After Hasina's Ouster, India Pays A Dear Price For Putting All Its Eggs In The Awami League Basket

The Indian High Commissioner in Bangladesh, Pranay Verma, finds himself in an unenviable position today. 

After Sheikh Hasina’s dramatic flight from Dhaka on Monday afternoon (5 August), India lost all leverage and influence in Bangladesh. Anti-India sentiments have peaked, primarily because New Delhi has been viewed as Hasina’s prime backer over the last few years. 

Since Monday morning, Indian diplomats in Dhaka have been calling up prominent persons — business and civil society leaders, bureaucrats, top officers of the armed forces, and a few non-Awami League politicians — in a desperate bid to gain some leverage over the fast-changing political landscape in the country.

However, many of these calls are going unanswered. And that is a stark reflection of India’s loss of influence and clout in Bangladesh since Hasina’s inglorious exit from the country. 

A senior officer in India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) told Swarajya that “even those who, till last week, were currying favour with us are ignoring our calls today.”

New Delhi has only itself to blame for the loss of influence and prestige in Bangladesh. That’s because India has, very injudiciously, preferred to put all its eggs in the Awami League basket.

India’s reasons for backing Hasina to the hilt are understandable. After assuming power in January 2009, Hasina has resolutely steered her country away from the anti-India forces and threw out cadres and leaders of militant groups belonging to North East India from her country. She also kept Islamists at bay and stopped Pakistan from using Bangladesh to carry out anti-India activities.

Also, New Delhi had a sour experience with the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and army regimes, which encouraged anti-India forces in Bangladesh and often adopted a hostile stance towards New Delhi. 

Hence, New Delhi offered strong support to Hasina, who reciprocated and returned India’s support and backing in ample measure.

That said, India committed what would easily amount to a cardinal error in diplomacy: New Delhi engaged solely with Hasina in Bangladesh and kept all other parties at a distance. 

Engaging with Hasina to the exclusion of all other parties and forces in Bangladesh is costing India dearly now.

This is not to say that New Delhi has totally lost out in Bangladesh. For geopolitical, economic, and various other reasons, whoever is in power in Dhaka will have to maintain a working relationship with New Delhi. But it will take a long time for India to regain the clout and influence it wielded in Bangladesh until Monday afternoon.

This diplomatic debacle could have been easily avoided by India. Had New Delhi responded positively to repeated overtures from the BNP and other players, like the Jatiya Party, Indian diplomats in Dhaka would not have found themselves in such an embarrassing situation today.

The BNP, which will storm to power when an election is held in Bangladesh in the future, reached out to New Delhi through multiple channels in the past one and a half decades. 

The BNP leadership had unilaterally offered to distance itself from Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh and other Islamic groups. The party had also offered to address India’s security concerns and guarantee that it would not allow Bangladesh to be used for anti-India activities as and when it comes to power in the country. 

All the BNP leadership wanted in return was for New Delhi to be even-handed in its dealings with all political parties in Bangladesh and lean on Hasina to allow democracy to flourish in Bangladesh. 

Hasina had, since coming to power 15.5 years ago, cracked down hard on the BNP by jailing its leaders, including its chairperson Begum Khaleda Zia, and forcing her son Tarique Rahman to seek refuge in London.

Hasina launched what was perceived as a vicious witch hunt against the BNP. Awami League cadres frequently targeted BNP workers, and the government machinery was misused to suppress the main opposition party.

An embattled BNP leadership wanted New Delhi to intervene and get Hasina to back off. “We wanted India to use its good offices and influence to prevail upon Sheikh Hasina to restore democracy in Bangladesh. We requested India many times to tell Sheikh Hasina to stop targeting opposition leaders and workers. But India refused to intervene,” Shamsur Rahman, alias Shimul Biswas, BNP chairperson Khaleda Zia’s special assistant, had told Swarajya before he was jailed in February 2018.

Biswas was released, along with other BNP leaders, on Tuesday morning (6 August).

BNP secretary general Mirza Fakrul Islam Jahangir, who was leading the outreach to New Delhi, told Swarajya Tuesday that New Delhi’s rejection of his party’s repeated overtures left a very bad taste in their mouths. 

“We were only asking India to use its influence to ensure a level playing field for all political parties in Bangladesh. But India did not heed our requests, and the repression of opposition leaders and workers not only continued but also intensified under Sheikh Hasina,” Mirza, who had served as a minister of state for civil aviation under Begum Zia’s premiership from 2001 to 2006, said.

Mirza confirmed that the BNP had vowed to keep India’s interests in mind if and when it comes to power in Bangladesh. “India had some genuine security concerns, and there were some instances of Bangladesh being used for anti-India activities in the past. We had assured India that it will have nothing to fear on those counts when we come to power,” Mirza added. 

The Jatiya Party, founded by former military dictator Hussain Mohammad Ershad, also made similar overtures to New Delhi but was rebuffed. 

BNP leaders had told New Delhi that the party would distance itself from Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh and crack down on radical Islamic groups, like Hasina had done. 

But New Delhi allowed its deep-seated distrust of the BNP and its past bitter experience with the BNP regime to cloud its judgement. 

Had India acted in a pragmatic manner and engaged with the leadership of the BNP and other opposition parties, it would not have found itself completely cut off from the current power play in Bangladesh. 

And India would also have saved itself from being cast as a villain in Bangladesh. The current mood in Bangladesh is strongly anti-Indian, primarily because of the blind support New Delhi extended to Hasina, who subverted democracy and unleashed terrible repression on the people of the country. India is widely perceived to be guilty by association. 

It will take a long time for New Delhi to regain some influence in Bangladesh. With Hasina out of the country and with the BNP set to assume power sometime in the future, India can only hope to regain a little bit of the ground it has lost in Bangladesh. Regaining all of it is simply out of the question for now.