On 5th of August this year, a student led mass uprising ended Prime Minister Hasina’s 16-year despotic and corrupt regime in Bangladesh. Hasina fled to India and has been residing in Delhi under the protection of the Indian government, since.
The anti-Hasina uprising that came at a huge cost – during the uprising Hasina government’s police, the paramilitary and her party’s student wing thugs, the Chatro League killed more than a thousand men and women, mostly young and some as young as 8-year, and injured thousands more.
The uprising that grew organically from bottom and without the involvement of any political party, was triggered by a decade-and-a-half long despotism and cronyism of the Hasina government where politically targeted extra-judicial murders, and disappearances, arbitrary arrests and tortures of dissidents, and loot and plunder became the order of the day.
In exchange of massive favours India, an ally of Sheikh Hasina played a key role in sustaining her despotic and kleptocratic regime, a partnership that has not gone down well with most Bangladeshis.[1]
Post-Hasina Bangladesh and a Pathetic India
It is conceivable that as the apple cart has been turned upside down, and the apples are gone, toppling of India’s client regime in Bangladesh, the Hasina government, has not been welcomed in India. As a result, the Indian government as well as the Indian media have gone ballistic and are on a vicious vilification campaign against the post-Hasina Yunus government and indeed, against Bangladesh itself.
Among many things, India claims and without evidence, that the fall of the Hasina government, is witnessing rise of “Islamist forces” in Bangladesh and that they are attacking the Hindus, the minority community in Muslim majority Bangladesh.[2]
Incendiary and sectarian statements especially by the India’s ruling party, the BJP leaders have roused anti-Bangladesh extremism in India and to such an extent that the rowdy mobs in India have attacked and vandalised Bangladesh diplomatic missions in Kolkata and Agartala, the capital cities of Bangla and Tripura respectively. The mob also burnt the Bangladesh flag.
Yet in another instance of diplomatic faux pas, the Chief Minister of Bangla, Ms. Mamata Banerjee has recently appealed to the Modi government to ask the United Nations to deploy Peace Missions to Bangladesh “where minorities have come under attack” without realising that “UN peacekeepers are very rarely sent inside any country except for the request by any country.”
Again, in Bangladesh’s Eastern border, in the Indian state of Tripura, the Hindu extremist mobs had attempted to cross the border into Bangladesh to “punish” the Bangladeshis. The timely intervention of the Indian border security force, stopped the marauding mob from crossing into the Bangladesh territory, averting a certain bloodbath.
However, in Tripura the Hindu mob rage against Bangladeshis has such a crescendo that the local hoteliers have vowed not to entertain any Bangladeshis.[3]
More recently, the arrest of a Hindu monk, Chinmoy Krishna Das, an ousted leader of an offshoot Hindu group in Bangladesh, the ISKON, on charges of sedition had sparked violent clashes between his supporters and the Bangladesh security forces. The government prosecutor of the Das case has been murdered in the courthouse, allegedly by the ISKON/Hasina party goons. The latter has infuriated people triggering more violence.
Sadly, without knowing the details, Indian media and politicians have promptly condemned monk’s arrest, demonstrating in the wake, its readiness to meddle in the internal affairs of another country namely, Bangladesh, and in the process aggravate further the sectarian tensions in the country.
Lately and in yet another spectacular move, the Indian government had given Sheikh Hasina, the deposed and reviled Prime Minister of Bangladesh who lives in Delhi these days under the protection the Indian government, the facility to use the social media to reach out to her supporters in Bangladesh and elsewhere and spread lies and incite communal rifts and destabilise Bangladesh. Among her many slurs she hurled against the Yunus government, Sheikh Hasina claimed that Yunus is conducting “genocide” in Bangladesh. If not for the gravity of the situation such an atrocious accusation would have gone down as a huge contribution to human comedy.
India is desperate and thus regardless of how ridiculous and heinous these allegations are, they are leaving no stone unturned to dehumanize the post-Hasina Bangladesh and fish in the muddy water.
International Media
Meanwhile, several international investigators and journalists who have visited Bangladesh and assessed facts on the ground have since reported that while it is true that the Hindus in Bangladesh do feel a little insecure and that there have been a few cases of attacks on Hindus in the immediate aftermath of the July/August uprising, there are no evidence that suggest that these attacks were sectarian, rather these attacks were politically motivated revenge attacks, and lately, there have not been no attacks on Hindus.[4]
India’s Proclivity to Misinformation/Disinformation
So, why is India is so averse to investigating facts on the ground and say the truth and not spread misinformation and disinformation and project Bangladesh in a bad light.
The reason is simple – the demise of the despotic Hasina government has dismantled the status quo of extortions, and the unequal exchange relations that India so craftily and opportunistically nurtured through Hasina and profited from for years. Suddenly, it’s all gone.
The loss has upset India beyond measure, prompting a misinformation and disinformation campaign whose aim is to dehumanize the Yunus government, destabilise Bangladesh and re-install if not Hasina, then another puppet government in Bangladesh.
It is also apparent that spread of misinformation and disinformation comes easy for India.
Indeed, India’s proclivity to convey myths as facts to serve itself- interest is a well-known fact. For example, a recent global survey that ranks countries in terms of spread of lies has ranked India as No 1 country, implying that India is a country where spreading misinformation and disinformation comes naturally.[5] This is instructive.
Response of Bangladesh
In response to India’s relentless bad mouthing, the Yunus government in Bangladesh has expressed its “utter dismay” saying that India’s false accusations are souring the relations between the two neighbours and more worryingly, fomenting tensions in the country. Furthermore, India’s weaponisation of Hindus in Bangladesh is also wrecking the inter-community harmony and in the process, promoting a negative image of India among the Bangladeshis. This is unhealthy and would work as a barrier against forging of good relations between the two neighbours.
Muhammad Yunus, the head of the Interim Government has urged the fellow Bangladeshis to keep calm and ensure communal harmony in the country and they have heeded his advice.
Indeed, throughout this entire period of India’s provocative actions and overtures, most Bangladeshis including the Bangladeshi Hindu organizations as well as the Hindu community have remained calm and managed India’s hatemongering with utmost restraint and maturity.
At the same time, the Bangladeshi Hindus who have realized that India, a country that does not treat its own minority, especially the Muslims including its own lower caste Hindus well, is hardly a credible promoter of minority rights in another country and that India’s sudden rush of affection for Bangladeshi Hindus has nothing to do with their passion for their cross-border religious compatriots, rather it is a ploy to use them as their geopolitical tool to weaken Bangladesh and extend their hegemonic control over Bangladesh. The Hindus of Bangladesh are convinced that their security and wellbeing lie within and not outside Bangladesh and thus are committed to work together with their Muslim brothers and sisters and maintain communal peace, harmony and promote together the wellbeing of each other.
Time for India to reflect and recalibrate
In a world where citizens are becoming increasingly conscious of their democratic and their country’s sovereign rights, the days of sponsoring and sustaining craftily groomed subservient and corrupt dictatorial regimes are over.
For example, only last week, the US patronaged South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol who declared Martial Law to avoid corruption charges against him but failed because citizen protest and now facing impeachment is a glaring example that days of externally sponsored and patronaged corrupt autocracies are over.
These days citizens have no time for hegemonic and opportunistic foreign-sponsored governments and leaders that steal democratic rights of citizens. These days people rise, resist and dislodge undemocratic political settlements and this is exactly what has happened in Bangladesh and recently, in South Korea. People resisted and kicked the externally patronaged corrupt autocracies out and therefore, any thought in the Modi government that they would be able to bring back Hasina or instal another puppet government in Bangladesh is not just atrocious but delusional.
Indeed, time is ripe for India to appreciate that client states that make repression and corruption their governing arrangements ultimately collapse and jeopardise the long-term interest of their patrons. Any attempt to re-instal the old client or instal yet another puppet is not only out of question but counterproductive.
For example, fall of Hasina, India’s protege and subsequent badmouthing of Bangladesh by India is already costing it – disgusted by India’s insults of Bangladesh, many Bangladeshis have started to seek medical treatment, a multi-million-dollar medical tourism business, in Malaysia which until recently used to be India’s monopoly. No more.
This is just one example. India’s poor treatment of Bangladesh is likely to cost India more than Bangladesh. For example, during FY 2023, India’s export earning from Bangladesh amounted to US$ 12.2 billion and Bangladesh’s export earning from India and during the same period amounted to US$ 1.72 billion. Therefore, India treating Bangladesh badly is not the best way to serve its own interest let alone that of Bangladesh’s.
India needs to depart from its chest-beating bullying tactic and recalibrate its neighbourhood policy including its policy towards Bangladesh in a manner which is empathising and respectful.
Indeed, India needs to re-invent itself, to an India that it once was – a leader of the third world, a India that strengthens and not weakens democratic aspirations of its neighbours and an India that shares each other’s concerns sensitively and grows together, equitably by respecting each other’s sovereignty.
M. Adil Khan is a former United Nations Senior Policy Manager and an Academic
[1] https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/08/16/where-no-sun-can-enter/decade-enforced-disappearances-bangladesh
[2] Hindus are a majority in India and the current Indian government, the Modi government’s Hindutva policy is a Hindu supremacist policy that promotes and encourages persecution of their minorities especially, Muslims, the majority, 90% population of Bangladesh.
[3] https://www.deccanchronicle.com/nation/current-affairs/hotels-restaurants-in-tripura-announce-they-wont-serve-bangladeshis-1843512
[4] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/8/8/islamophobic-alarmist-how-some-india-outlets-covered-bangladesh-crisis
[5] https://www.statista.com/chart/31605/rank-of-misinformation-disinformation-among-selected-countries/?fbclid=IwY2xjawG-FMRleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHcFLCNKp1nlXJx5TJs5lTa_KJMeRFVB4EfShG10ghNgVppYbx1sQKt2q_w_aem_feSl1bJLw5QuDYb8dIU4Hg
