Bangladesh’s chaos leaves India with security issues because there was no Plan B

India would be on a much better wicket today in Bangladesh if it hadn’t put all its eggs in the Hasina basket

A host of strategic and security challenges today stare India in the face due to the sudden exit of Sheikh Hasina from Bangladesh – a nation geographically embedded in Indian territory making it much more crucial and critical than our other neighbours – after unquestioningly giving New Delhi anything and everything it wanted for 15 long years. India’s desire, to put it mildly, was her command! It was of course not one-way traffic – we supported Hasina no matter what ensuring four straight terms for her.

But now that Hasina is gone for good; her only son Sajeeb Wazed has emphatically ruled out her return under any circumstances; and the countdown for the formation of an interim government has begun, who will Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration now turn to for safeguarding our wide-ranging political, economic, connectivity, infrastructure, trade, defence and counter-terrorism interests which Hasina loyally protected and promoted for so long?

India would be on a much better wicket today in Bangladesh if it hadn’t put all its eggs in the Hasina basket. We are suddenly handicapped because we didn’t have a Plan B in place in Bangladesh.

Missing the bus

Importantly, New Delhi had golden opportunities to oblige two key Bangladeshis – Mohammad Yunus and Khaleda Zia – but we let the opportunity slip out of our hands because we were impractical.

Yunus, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, is going to head the interim government as its chief adviser and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party’s Zia, who has been released from jail, will be the most powerful player in the interim government and probably beyond as the country’s tallest leader after Hasina.

Zia, 78, and Yunus, 84, would have been indebted to New Delhi and repaid us with interest if we had played our cards sensibly when their back was against the wall and we got the chance to come to their aid. What an asset they would have turned out to be! In a manner of speaking, they could have been an alternative to Hasina. But we missed the bus.

Our ham-handedness begs the inevitable question: Were we so Hasina-struck that we thought she would rule Bangladesh forever? Considering that Hasina is 76, did we somehow forget to take even human mortality into account and look beyond her regardless of how useful she was to India? Several diplomats have told me that keeping Hasina in power was the top priority of India’s foreign policy since 2009. But did our diplomatic-cum-security establishment have to wear blinkers blindsiding us?

India could have aided Khaleda Zia on humanitarian grounds

India would have been in Zia’s good books today if the Modi government had used its good offices to stop Hasina from treating her inhumanly in prison after her arrest in 2017. Hasina deliberately denied Zia proper medical treatment in jail and made her life hell; she narrowly escaped having a heart attack because of state repression. Hasina’s vindictiveness could have proved lethal as Zia was denied treatment by doctors of her choice, and forced to spend years in a crumbling two centuries-old prison room infested with rats, cats, spiders and cockroaches.

India did not bat an eyelid even as a full-blown horrific tale of badla, or revenge, played out in India’s backyard putting to shame all civilised norms. New Delhi should have intervened on humanitarian grounds. But it didn’t, although it received several representations from BNP to have a quiet word with Hasina.

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The upshot was that we failed to rescue the frail and extremely sick woman who had once served two full terms as Bangladesh’s PM, was her country’s first woman PM and the second in the whole Muslim world after Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto. After Hasina fled the country on Monday, the President finally ordered Zia’s release.

Turning a blind eye to Yunus’ plight

We were equally stone-hearted last year and silently watched Yunus’ persecution at Hasina’s hands. We didn’t lift a finger to help the Nobel laureate viciously targeted by Hasina. We didn’t speak out despite owing a big debt of gratitude to the Grameen Bank founder who is the pioneer of microfinancing, not just in Bangladesh, but also in India where his innovative brilliance helped lift millions of women out of grinding poverty.

More than a 100 Nobel laureates wrote to Hasina urging her to drop a string of trumped up anti-corruption and labour law cases lodged against Yunus to browbeat him into submission. But New Delhi refused to add its voice to the international chorus to insulate Yunus alone. The leading lights of India’s micro-financing institutions (MFIs), who were mentored by Yunus, pleaded with the Modi government to take up Yunus’ matter with Hasina when she visited New Delhi for the G20 Summit, but their plea was shrugged off.

There was anguish in Yunus’ voice on Monday when he criticised the Indian government for insisting that the students’ protests which claimed more than 400 lives were Bangladesh’s “internal matter”. Yunus asked rhetorically: “When your brother’s house is burning, do you say that it is an internal affair?”

There is no doubt that as the proverbial Big Brother and resident power we didn’t realise the value of reining in an authoritarian Hasina and counselling her to let bygones be bygones and bury the hatchet. If we had, we could have counted today on Yunus and Zia to safeguard our interests in Hasina’s absence – and both would have gladly stood by us.