desecration of his statue shows that his national hero status may not be accepted by the entire population: in fact it looks like friends of Pakistan wish to erase his entire legacy.
The history of democracy in independent Bangladesh is checkered and marred by violence. Before he was deposed and killed in 1975, Mujibur Rehman himself had banned all opposition parties. After Mujib, there was outright military rule till 1986, when the erstwhile Chief Martial Law Administrator Hussain Mohammed Ershad became the elected President.
When Ershad was deposed after (student-led) agitations in 1991, Khaleda Zia (BNP or Bangladesh National Party) became the PM and after that she and her arch-rival Sheikh Hasina (Awami League) alternated in power. The BNP boycotted the 2018 elections partly because Khaleda Zia was jailed on allegations of corruption.
In all of these twists and turns, ‘students’ were involved. In 1971, when Yahya Khan launched Operation Searchlight, the Pakistani army went straight for students and professors in Dhaka University, especially if they were Hindus. Later too, ‘student’ protests were instrumental in the overthrow of Ershad.
The proximate cause of the troubles in 2024 was also a ‘student’ uprising. There had been a 30% quota in government jobs for the children of freedom fighters; along with other such set-asides e.g. for minorities and women, a total of 56% of government jobs were ‘reserved’ by 2018. This reservation system was largely abolished by Sheikh Hasina’s government in 2018 after yet another student agitation.
In June 2024, a High Court in Bangladesh overturned the 2018 judgment as unconstitutional. Even though the Supreme Court reversed it, and restored the status quo ante (of drastically reduced reservations to 7% in total), the peaceful ‘student’ agitation suddenly morphed into a violent confrontation led by members of the Jamaat e Islami (an Islamist party) and the BNP. There was police firing. The Daily Star, a respected daily, found out that 204 people were killed in the first few days, out of which only 53 were students.
It appears the supposed ‘student revolution’ was taken over by professional agitators and agents provocateurs, and it rapidly led to the overthrow of Sheikh Hasina, with escalating violence, especially against Hindus, and the Army getting involved. Even though the Army is in charge now, there is a smokescreen of an ‘interim government’ that allows entities like the UN an excuse to not impose sanctions on Bangladesh.
It is hard to take it on face value that this was a popular uprising; circumstantial evidence suggests that there was a clear agenda for regime change, and since it suits both China and the US to keep India constrained, either of them could have been behind it. The diplomatic snub to Hasina in July suggests the Chinese were well aware of the coming coup.
On the other hand, the sudden U-turn in the narrative about Hasina in the Western media suggests that the US might have decided to dump her. The process by which the regime change happened is also similar to what happened in other countries that experienced ‘color revolutions’. The actions of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), and of some diplomats in supporting the BNP, have been offered as possible evidence of US bad faith.
What is obvious is the role of the fundamentalist group, the Jamaat e Islami, which has strong connections with Pakistan. It seems likely that they were the enforcers, and had invested assets within the armed forces. They have called for the secular Bangladesh constitution to be replaced by Islamic Sharia law, and for non-Muslims to be treated as second-class citizens. The Yunus government has just unbanned the Jamaat e Islami.
The attacks on Hindus, including large numbers of lynchings, rapes, and abductions of women, suggests that there is a religious angle and the Jamaat e Islami’s prejudices are coming to the fore. Notably, the entire Western media, Amnesty International, the United Nations, and the USCIRF, human rights specialists all, had nothing at all to say about the horrific oppression of Hindus.
The New York Times even had a headline about “revenge killings” of Hindus, as though somehow the 8% minority Hindus had been responsible for whatever Sheikh Hasina was accused of. Upon being called out, the NYT changed the headline to just “killings” of Hindus with no explanation or apology.
The role of Professor Mohammed Yunus is also intriguing: he had been invited to head an interim government in 2007 but abandoned the attempt and in fact left politics. He had been close to Sheikh Hasina at one point, for instance he got the licenses for his Grameen Phone during her rule, but they later fell out. Yunus’ Nobel Peace Prize and his earlier stint in the US have raised questions about whether he is in fact managed by US interests.
Given all this, it is much more likely that it was a coup than a popular agitation. It remains to be seen who was behind the coup.
What next for India and the region?
There are several long-term challenges for India. None of this is positive for India, which is already facing problems on its periphery (eg. Maldives and Nepal). The coup in Bangladesh also makes the BIMSTEC alliance as unviable as SAARC.
1. Deteriorating India-Bangladesh Relations
The overthrow of Sheikh Hasina, seen as a close ally of India, has led to a rise in anti-Indian sentiment in Bangladesh. The new government may not be as friendly towards India, especially on sensitive issues like trade and security. This could jeopardize the gains in bilateral ties over the past decade. The presence of hardliners among the ‘advisers’ to the interim government suggests that India will have little leverage going forward.
2. Increased Border Security Risks
India shares a long, porous border with Bangladesh. The political instability and potential increase in extremist groups could lead to more infiltration, smuggling, and illegal migration into India's northeastern states, posing internal security risks. Monitoring the border region will be critical. As it is, there are millions of illegal Bangladeshis and Rohingya residing in India, which actually poses a threat to internal Indian security.
3. Economic Fallout
Bangladesh is India's largest trading partner in the region, with $13 billion in commerce under the Hasina government. A deterioration in relations could hurt Indian exports and investments. The economic interdependence means India also has a stake in Bangladesh's stability and prosperity. Brahma Chellaney pointed out that Bangladesh is in dire straits, and has requested $3 billion from the IMF, $1.5 billion from the World Bank, and $1 billion each from the Asian Development Bank and the Japan International Cooperation Agency to tide over problems.
4. Climate Change Challenges
Both countries are vulnerable to the effects of climate change, including rising sea levels, floods, droughts and extreme weather events. Bangladesh is especially at risk due to its low-lying geography. Millions of climate refugees could seek shelter in India, straining resources and social cohesion.
5. Geopolitical Implications
The regime change has opened up space for China to expand its influence in Bangladesh. India will need to balance its ties with the new government while countering Chinese inroads in the region. The U.S. is also closely watching developments in Bangladesh. Instability in the region plays into the hands of Pakistan, whose medium-term ambition would be to detach India’s Northeast as revenge for the creation of Bangladesh and for increasing normalization in J&K.
6. Quota Implications
Indians, especially those agitating for ‘proportional representation’ should note that the Bangladesh quota system was abolished in its entirety by Sheikh Hasina’s administration in 2018 in response to student demands. India has a constitutional limit of 50% for reservations, but some are agitating for even more, which is a sure recipe for resentment and possibly violence. It is not inconceivable that it could be the spur for regime change in India as well.
7. Human rights for Hindus and Buddhists; Citizenship Amendment Act and the Right to Return
The Hindu population in Bangladesh has fallen dramatically from about 28% in 1971 to about 8% now, and there is every indication that this is a demographic under extreme duress. Buddhist Chakmas in the Chittagong Hill Tracts are also under stress. India should enhance the CAA or create a formal Right to Return for Hindu and Buddhist Bangladeshis. Writing in Open magazine, Rahul Shivshankar pointed out that Hindus had faced attacks and threats in 278 locations across 48 districts.
In summary, the fall of the Hasina government and the long-term threat of climate change compel India to rethink its Bangladesh policy. Fostering stable, democratic and economically prosperous neighbors is in India's own interest. Rebuilding trust and deepening cooperation on shared challenges will be key to navigating the new realities in the region.
2350 words, Aug 26, 2024
Ep. 134: The geo-political fallout from Bangladesh: What should India do?