As if it were not bad enough that India’s domestic polity has been poisoned by communalism as never before, increasingly, foreign policy, too, is being given a communal twist. This is most evident in relation to Bangladesh. The enormous gains of the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War are being frittered away in a vengeful attack by the Narendra Modi government and its ‘godi’ media, in the name of protecting the Hindu minority, on the consequences of the Monsoon Revolution that overthrew our much-favoured Sheikh Hasina as prime minister of Bangladesh. In view of continuing atrocities against India’s Muslims, such chutzpah quite takes one’s breath away.
We did not bring Hasina to power in Dhaka. It was the people of Bangladesh who elected her in 1996 and again in 2009. It is they who overthrew her on August 5, 2024. Our government refuses to accept the self-evident truth that Hasina had compromised her moral right to the premiership by rigging the elections of 2014 and 2019 and forfeited it completely by the time the people’s frustration at this perversion of democracy spilled on to the streets.
Bangladesh is not a province of India. It is a foreign country. Yet, when it comes to Bangladesh (as, indeed, when it comes to any neighbour smaller than us) we assume the right to settle their matters to our liking (although we rarely succeed). Yes, Hasina was good for us. But even as we reserve the right to elect or dethrone any prime minister of our country, so also do the Bangladeshis in theirs. That is their sovereign right.
True, Hasina was driven from office not in an election but by the army refusing to follow her orders to shoot. At this, she felt she had to flee. She flew to India. We welcomed her. I certainly applaud our giving her refuge and refusing to extradite her. But having done our duty, should we not give the interim authorities in Dhaka the opportunity to settle down and hold elections when they are ready—elections that Hasina’s Awami League may win if an adequate majority of Bangladeshis so decide. That is for them, not us, to determine.
Faced with this impasse, the Modi establishment and their collaborators in the media have charged Bangladeshis with being anti-Hindu. Mahfuz Anam, a leading Bangladeshi journalist and editor and publisher of The Daily Star, deplores “the venom that is being spewed, the hatred that is being spread, and the demeaning stereotype that is being portrayed about us (which) seems to be geared towards generating a hatred for Bangladeshis among the Indian people”.
Recalling that it was student power that opposed Muhammad Ali Jinnah when he sought to make Urdu the sole national language of Pakistan and student agitations that brought down the Ayub Khan regime and brought in Mujib as the liberator, and has now outed his daughter, Anam points to student agitations having been the traditional medium for political expression when other means of communication are strangled.
The validity of this assertion will be tested when elections are held. Meanwhile, in answer to charges of widespread anti-Hindu violence and rioting, Anam’s own newspaper and journalist investigators from Bangladesh’s premier Bengali newspaper, Prothom Alo, have visited every district and sub-district of the country to check on the truth of these allegations. In a majority of cases, they have found that Hindus have been attacked not because of their religion but because of their affiliation to the Awami League and involvement in atrocities inflicted on their local political opponents during the previous regime.
One hopes Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri will ascertain the truth (or otherwise) of this view when he was in Dhaka for foreign office-level consultations rather than demonising in advance the people of Bangladesh as anti-Hindu.
Aiyar is a former Union minister and social commentator.