By Mayank Chhaya-
For Bangladesh’s ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina traumatic personal history has come full circle nearly almost 50 years after her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founder of the country, was massacred along with most of her family in a military coup.
Then too she was abroad and had to go into exile in India. At age 76, she is once again in exile, this time without any realistic likelihood of returning.
As the country of 170 million people, created by India in 1971, battles grave uncertainty in the aftermath even while celebrating her departure, implications for India are serious and many. Among the biggest worries for New Delhi is whether Bangladesh would swing into China’s orbit the way its once fraternal twin, Pakistan has done. Hasina, who was exceptionally friendly towards India for the last 15 years, had managed to keep the China-Pakistan forces at bay even though there were clear signs that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence had been active for decades. In fact, Pakistan’s military establishment has never come to terms with having lost the erstwhile East Pakistan to the creation of Bangladesh under India’s Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s leadership, a feat without parallel in modern world history.
Now that Hasina has fled, she leaves in her wake some profound worries for New Delhi Bangladesh’s progenitor. The two countries share a 4300-kiometers long (2671 miles), more than half of which it shares with its cultural cousin, the Indian state of West Bengal. Apart from the chronic problem of border intrusions by dispossessed Bangladeshis, India has for decades faced problems of drugs, human and weapons smuggling from Bangladesh, part of which have contributed to violent insurgencies in northeastern Indian states.
What Hasina’s dramatic ouster has exposed is the question whether over the last 15 years of her tenure and her sanguine praise of India made New Delhi complacent, in the process not being ready for the contingency of her fall. It is not clear whether during her two visits to India as recently as June she foreshadowed for Prime Minister Narendra Modi her impending problems. Even though the ostensible trigger for the current student protests that mutated into something terminal for her was her decision to continue special government job quotas, there appears to be deeper malaise at work. One persistent grievance was her increasingly authoritarian tendencies.
Apart from the usual litany of bilateral problems such as border intrusions and sharing of river waters, India will also have to worry about whether the China-Pakistan combination will see an opening in this instability and turn it to their advantage for strategic consideration. In that context, New Delhi’s focus will be on General Waker-Uz-Zaman, the army chief now at the helm of an otherwise leaderless country. His worldview, especially in the context of India and China is not fully known.
Even though Bangladesh’s President Mohammed Shahabuddin ordered the release of the jailed former prime minister and key opposition leader Khaleda Zia, hours after Hasina’s ouster, she is unlikely to be the contender for the former prime minister’s position given that she is herself a year older and ailing. As the head of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) she will at best be a symbolic presence politically. On the other hand, Hasina’s Awami League party is expected to face serious existential problems given the extent of rage and hatred displayed against her and her late father Sheikh Mujib by protestors.
For a country that was being held up as a shining example of strong economic growth and stability, Bangladesh suddenly finds itself staring at the prospects of turning into another Pakistan-like basket case. Apart from its economic stability India will also have to worry about the likelihood of the Islamist forces making serious inroads in the vacuum created by Hasina’s sudden exit.
During her June visit to attend his swearing-in ceremony for a third term, Modi had said, “We have met 10 times in the last one year. However, this meeting is special because Sheikh Hasina is the first state guest after the third term of our government.”
In response she said, “Bangladesh greatly values its relations with India. Come to Bangladesh to witness what all we have done and plan to do”.
Barely two months later, the India-Bangladesh bilateral landscape looks bleak.
