The rising risk of India’s waning influence in the neighbourhood

India's neighbourhood is on the boil.

India's neighbourhood is on the boil. The Maldives is in the process of getting a new government, not entirely to India's liking because of its professed tilt towards China. Nepal signed a dozen agreements with China 10 days ago, when its prime minister Pushpa Kamal "Prachanda" Dahal flew to Hangzhou and Beijing after addressing the United Nations General Assembly in New York. Sri Lanka is on the mend after its colossal economic and political crisis last year, but the island nation descended into political football in an unseemly quarrel between the ruling Trinamool Congress and the opposition BJP in West Bengal over ties with Colombo.

India's biggest concern in its neighbourhood, though, should be Bangladesh, where a general election is due in January 2024. The Joe Biden administration in Washington has launched a psychological war against Dhaka, announcing that it will begin "to impose visa restrictions on Bangladeshi individuals responsible for, or complicit in, undermining the democratic election process in Bangladesh.". As if Bangladesh was like the Congo, Mali or Haiti! The big surprise is that the United States announced sanctions a fortnight ago, only hours after its undersecretary of state for civilian security, democracy and human rights, Uzra Zeya, met prime minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed in what was supposed to be a reconciliation meeting coinciding with the ongoing UN General Assembly in New York.

The Bangladesh Factor

India had invited Hasina to the G20 Summit in New Delhi last month, partly in the hope that her meeting with President Joe Biden could prepare the ground for a rapprochement between the two countries. India felt it needed to apply balm on what was rapidly developing into an ugly fight between two of its good friends, both democracies and facing difficult elections next year. The meeting between Biden and Hasina did take place, but its follow-up talks in New York appear to have produced the opposite result of what was intended. Zeya was unusually harsh even by her standards as a hardline human rights and democracy crusader in Foggy Bottom, the seat of the US State Department. "The US is committed to supporting free and fair elections in Bangladesh that are carried out in a peaceful manner."

She mentioned the opposition parties in Bangladesh in passing, but it was clear from the tenor of the US announcement that it intended to target only the ruling Awami League and Hasina's law enforcement officials. "These persons (to be sanctioned) and members of their immediate family may be found ineligible for entry into the US. Additional persons found to have been responsible for, or complicit in, undermining the democratic election process in Bangladesh may also be found ineligible for US visas under this policy in the future. This includes current and former Bangladeshi officials... and members of law enforcement, the judiciary and security services," said an official notification that Zeya shared. This is the unkindest cut that the Biden Administration could hand out to Hasina and her family. Hasina's son and adviser Sajeeb Wazed has strong business, personal and family links in the US. He lived on the outskirts of Washington for a couple of decades and still divides his time between Dhaka and the stateside. Zeya’s announcement was reminiscent of the ill-advised, poorly thought-out visa ban on the then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, from which US unilaterally walked back in 2014.

It is imperative for India's internal security and for protecting its volatile northeast that Hasina is re-elected to lead Bangladesh in the next general election. Short of directly interfering in that election, India must use all its resources to ensure Hasina's return to power. American lobbyists across the board in New Delhi are trying to sow confusion in Indian minds that Chinese influence in Bangladesh is a threat to its western neighbour’s interests there. Islamic fundamentalist forces constitute the real threat in Bangladesh, not merely to India, but to peace in the entire South Asian region. China does not constitute even a remote threat to India compared to the dire danger of Dhaka falling into the lap of a Bangladesh Nationalist Party-Jamaat-e-Islami coalition next year. A five-member Awami League delegation led by Bangladesh agriculture minister, Mohammad Abdur Razzaque, met Indian leaders two months ago and assured them that China is their "development partner" while India is a long-standing and committed "strategic-cum-development partner".

Imaginary Conversation

It is unfortunate that Suvendu Adhikari, leader of the BJP Opposition in the West Bengal Legislative Assembly, should have insensitively mocked Sri Lanka's recovering economy to take out his bile on chief minister Mamata Banerjee. Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe had an unscheduled encounter in Dubai with Banerjee during the latter's mid-September tour of Spain and the UAE. The chief minister, as a courtesy, invited the president to the upcoming Bengal Global Business Summit. In a tweet on X, Adhikari described an imaginary conversation in Dubai where Wickremesinghe backhandedly compliments Banerjee on leading her state's finances down to the depths of Sri Lanka's ruptured economy. The president confesses that his country is in no position to invest anywhere. Banerjee tells him to visit Kolkata just for a good time and sign some MoUs to produce good headlines. "Everyone comes and signs MoUs and nobody invests," she says in the imaginary conversation. The BJP leader's indiscretion is to be taken up by the state government with external affairs minister S Jaishankar.

The agreements which Prachanda signed in Beijing after meeting Premier Li Qiang do not constitute any threat to Indian interests in the short run. But New Delhi has to be watchful. Once Beijing conceded Nepal as a part of India’s sphere of influence, but President Xi Jinping may want to change that current reality.

KP Nayar has extensively covered West Asia and reported from Washington as a foreign correspondent for 15 years. Views are personal, and do not represent the stand of this publication.