As Sheikh Hasina flees Bangladesh, India suffers huge setback in Dhaka

With more than a hundred people dead on Sunday, the country in flames and protesters entering and vandalising ‘Gonobhaban’, the official residence of the Bangladesh Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina’s sudden resignation and consequent fleeing in a military helicopter on Monday, has presented a deep challenge to India’s foreign policy.

Reports of where the 76-year-old leader exactly flew to, were hazy with some saying it was Kolkata or Agartala while an unconfirmed source said the Bangladeshi PM may have flown to London. Nevertheless, the implications for India are anything but good.

The month-long violent protests against job quotas for the kin of freedom fighters of the country’s 1971 independence war with Pakistan have left more than 300 people dead till now.

Reports on Monday said the Awami League's Dhaka district office was set on fire by the agitators. The Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Memorial Museum at 32 Dhanmondi was also afire, according to reports.

With Hasina no longer in power, an anti-India sentiment, which was already gaining extensive ground, may sweep across the country. The conservative Khaleda Zia-led Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and the Jamaat collaboration will utilise this opportunity to the fullest to rake up the sentiment against its bigger South Asian neighbour.

While the secularists, including the Awami League, were declaredly pro-India, the BNP-Jamaat combined vociferously roots for Pakistan. Therefore, Pakistan will find a wide political and strategic space to exercise its options which would be of inimical interest to India.

With the strong possibility that the BNP may be back in power, the spectre of Bangladeshi Hindus and Buddhists particularly from the Chittagong Hill Tracts, embarking on an exodus to India may turn too real. It will add to the already extant problem of illegal immigrants particularly in the border states like West Bengal, Assam, Meghalaya, and Tripura.

Already reports say that religious minority community members have been attacked at many places and a few reportedly killed although no confirmation was available.

Insurgents from Northeast India who had to flee from their military-style training camps in Bangladesh in the past will find safe havens in the country once again.

Since 2014 when the BJP-led NDA government took over the reins in New Delhi, India’s “Neighbourhood First” Policy has been the fulcrum on which India’s relationship with its neighbours was determined.

The developments also put into question the prospects of the ‘India-Bangladesh Shared Vision for Future’ agreement that was inked by the PMs of the two countries during Hasina’s two-day visit to New Delhi in June. In fact, she was the first foreign head of state to visit in the Modi government’s third term underlining the proximity of the two leaders.

The chain of rapid events on Monday was preceded by a clarion call by student activists to march to Dhaka in defiance of a nationwide curfew. 

Meanwhile, in an address to the nation on Monday, Army Chief General Waker-Uz-Zaman said that an interim government will now run the country. “We have invited representatives from all major political parties, and they have accepted our invitation and committed to collaborating with us,” Gen Waker-Uz-Zaman said.