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Here’s The Bold New Strategy That New Delhi Needs To Craft With Regard To Bangladesh
- India must first regain lost ground in Bangladesh and then proceed to secure its long-term interests in that country.
New Delhi needs to gain a clear insight into the current situation in Bangladesh.
The ignominious downfall of the Sheikh Hasina regime in Bangladesh resulted in India losing almost all influence in that country.
India was commonly perceived as being the strongest supporter of Hasina, who had ruled over the country since January 2009, and as having been instrumental in propping up her unpopular regime and shielding it from global criticism over her alleged tyrannical rule.
A mass uprising, mentored covertly by some Western nations and influential bodies (read this and this), unseated Hasina from power, and she fled the country to seek refuge in India on 5 August.
New Delhi had, going against conventional diplomatic wisdom, maintained ties exclusively with Hasina and her Awami League and had even rejected overtures from the (then) opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), which had wanted to mend ties with India (read this).
Indo-Bangladesh relations had suffered when the BNP was in power from 1991 to 1996 and again from 2001 to 2006 over the refuge that Dhaka had given to rebels belonging to the insurgent groups of North East India in the neighbouring country.
The BNP government was also complicit in the North East rebels receiving training and arms from Pakistan’s notorious Inter Services Intelligence (ISI). The BNP government had allowed the use of Bangladeshi territory for anti-India activities.
That had soured ties between the two countries and made the BNP a perennial outcast for successive governments in New Delhi. The BNP’s alliance with the fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh had also motivated India to keep the BNP at bay.
Since 2014, the BNP had made a number of attempts to mend ties with India and had reached out to the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) top leadership. But the party’s overtures were repeatedly rejected.
As a result of this myopic policy followed by all Indian governments across the political spectrum — be it the Congress or the BJP — New Delhi was caught completely by surprise as protests by students over quotas in government jobs coalesced into a mass uprising against the Awami League government in a matter of weeks.
New Delhi did not have any inkling that public anger against the Hasina government for its alleged tyranny had become so widespread and intense. As a result, not only did India find itself in deep sea on 5 August as far as an important next-door neighbour is concerned, but it was also left without friends in that country.
In fact, New Delhi is still bearing the brunt of public anger against Hasina because India is widely perceived in Bangladesh as having provided crucial support to her. The popular belief in Bangladesh is that if New Delhi had not turned a blind eye to Hasina’s misrule and shielded her, she would have had to step down a long time ago.
But what’s done cannot be undone, and India now needs to craft a bold strategy to not only regain lost ground in Bangladesh but also secure its long-term interests in that country.
The first thing that New Delhi needs to do is gain a clear insight into the current situation in Bangladesh. Such an exercise, if undertaken diligently without any preconceived notions and also independently, will reveal that the interim government headed by Muhammad Yunus is not destined to last long in that country.
Hence, India need not make any serious effort to get Yunus on its side. Differences are slowly developing between the BNP, Jamaat, and the fringe parties on one side and the interim government on the other.
New Delhi ought to exploit these differences and provide assurances of support to the BNP. The Indian high commissioner to Bangladesh, Pranay Verma, is leading an outreach to the BNP’s top leadership.
Those efforts have to be supplemented by some aggressive wooing of the BNP top leadership, including its acting chairperson, Tarique Zia (son of Begum Khaleda Zia). The London-based (Tarique) Zia is perceived to be very close to the Pakistani establishment and is said to have intimate ties with the ISI. He is believed to be hardline anti-Indian.
But that should not come in the way of New Delhi pursuing a vigorous approach to wooing him and weaning him away from Pakistan’s clutches. Zia will be the Prime Minister of Bangladesh once elections are held in that country, and New Delhi would do well to cultivate him and turn him into a friend in advance.
This will not be the first time that New Delhi aggressively woos a staunch adversary. India’s foreign policy establishment would do well to remember the Chanakyan adage that every adversary is a friend waiting to happen.
Zia is a pragmatic politician, and he can be made to see sense: it would be far more advantageous for him to have India, rather than Pakistan, as a friend. Bangladesh will have much more to gain through close ties with India than with Pakistan, which is on the verge of bankruptcy, is considered a rogue nation by quite a few countries around the world, and has little political capital in many countries.
But to win over Zia, India has to shed its diffidence and go the extra mile. India should offer to host him in the near future even before elections are held in Bangladesh, just like it did earlier this year with the current Sri Lankan President, Anura Kumara Dissanakaye.
Delhi should roll out the red carpet for Zia and floor him with goodies and promises of lucrative trade and other deals when he becomes Prime Minister.
This is not to say that New Delhi should turn its back on Hasina, a long-time, all-weather friend of India.
This is also an opportune time for India to get the BNP leadership on its side. Ties between the BNP and the Jamaat are destined to enter choppy waters because both have become rival contenders for power.
As long as the Awami League was their common political foe, it made sense for the BNP and the Jamaat to be in alliance. But with the Awami League out of the political arena in Bangladesh and no sign of it staging a comeback in the near future, the BNP and the Jamaat have become political rivals.
The two parties (BNP and Jamaat) have already started taking opposing stands on many issues, including the hot-button one on the demand for the resignation of the country’s president, Mohammad Shahabuddin.
The two parties have developed differences on some other issues as well, and political observers say it is only a matter of time before the two become fierce rivals.
With the BNP no longer in league with the Jamaat, New Delhi should have no qualms about forging close ties with the BNP. In the long run, India can play a significant role in weaning the BNP away from the country’s Islamists.
One institution that India should also cultivate vigorously is the Bangladesh armed forces, especially its army. Military-to-military ties between the two countries are cordial, but these ties need to be taken to the next level.
This is because the Bangladesh army is a powerful institution within that country and wields a lot of influence over the country’s political leadership from behind the scenes. The Bangladesh Army also enjoys a lot of public support and respect.
India should host Bangladesh’s top military commanders, including its three service chiefs, frequently. India can offer more seats to the Bangladesh armed forces in Indian military training institutions and increase the number of joint exercises between the armed forces of the two countries.
New Delhi will find it advantageous to have friendly generals, air marshals, and admirals in Bangladesh. Having close ties with the military leadership of Bangladesh will also preclude the possibility of Pakistan’s ISI re-establishing its foothold in Bangladesh.
India’s efforts must be dictated only by its own interests, and that means securing its long-term interests in Bangladesh and ensuring the protection of Hindus in that country.
Another important objective for New Delhi should be to marginalise the radical Islamists in Bangladesh to not only protect that country’s minority Hindu population but also to prevent radical Islamists in Bangladesh from becoming strong enough to create trouble through its proxies in India.
Good ties with the BNP and Bangladesh’s armed forces will ensure that the trade and transit projects initiated with the Awami League government continue and are even intensified.
There is no harm in New Delhi admitting in private to the BNP leadership that it had erred in the past by keeping the BNP at bay. That should be accompanied by a solemn promise that Indo-Bangladesh ties will be reset to another level to ensure that the benefits of close ties flow equally to both the countries.
After doing all this, India’s next step should be to nudge the BNP to demand early elections in Bangladesh and get the country’s armed forces to also back this demand.
Elections and the formation of a new government (headed, in all possibility, by the BNP) will pave the way for Yunus' exit from Bangladesh’s political scene.
That can only be good news for India. Some Western nations and powerful institutions that back Yunus will then be left without much influence in India’s immediate neighbourhood. Yunus’ backers in the West feel they have gained beachhead in South Asia.
They think they can now interfere in India’s internal affairs through Bangladesh and their own proxies in India. It will thus be in India’s interests to see Yunus’ departure from power and the ascension to power of its new friend — the BNP.
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