Bangladesh: With polls nearing, Sheikh Hasina walks the extra mile to please New Delhi and Kolkata

Sheikh Hasina’s calibrated pre-poll outreach to Bangladesh’s Hindus is purely dictated by the priority India’s BJP government gives to their welfare and well-being.

Ahead of elections in Bangladesh, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is making one smart move after another with all the cold-blooded realism and guile of a three-term Premier determined to win a fourth successive term.

She is immersed in an elaborate box-ticking exercise even as the political opposition, led by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), is vociferously demanding that she step down so that the polls are held under a non-partisan caretaker government, but Hasina is unmoved and unruffled.

Two of Hasina’s latest moves have a strong India flavour. And that is not surprising. As Bangladesh lives in India’s shadow – or zone of influence in diplomatic parlance – it’s quite natural for Hasina to go out of her way to be on the right side of India.

Critics accuse her of pandering to India – referred to as “Big Brother” by ordinary Bangladeshis – but the fact is that she and India are made for each other. And as the match has been forged in the crucible of geopolitics, New Delhi not only wants her to win but win by any means. In Hasina’s case, as far as India is concerned, the end would justify the means.

But, be that as it may, Hasina is still not taking any chances. To be in India’s good books, she is astutely courting Bangladeshi Hindus who account for 7.95 percent of the population, or around 13.1 million out of 169 million people, in the run-up to the elections. The predominantly Muslim country is home to the world’s third-largest Hindu population after India and Nepal.

Hasina’s calibrated pre-poll outreach to Bangladesh’s Hindus is purely dictated by the priority India’s BJP government gives to their welfare and well-being. She knows that if the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, then standing by Hindus is the best way to Narendra Modi-Amit Shah-Ajjt Doval’s heart.

And to please and appease West Bengal, which shares a 2,217 km-long border with Bangladesh, she has allowed the export of nearly 4,000 metric tonnes of Hilsa fish – the biggest consignment ever of the delicacy – to spice up Durga Puja celebrations from October 21 to 24.

Earning Bengal’s goodwill during its biggest festival is important as its Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, besides being a potential prime ministerial candidate from the opposition, has stubbornly and single-handedly blocked the Teesta River water-sharing treaty which Hasina is hankering after since 2011 – and the CM’s change of heart can put all the wind in the world in Hasina’s sails before the elections.

The BNP and its ally, Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI), naturally say that Hasina is kowtowing to India but she knows what’s good for her and her Awami League (AL). There is no substitute for experience; at the ripe old age of 77 Hasina knows how important it is to keep both New Delhi and Kolkata happy.

Welcoming Hindus at her official residence, Gano Bhaban, Hasina urged them not to undermine their own status by calling themselves a minority. There is no minority-majority; everyone is equal whether he or she is Muslim or Hindu, she declared loftily.

Earlier, she dispatched Kabir Bin Anwar, chairman of Awami League’s election management committee, to request the Hindu, Bouddha, Christian Okiya Parishad, or the Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council, to lift its 48-hour hunger strike demanding the implementation of promises in Awami League’s election manifestos. And the Council, led by general secretary Rana Dasgupta, Bangladesh’s tallest Hindu leader, readily obliged.

Bangladeshi Hindus are demanding the establishment of a national commission for minority affairs, a minorities development and finance corporation – both modelled on institutions in India – and the scrapping of the highly discriminatory Enemy Property Act 1965 and its Bangladeshi versions which allow the state to seize properties of those who leave the country.

Ain O Salish Kendra, a leading Bangladeshi human rights watchdog, has documented 3,679 assaults on Hindus from 2013 to 2021, including 1,559 housebreaks and 1,678 attacks on temples and vandalism of idols, and the death of 11 Hindus in the attacks.

The Hasina administration has a proven record of coming down like a tonne of bricks on Muslim extremists attacking Hindus, which does raise questions of the spotty record of some state governments in India in countering anti-minority violence. Whether Hasina acts with an iron hand out of personal conviction or to please India is debatable, though.

After two Hindus were killed during Durga Puja in 2021, the police opened fire on the Muslim mob killing four, sending a stern message. Last year, the festival passed off peacefully without a hitch. Now, ahead of elections, additional security forces are deployed at all Durga Puja “pandals” across Bangladesh.

And Hindus’ confidence in the Awami League government is evident from the marginal increase in the number of pandals in the country to 32,408 from 32,168 last year. In Dhaka alone, there are 245 pandals, three more than last year and Hindu community leaders have expressed their satisfaction with security arrangements.

It is left to be seen whether embracing the country’s Hindus and green-lighting the biggest ever consignment of Hilsa fish from the Padma River, which the denizens of West Bengal relish so much, will send Hasina’s stocks soaring in New Delhi and steel India’s resolve to back her to the hilt in the battle of the ballot. The BJP would in any case prefer a friendly Awami League to an antagonistic BNP.