Sheikh Hasina’s stay here should be only on India’s terms

Hosting Hasina indefinitely in Delhi defying Dhaka is like waving a red flag at a bull.

Even as Bangladesh’s ex-prime minister Sheikh Hasina licks her wounds in a Delhi safe house, the Indian Government is having to weigh up excuses to fob off Dhaka’s constant pressure to send her back to stand trial in dozens of criminal cases registered by law enforcers after a student-led uprising abruptly ended her authoritarian rule and forced her to flee the country.

While External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and National Security Advisor Ajit Doval are perfectly entitled to take their time assessing and reassessing the formal extradition notice served by the Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus-led interim government, a few steps are in order to safeguard our national interests.

Pack her off to a southern city

Firstly, Hasina should be packed off to Bangalore, Hyderabad or Trivandrum without wasting any more time. Hosting the wanted woman indefinitely in Delhi – the seat of India’s rising power and authority -- defying Dhaka is like waving a red flag at a bull. Her relocation to the south from the Indian capital will hopefully cool down tempers across the border.

India might have its own geopolitical reasons to shelter Hasina. But it is extremely foolish to allow her to remain centrestage; she should be offstage and cooling her heels in a back room, so to say, given the chilling details of her repressive rule; especially the inhuman treatment of her critics; which are now being revealed.

Secondly, Hasina should be strictly forbidden from issuing statements from Indian soil. She has been broadcasting all too often and must be ordered to go completely off air. One can’t fault Yunus’ demand that Hasina should stay silent while India processes the extradition notice. In short, she must be told to keep quiet or get out.

Refuge should come with conditions

Silencing Hasina is of utmost importance given Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri’s forthright statement before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs that India doesn’t endorse or support Hasina’s criticism of the provisional government in Bangladesh.

Misri made India’s stand clear after visiting Dhaka where Yunus directly questioned him about Hasina’s frequent video messages targeting his government.

Misri clarified before Indian Parliamentarians – and obviously Yunus too when he met him in Dhaka – that Hasina was using “private communication devices” for the video messages and that the Government of India is not providing her any “facility or platform” to carry out her political activities from Indian soil, as that goes against India’s traditional practice of refraining from interference in the domestic politics of its neighbours.

On December 11, Misri distanced and disassociated India from Hasina’s strident activism in exile, but shockingly enough just five days later, on December 16, Bangladesh’s Victory Day, Hasina had yet another go at the Yunus government, branding it the “most autocratic” and “pro-communal forces” in the history of Bangladesh.

Hasina’s relapse, after Misri’s much-needed clarification that India doesn’t condone her attacks on the Yunus government, is nothing but a slap on our face. She is guilty of grossly abusing our hospitality.

Given her misdemeanor, Jaishankar and Doval have their task cut out. They must rein in Hasina in our national interest. She deserves a rap on the knuckles for putting us in an embarrassing position. If she must live in India, it must be on India’s terms, not hers. She can’t cross our red lines and get away with it. Every game has its rules which must be respected – otherwise there would be a real blowout.

The problem with Hasina is that she is so conceited and full of herself that she can become a liability for even her most caring friends, including the Narendra Modi government. She came at short notice for what we thought was going to be a short stay. But Hasina has prolonged her presence in India citing threats to her life from the jihadi forces she claims she battled at India’s behest.

I have gathered that she has convinced the top Indian leadership that while a country like the United Kingdom or United States might grant her asylum, only India can give her protection from assassins. She knows exactly how to tug at our heartstrings. Her tearful plea is that if India were to ask her to leave after all that she has done for India, it would amount to sending her to the gallows.

Hasina’s presence does affect bilateral ties

At the same time, her presence in India since August 5 has become the biggest obstacle in the path of normalizing relations with Bangladesh. Bangladesh’s politics and society is as fractious as before, but when it comes to Hasina’s extradition, the whole of Bangladesh is on the same page.

Political parties across the spectrum have notable differences over the timing of the elections, electoral reforms and the division of powers between president and prime minister, but barring the Awami League or whatever remains of it, they unanimously back the interim government’s drive to bring Hasina back for “judicial process”, as Dhaka’s formal diplomatic communication put it. Their united stand on Hasina’s repatriation was more than evident when representatives of all political parties, including Bangladesh Nationalist Party, Jamaat-e-Islami, communist and Islamist parties, met Yunus on December 4 at the Foreign Service Academy and urged him to fearlessly safeguard the country’s independence and sovereignty.

As things stand, India will have to eventually respond to the extradition notice that Dhaka has served, but in the meanwhile it is absolutely necessary to cut Hasina down to size in our own interests.