Bangladesh Has Changed Its Rulers – Should Its Neighbours Be Worried?

August has always been a cruel month for the Rehman family. Sheikh Mujibur Rehman, the founding father of Bangladesh was killed in a military coup in the early hours of August 15, 1975 along with his entire family save his two daughters — Sheikh Hasina and Sheikh Rehana — who were forced into exile in India.

On August 21, 2004, Sheikh Hasina, who had plunged into politics as her father’s successor, was injured and nearly killed in a grenade attack on a rally she was addressing. More than a score of Awami Leaguers died in that attack in Bangladesh’s Sylhet by a terrorist group called Harkat-ul-Jihad. And now 20 years later on an August afternoon, the Bangladesh army, unwilling to shoot down protestors demanding Hasina’s ouster and threatening to invade her residence, asked her to step down and flee Dhaka.

The story of how a month-long student demonstration against a job quota was badly handled by her government, went out of hand and developed into a demand for regime change, backed by her opponents in the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and Jamaat-I-Islami Bangladesh, is well known and need not be repeated.

However, the fact of the matter, and worryingly so for those who wish Bangladesh well, is that the movement had not only morphed into a demand for regime change but into a vengeful battle for ideology change. Rioters broke down the statue of the country’s founding father, terming it un-Islamic, and burnt down the offices and homes of Awami League leaders as Hasina fled the country.

The night before, attacks had been unleashed on minority homes and villages in Rangpur and elsewhere. What does that portend for Bangladesh and more importantly for the neighbourhood?

For all its faults, including charges that it rigged the last two elections, the Awami League provided a secular governance, and the minorities who live in Bangladesh had, despite incidents of land-grabbing and occasional attacks, enjoyed a far greater degree of equality and equal opportunity than under any military dictatorship or previous regimes which had ruled the country.

A degeneration into the days when BNP ruled, when attacks on Buddhist tribals in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, burning down of Hindu villages in Barishal and Faridpur were frequent occurrences, should be a matter of worry for India. It would push tens of thousands of refugees into the already demographically stretched states of West Bengal, Assam, Tripura and Meghalaya.

Under the BNP regime, Bangladesh had become a notorious hub for exporting Jihadis to Afghanistan who returned home after the Taliban was ousted in 2001, to wreak terror not only in Dhaka and outlying districts of their homeland but also to carry out attacks on Indian soil.

India needs necessarily also worry about that possibility. As it also must of the possibility of Pakistan, which was suspected by some of having been mixed up in the student “revolt”, again utilising a favourable climate in Bangladesh to create safe havens for militants from India’s Northeast on Bangladeshi soil.

Even the Awami League regime was split between those who wanted an independent non-aligned foreign policy with emphasis on trade and travel connectivity with neighbours such as India, and those who favoured striking closer ties with China even if it meant compromising India’s security interests.

However, on the balance Hasina had always taken a stance which was of building better relations with India in preference to all others. In the case of developing the Teesta river downstream, she pointedly agreed to India’s proposal to partner Bangladesh over China’s offer, to the extent that Beijing was extremely irked with her.

That this happened even as the student protests changed complexion, from a demonstration against quotas which had been struck down by the Supreme Court of the country into a single point regime change call, is another matter, which should some day be probed by historians and observers of international relations.

However, China’s growing tentacles in Bangladesh need to be carefully watched by both India and those nations in the West which in the past have opposed Sheikh Hasina’s government on many counts. Bangladesh owes China some US $ 7 billion in loans and its debt repayments have already wreaked havoc on its foreign exchange reserves, which have fallen by 60% between August 2021 and June 2024.

Bangladesh may well follow Sri Lanka in sinking into a Chinese debt trap and be forced to give away strategic ports and economic zones to the creditor in lieu of a loan write-off.

Chinese vessels have for several months been surveying Indian Ocean areas and these could well tie up for an enlarged naval presence in the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea courtesy countries which are beholden to it. All these factors need to be considered by Indian mandarins when they deal with the new incoming government in Dhaka.

Under the circumstances, India’s and the democratic world’s best bet is to back the Bangladesh military and ensure that the interim government formed is not stuffed with pro-China ministers or hardline fundamentalists. The Awami League is not finished. It still has deep roots in the country and a large cadre of supporters. They should not be ignored nor deprived of a seat in the interim set-up which the army has promised to form.

Lastly, the world changes at rapid speed. Just as Communism died overnight, so has Sheikh Hasina’s government. However, ideologies continue to outlive regimes and these can make a comeback under the right “weather conditions”. India and all other nations invested in Bangladesh would do well to remember that lesson as well.

The writer is former head of PTI’s eastern region network

Published on: Tuesday, August 06, 2024, 06:00 AM IST