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Prime Minister Narendra Modi greets his Bangladeshi counterpart Sheikh Hasina in New Delhi on June 22, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP
The story so far:
A week after protests in Bangladesh boiled over, forcing former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to flee to India, there’s little clarity about her future. While the Narendra Modi government has given her shelter, it has also moved to engage the regime that replaced the Awami League government, even as it counts the cost of Bangladesh’s political changes on India’s relations with the country.
Is Ms. Hasina’s ouster a setback for India?
Ms. Hasina’s removal from power in Bangladesh is no doubt a dramatic setback for India, as both countries have transformed ties on every front in the past decade and a half. The worry is that all the progress made on the economic front, border security, defence, and strategic ties, trade and connectivity, and linking people-to-people could be undone.
What led to Sheikh Hasina’s downfall?
What kind of transformation did her reign bring to relations between the two neighbours?
From her return to office (2009), Ms. Hasina made her intentions to forge strong ties with Delhi clear. She began a nationwide crackdown to shut down terror camps, a campaign against religious radicalisation, and extradited over 20 “most wanted” men accused of terrorism and crime to India. In sharp contrast to her predecessor Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) Prime Minister Khaleda Zia’s government, Ms. Hasina also worked on ending border tensions caused by illegal immigration into India, particularly the 2001 incident where brutal BDR-BSF clashes left 15 dead. Several border patrolling agreements and the signing of the historic 2015 land boundary agreement followed.
In India, the Manmohan Singh government followed by the Modi government gave Bangladesh trade concessions and low-interest Lines of Credit to help Ms. Hasina take a country, once called the “basket case” of the global economy, to a developing country, that outstripped its neighbours on human development indices. India and Bangladesh worked on enhancing trade through connectivity, border ‘haats’, andrail, road and river links. This year Ms. Hasina and Mr. Modi even essayed new defence cooperation. Though Ms. Hasina’s government grew more and more authoritarian in the past decade, banning and arresting Opposition leaders, legislating tighter controls on the media, and filing hundreds of cases against any civil society group that criticised her, New Delhi remained steadfast in supporting her. In turn, Ms. Hasina stood with India on every issue, from boycotting SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) over terrorism from Pakistan, to the Citizenship Amendment Act that set off protests in Bangladesh.
New regime in Bangladesh | Lessons for India & South Asia
Bangladesh has become a lynchpin to India’s regional connectivity plans to Southeast Asia and the Indo-Pacific, and an important buyer of Indian energy off the subcontinental grid. The worry is that many of the agreements signed, including the most recent power agreement with the Adani group, will now be reviewed.
Can New Delhi forge similar ties with the new government?
New Delhi has shown that it continues to engage the interim government and any future elected government in Dhaka. The Indian High Commissioner in Dhaka, Pranay Verma, attended the swearing-in ceremony of the new interim government led by Muhammad Yunus.
However, several issues complicate the Modi government’s ties with the new regime in Bangladesh. Firstly, Ms. Hasina’s presence in India is viewed with suspicion in Dhaka. External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar’s statement in Parliament that she has come to India just “for the moment” indicates that New Delhi would like to see her travel elsewhere until some of the anti-Hasina sentiments in Bangladesh die down. Things will get trickier if the new government there demands her extradition.
The story of Sheikh Hasina
Secondly, elections in Bangladesh could throw up the BNP as winners, and India’s experience with Ms. Zia’s last stint in power (2001-2006) was bitter. During that time, Bangladesh became a haven for violent anti-India separatist groups, and China and Pakistan made inroads. It remains to be seen if two decades on, another BNP government will be different. Thirdly, Mr. Modi’s appeal for the safety of Hindus and other minorities, as well as the Ministry of Home Affairs setting up a five-member committee to “maintain communication channels with their counterpart authorities in Bangladesh to ensure the safety of Indian citizens and people belonging to minority communities in Bangladesh,” are being seen as partisan in Dhaka. Hundreds have been killed in violence in the past few weeks; Mr. Modi’s appeal and setting up of the committee will further complicate Delhi-Dhaka ties.
Will Bangladesh’s ties with other countries change?
The immediate impact of the changes in Dhaka will be felt in ties with the U.S., which was consistently inimical to the Hasina government, and has even been accused of instigating her downfall. Last year, the U.S. State Department passed a special visa policy to “promote democracy” in Bangladesh, seeking to sanction officials who attempted to subvert elections. This was targeted at Ms. Hasina and the Awami League, and thus ties with the new dispensation will likely improve. Bangladesh’s ties with Pakistan had also been tense during Ms. Hasina’s tenure, and that could change. Ms. Hasina had close ties with China, joining the Belt and Road Initiative and meeting President Xi Jinping. Beijing will likely forge equally strong ties with the new government in Dhaka.
