By P.K.Balachandran
Colombo, September 4: The ouster of the Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina by a student-led movement on August 5, has muddied South Asia’s waters. India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and China, are all impacted, for better or worse. Hasina’s exit in a cloud is a grave setback for India, but it opens new opportunities for the US, China, and also Pakistan.
The ouster has caused acute anxiety in India because Hasina was New Delhi’s protégé. India’s anxiety is reflected in the frenzied comments in Indian television debates, news reporting and expert opinions aired in seminar halls.
While government of India has not commented on the developments in Bangladesh, Indian think tanks and the media have attributed Hasina’s overthrow to a conspiracy hatched by Pakistan, the US and China.
India’s Stakes
The new government in Dhaka is not anti-India at least on the face of it. But it is certainly not going to be India’s camp follower as Hasina’s government was. One of the popular charges against Hasina in the movement against her was that she was India’s puppet.
Thanks to Hasina’s tight grip on power from 2009 to 2024, India was able to pump in huge Lines of Credit totaling US$ 7.9 billion in 2023. These were spent on projects in connectivity and energy.
If the political vacuum in Bangladesh is filled by the anti-Indian Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), Indo-Bangla relations could sour badly and the future of Indian projects could be in jeopardy. When the BNP was in the power in the 1990s and 2000s, India-Bangladesh relations had touched the nadir. Bangladesh was a cockpit of Islamic and tribal militants aided and abetted by Pakistan.
There is a strong demand in Bangladesh that Sheikh Hasina be extradited from India to face the 100-odd cases filed against her, including murder. But India cannot oblige Bangladesh in this matter given its past close relations with Hasina and her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
US Stakes
The change of guard in Dhaka will have a significant impact on Indo-US relations also. The relationship is outwardly fine, with America characterizing India as a “strategic partner” against China and parading it in the world as a feather in its cap. India is part of the Indo-Pacific partnership the QUAD.
But contradicting the US stand, New Delhi keeps flaunting its “strategic autonomy” in international relations to America’s annoyance. America’s relations with South Asian countries often clashes with Indian interests. India had been blindly backing Sheikh Hasina while the US was very critical of her authoritarian rule and imposing sanctions.
The US was so annoyed with India for its support for Russia over Ukraine that envoy Eric Garcetti publicly stated: “I know and respect that India likes its strategic autonomy. But in times of conflict, there is no such thing as strategic autonomy. We will, in crisis moments, need to know each other. I don’t care what title we put to it, but we will need to know that we are trusted friends, brothers and sisters, colleagues. The India-US relationship is not deep enough.”
US Stake
While India is wondering how to recover lost ground in Bangladesh, the US should be happy with the developments in Dhaka. It also has a stake in the growing rift between India and Bangladesh.
For the US, Bangladesh is a strategically important due to its geographic location connecting South and Southeast Asia. The location makes it a focal point in the Indo-Pacific strategy of the QUAD, comprising US, India, Japan and Australia.
In April 2023, Sheikh Hasina’s government published a peace and development-centric “Indo-Pacific Outlook” which highlighted Bangladesh’s non-alignment on the issue of the Indo-Pacific. The Hasina government saw the American Indo-Pacific scheme as being anti-China and therefore not in conformity with its independent nonaligned foreign policy.
Hasina told the US that if the Indo-Pacific architecture was for trade and investment she would be ready to support it. But US was looking at the Indo-Pacific only as a theater to confront China militarily.
The US was wanting Bangladesh to sign two defense agreements, namely the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA) and the Acquisition and Cross Services Agreement (ACSA). But Bangladesh made it known that it would not sign these agreements.
Partly in retaliation, the US kept condemning the human rights violations of the Hasina regime, especially the extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances. The US sanctioned some Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) officers and even a retired army chief, Gen. Aziz Ahmed.
A key factor in the post-Hasina US-Bangladesh relations is Dr.Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Peace prize winner and Chief Advisor to the Bangladesh President. Nuhammad Yunus is America’s point man in Dhaka. The US had fully backed his “Grameen (Rural) Bank” project much to the annoyance of Hasina who saw the bank as a den of corruption.
It is even said that the student agitators were persuaded to accept Dr.Yunus as the Chief Advisor by the US and the pro-US Bangladesh army chief, General Waker-uz-Zaman.
After she was overthrown, Hasina issued a statement blaming America for her ouster and said that Washington would not have engineered her overthrow if she had only handed over St.Martin’s island in the Bay of Bengal to the US. The US refuted this charge.
Significantly, a high powered US delegation will be Dhaka in mid- September to assess the ground situation and shape US policy towards the new Bangladesh. The delegation will comprise Brent Neiman, Deputy Under Secretary for International Finance at the US Department of Treasury, Lindsey W Ford, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for South and Southeast Asia, and Donald Lu, Assistant Secretary Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs.
Humayun Kabir, President of the Bangladesh Enterprise Institute (BEI) told Prothom Alo that the US would prioritize financial and economic cooperation.
China’s Stakes
There is an apprehension in India that the Interim Government might favor the Chinese as the pro-China BNP is now close to the power center, if not formally part of it.
But it should be noted that Chinese presence was strong even in Hasina’s time. Although not pro-China as such, Hasina’s government had secured huge investments from Beijing in the infrastructure sector. Between 2016 and 2022, Chinese state-owned and private companies had invested nearly US$ 26 billion in Bangladesh.
In 2022, Beijing emerged as Bangladesh’s single largest FDI provider as its investments topped almost US$1 billion—a 30% increase from US$700 million in 2021. In both these years, Chinese investments also accounted for more than 65% of FDI registered by the Bangladesh Investment Development Authority (BIDA). Besides these projects, in 2023 alone, China invested nearly US$ 800 million in Bangladesh
But Hasina was not seen as Beijing’s puppet as the Chinese had not thrown their weight about publicly.
China’s relations with new regime is expected to be smooth as it had been in the past when BNP was in power. The Bangladesh army has had a preference for Chinese weapons and this is likely to continue.
And with the Chinese will come their ally, Pakistan. That will be a red rag for India as the Pakistanis could train and station Islamic militants in Bangladesh as they allegedly did when BNP was in power earlier.
India’s Hopes
Indeed, the prospects for India in Bangladesh look very dim. But the situation could change in its favor if the past events are any indication.
Developments in Bangladesh are difficult to predict given the volatility of the people. Their leaders also act more like quick-change artistes than ideologues committed to a given line. Bangladesh can come up with surprises upsetting conventional wisdom.
The nation was founded in 1971 with the active political and military involvement of India. But within four years, India’s protégé, Prime Minister-turned President Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, was assassinated by elements in the military who were riding on an anti-Indian wave based on a fear of Indian domination.
The anti-India chant was kept up by successive governments from 1975 to 1996. Military dictators like Gen. Ziaur Rahman and Gen.Hussain Muhammad Ershad; military backed non-political caretaker governments; and governments led by the BNP, were hostile to India.
Conventional wisdom would have been that Bangladesh had dissolved its marriage with India with no prospect of a rapprochement. But this was proved wrong. Mujibur Rahman’s daughter, Sheikh Hasina, made a daring entry into Bangladesh politics, revived her father’s party, the Awami League, won the 1996 elections and restored friendly ties with India.
She came back to power in 2009 and ruled the roost till 2024 with the Indians in tow.
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