Regime Change In Bangladesh: The Story Is Just Beginning And The Bulk Of The Script Will Be Written By India

When Sheikh Hasina, the Prime Minister of Bangladesh, hastily left the country on 5 August and flew to India, the only fact on hand was that a series of ugly designer protests conceived by unknown regime change artistes had worked.

Everything else — motives, objectives, and clarity on who the real winners and losers were — remains shrouded in miasmic shadows.

It was not the first time that Hasina found refuge in India; when her father, Mujib Ur Rehman, was assassinated in 1975, she was granted asylum in India until 1981, the year when General Zia Ur Rehman, husband of Bangladesh Nationalist Party's (BNP) Khaleda Zia, Hasina’s principal political opponent, was assassinated.

The dramatic events of July-August 2024 unfolded in the backdrop of sustained, intense engagement at the highest levels between India and Bangladesh. Look at the chronology:

The year began with general elections in Bangladesh, which were boycotted by the two main opposition parties, the BNP of Khaleda Zia (who had been imprisoned since 2018), and the Islamist Jamaat.

Naturally, then, the Awami League of Hasina won most of the seats in an acrimonious non-contest which was punctuated by her frequent complaints of foreign interference, particularly by the United States (US).

In early February 2024, Indian National Security Advisor Ajit Doval made a quiet visit to Dhaka. This was followed by a visit to New Delhi from 7-9 February by Dr Hasan Mahmud, the foreign minister of Bangladesh.

Then, there was a brief lull as the lengthy Indian general elections began.

Indian Foreign Secretary Vinay Kwatra was scheduled to visit Dhaka on 20 April, but the trip was cancelled. Instead, General Shafiuddin Ahmed, the Bangladeshi Army Chief, was in Delhi from 27-29 April. This was followed up by Kwatra’s visit to Dhaka on 8-9 May, and another lull as the Indian elections entered its final phases. Through it all, a persistent narrative kept repeating itself in the usual foreign circles, that Hasina ought to go.

June was a busy month. The so-called ‘student’ protests began in Bangladesh on 5 June, silent and peaceful at first, ostensibly against a Supreme Court ruling which reinstated a 30 per cent quota in government jobs for descendants of freedom fighters.

Hasina visited Delhi on 9 June to attend the third swearing-in ceremony of a Narendra Modi government. The very next day, the protests started to take an ominous turn. Try as one might, it was difficult to avoid drawing parallels with the pace and efficiency with which similar protests erupted in Manipur last year, not least because they were too spontaneous, and too well organised to be organic.

As Bangladesh descended into a well-engineered chaos, and Hasina grappled with a Damocles-like law-and-order problem, she returned to Delhi for the first state visit by a head of government in Modi’s third term, from 21-22 June.

The next day, 23 June, General Waker Us Zaman took over as the new Bangladeshi Army Chief. This was a significant power shift, which was certainly discussed at length beforehand, in multiple discussions at the highest level. And it was followed up by a visit to Dhaka on 3 July, by India’s new Chief of Naval Staff, Admiral Dinesh Tripathi.

And, finally, Hasina visited Beijing from 8-10 July, a visit which she cut short by a day for reasons unexplained satisfactorily.

Police attacked student protesters in the town of Comilla on the day of Hasina’s return from Beijing, and the quota revolution irreversibly transmogrified into a month of ugly violence which ended only when she was forced to flee the country on 5 August.

It is, therefore, evident that the Indian government was intensely engaged with Dhaka at multiple levels for months, that we knew what was coming, and, that we sought to manage the fallout, which included making sure that Hasina was given a safe passage out of Bangladesh, and India granting her refuge.

But the big questions, still unanswered, are: who instituted this regime change, why, and what are the possible geopolitical dynamics of it? While the press is rife with wild speculation, the bottom line is that we still don’t quite know the who or the why.

According to a statement purportedly issued by Hasina, and retracted by her son, the entire imbroglio centred around Hasina’s refusal to cede St Martin’s Island, a strategic spot in the north-eastern Bay of Bengal, to the Americans. Their speculated objective (and this entire episode is rife with speculation) was to flank China from the south.

Some felt that Hasina was resisting American pressure with the help of the Chinese, while others pointed to Pakistani involvement in this regime change via their links to the Jamaat. But frankly, there is too much blunt talk floating around for such a serious matter as the fall of a government, so it is better to test these theses.

First, America: they may very well desire a base in the Bay of Bengal, close to China and adjacent to Myanmar; and the anti-Hasina narrative in the Western press stank of a put-up job. But really, would India countenance such a base well within the core of its sphere of influence, and what impact would such a push have on America’s broader quest for a QUAD?

When weighed in the balance, from an American standpoint, what is more valuable — a base which would wreck Indo-American relations, or a robust quasi-military formulation which (hopefully) incorporates Indian concerns and interests into its composition?

Next, China: yes, it is true that Beijing has long sought to bring Bangladesh closer to its orbit, and, that a non-Hasina government would be more amenable in distancing itself from India. But it is also true that there are limits to how much meddling of this sort can be engineered before India draws a line (which she will).

Regarding Hasina’s premature departure from Beijing in July, the easy analysis is that she did so because the Chinese demanded too high a price for keeping her in play (assuming Beijing could do that). But the chronology of events, and Occam’s Razor, suggest that Hasina may very well have returned to Dhaka a day early because of the rapidly deteriorating law and order situation there.

Third, Pakistan: whether they are supporting the Jamaat to destabilise the Hasina government on American orders, or whether those instructions came from Beijing, is a matter of trivial detail because Rawalpindi has always been the cat’s paw to only the highest bidder. That is how and why they have managed to serve multiple, conflicting interests simultaneously, without contradiction.

Fourth, Russia: not many realise the extent to which Russia is invested in Bangladesh. They have given a loan of $12 billion to Dhaka and are constructing a nuclear power plant at Rooppur. Many of the contracting companies are Indian. The first of the two units is expected to go critical later this year.

At a time when electricity consumption is rising in Bangladesh, and gas production is declining, neither the army, the BNP, or the Jamaat will do anything to rock this boat. As a result, Russian, and by extension, Indian influence, will remain undiminished in this critical sector.

Fifth, and finally, India: the chronology of diplomatic exchanges shows that India has been tracking and tackling the developments in Bangladesh very closely.

If we were unable to prevent the fall of the Hasina government, it is because we do not interfere physically in the domestic affairs of our neighbouring countries except in exceptional circumstances, like East Pakistan in 1971, or Sri Lanka in 1987. 

And regime change? Well, it happens quite frequently in our neighbourhood, and we are structured to tackle it — be it the 2021 coup in Myanmar, or the ascendancy of the Taliban in Afghanistan when the Americans abruptly withdrew in mid-2021. This latest episode in Bangladesh is really no different. 

Every colour revolution requires a victim. This round, it was Sheikh Hasina. But if analysts believe that the situation has stabilised with the appointment of Muhammad Yunus as the interim head of government, or, that the regime changers have won, they are sorely mistaken because, this story is just beginning, and the bulk of the script is going to be written by India, whether anyone likes it or not. In which case, it is possible that the St Martin's Island story could be a red herring.

Therefore, in conclusion, whatever the motivations and objectives behind the ousting of Sheikh Hasina, two things are nearly as certain as death and taxes: just as a few predicted in 2005, nuclear deal or no nuclear deal, that India would not acquire nuclear reactors from America, Hasina or no Hasina, the Americans are not getting a base in the Bay of Bengal any time soon.