Why India is so concerned about Bangladesh’s political problems | East Asia Forum

Sheikh Hasina’s resignation as Bangladesh’s longest-serving prime minister and exile to India in the face of a revolutionary mass uprising against her has raised widespread speculation about the trajectory of Dhaka’s relations with New Delhi. Her rule was marked by warm relations with India, which included several critical strategic alignments that benefitted New Delhi’s security and geopolitical interests.

The Bangladesh–India relationship will be under review by the new regime in Dhaka. The interim government led by Muhammad Yunus has pledged to hold free and fair elections. There is increasing concern in New Delhi that the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), which has historically been hostile towards India, may win a landslide. No political party has been as popular and robust as the BNP since the fall of the Awami League. This will raise concerns in New Delhi about the strategic stability of India’s North–eastern region, which shares a border with Bangladesh, and Dhaka’s new geopolitical calculus.

India supported the liberation movement of Bangladesh against Pakistan in 1971 for their strategic interest, making Pakistan a weaker rival. Since then, Dhaka’s relations with New Delhi have varied according to the political parties in power. The Awami League, led by Sheikh Hasina, and the BNP, led by Khaleda Zia, are two of the most significant political parties and arch-rivals. Hasina’s party had historically aligned with India, whereas the Khaleda-led BNP had been critical of New Delhi.

The most recent Khaleda-led BNP tenure, from 2001–06, had been marked by the rise of Islamic militancy and the safe housing of insurgents from India’s North–eastern region. Terrorist outfits hostile to India started operating, maintaining connections with various BNP leaders like Tarek Zia and Lutfozzaman Babar. Scandals, like the incident of 10 trucks of arms being shipped through Bangladesh to insurgents in the North–east, also took place under the direction of top officials of the BNP regime in 2004.

All these issues spiralled into an unofficial political consensus in New Delhi that a pro-India regime in Dhaka is vital to their national and strategic interests. Hasina’s victory in the 2009 national polls was a geopolitical win for India and the relationship between Dhaka and New Delhi has since deepened significantly during the 15 years of the Hasina regime. The relationship can be defined as Bangladesh’s tilt towards India, where Bangladesh has granted India several strategic benefits.

India has significantly developed subregional connectivity with its Seven Sisters through land transit, rail connectivity and transhipment within Bangladesh, which was allowed by the Hasina regime. North–eastern region-based insurgents were also expelled and handed over to India through extradition treaties. New Delhi was also awarded two special economic zones and priority in the Teesta Project. These ensured India access to its North–eastern region in case of a conflict with China, where the latter might cut off the former by occupying the Siliguri Corridor or aiding regional insurgents.

Hasina also diminished terrorist outfits like ISIS offshoot Neo-JMB and Al–Qaeda offshoot Ansar Al Islam. Law enforcement and the judiciary crushed anti-India political parties like Hefazat-e-Islam and Jamaat Islami. Such measures prevented Bangladesh from becoming a terrorist hub and protected the Hindu minorities inside Bangladesh from being targeted by extremists. New Delhi also successfully established defence cooperation with Dhaka by providing military hardware through loans and interactions like exercises, seminars and dialogues. Through defence diplomacy, New Delhi also tried to assuage the long-term scepticism of Bangladesh’s Armed Forces, one of the largest buyers of Chinese defence equipment.

It is easy to see why India is concerned about the current situation in Bangladesh. The people’s uprising demonstrated the mass frustration against Hasina and her party and the chances of  the Awami League returning to power is slim. New Delhi is concerned about the BNP and other Islamist parties winning the new elections, which will harm their geopolitical interests and influence.

India’s support and shelter for Hasina could be used by the BNP to garner popular anti-India sentiment in Bangladesh. They have previously used anti-India rhetoric as a political tool and have already started putting pressure on New Delhi by demanding that the former premier be extradited. BNP activists were harassed, tortured and murdered with impunity for years while India turned a blind eye and supported unfair elections by the Hasina regime.

This uneasy relationship between the BNP and New Delhi has also built an environment of mistrust and resentment towards the latter by the former. These political realities may be headed toward severely disadvantaging India’s strategic interests and geopolitical realities concerning Bangladesh.

Khandakar Tahmid Rejwan is Research Data Analyst at the Bangladesh Peace Observatory under the Centre for Alternatives and was previously a research associate at the World Bank.