Only five months ago it was unthinkable that India-Bangladesh relations would nose-dive.
At the heart of the problem is India’s decision to not only allow the ousted Bangladesh prime minister Sheikh Hasina to stay in India but also willy-nilly allow her to air her controversial views on Bangladesh politics. She has gone to the extent of accusing the Mohammed Yunus-led Bangladesh government for the deteriorating communal situation in the country which according her amounted to a ‘genocide’ of the Hindus.
It is not surprising that such statements have annoyed the Bangladesh government. During the visit of India’s foreign secretary Vikram Misri to Dhaka on December 9, 2024, Yunus did not miss the opportunity to point this out to his Indian visitor. Characteristic of his polite demeanour he simply complained: “Our people are concerned because she is making many statements from there [New Delhi]. It creates tensions.”
That the anti-Hindu incidents in Bangladesh would stir Hindu sentiments in India is predictable. India’s ever ready Hindutva forces led by the BJP, RSS and many other groups are up in arms demanding retribution. Adityanath, the fire-breathing Bharatiya Janata Party chief minister of Uttar Pradesh (UP), has even identified a connection between the Bangladesh events and the mosque related conflict in the small town of Sambhal in his state in which four Muslims have lost their lives.
Speaking at the inauguration of the Ramayana Mela in Ayodhya on December 5, (December 6 is the anniversary of the demolition of the Babri Mosque by a militant Hindu mob) Adityanath said: ‘What a general of Babar did in Ayodhya 500 years ago, the same thing happened in Sambhal, and the same is happening in Bangladesh.’
Even in West Bengal, an otherwise communally peaceful state, the heat of Bangladesh politics is being felt. Not to be outwitted either by Hasina or by Adityanath, Mamata Banerjee has made the outlandish demand that the United Nations should intervene in Bangladesh.
To match her bluster, Suvendu Adhikari, the principal BJP face of Bengal politics, has thundered against her pro-Muslim politics. By dramatically meshing West Bengal and Bangladesh politics, Adhikari has raised a war cry against the forces behind the rise of Muhammad Yunus. He has threatened that if India’s Hindus and Bangladesh’s anti-razakars (connoting pro-liberation forces) unite, in no time Muhammad Yunus would be skinned (in Bengali: chamda khule nebe).
Most Indians seem to have failed to note that the communal situation in India is not very different from what is happening in Bangladesh. The Hindu chauvinistic BJP thinks that since India is very powerful, accounting for three-fifths of the region’s population, GDP and military strength, it has a monopoly over anti-Muslim hatred. If Muslim and Buddhist majority countries dare display any kind of anti-Hindu sentiments they deserve to be condemned. The fact that 200 million Muslims of India (15% of population) grieve the fact that they have been reduced to the status of second class citizens disturbs BJP/RSS the least.
But BJP must realise that along with power must come responsibility. Many years ago, during the tea break of an academic seminar in Sri Lanka dealing with the Sinhala-Tamil ethnic conflict, a senior Sri Lanka Tamil professor had told me that India was the natural warden of the region at the core of which was its secular ethos. The day it would dilute that commitment no power on earth would be able to guarantee regional peace.
It is difficult to know for sure how much violence the Bangladeshi Hindus have actually been subjected to. In these days of social media and fake news galore every bit of news must be taken with a pinch of salt. ‘Genocide’ of course is too strong a claim. As a student of Bangladesh politics I can vouch that what we read in the Indian press is exaggerated and motivated to placate the current Hindutva regime in India. Sheikh Hasina is indeed playing politics to suit her Indian shelter givers, an instinctive human defensive mechanism.
A flag seller in Dhaka. Photo: Shome Basu
It is a fact that the pro-Islamic forces in Bangladesh are traditionally strong. Both the leading political parties of Bangladesh, namely, the Awami League (AL) and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), more so the latter, do enlist their support particularly during the elections. On their own, however, the Islamic parties, in the forefront of which is Jamaat-i-Islami Bangladesh, concede that they cannot capture political power. This is true also for Pakistan.
But the Indian part of the story is more nuanced. There is no Hindu counterpart of Jamaat-i-Islami in India. The only party which carries the word ‘Hindu’ is the Hindu Mahasabha but it is on the wane. The BJP-RSS duo has completely appropriated it. There are many B-teams of the combine like Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Ram Sene, Hindu Janjagruri Samiti, etc. which are ever available to supply the foot soldiers whenever required. As such, when the BJP, which has been ruling India for ten long years with its avowedly anti-Muslim politics, tends to shed tears for the minorities in a neighbouring country it sounds rather ironical.
In the face of a deteriorating inter-communal climate in South Asia, the danger of a regional upheaval is real unless there is an elite congruence to stem the drift. Good or bad there was something like SAARC where the regional leaders could at least meet and discuss things. But since 2016 it is defunct. India is claiming to become one of the leaders of the ‘global south’ but in its own backyard it has failed to enlist the confidence of its neighbours, all of whom belong to the ‘global south’.
Charity, as the saying goes, must begin at home. The way the communal scene in India is deteriorating I am faced with a dilemma: Was Mohammad Ali Jinnah who claimed that India comprised two nations more realistic? Correspondingly, was the Gandhi-Nehru-Patel-led Congress more romantic? I hope a day would come when my concern would melt away. Whatever the current politics of Bangladesh may indicate the fact remains that the Islamic credo of Pakistan could not prevent its bifurcation in 1971.
South Asia is an assorted bag. Of its eight constituent units, two are Hindu-majority yet constitutionally secular (India and Nepal), two are Buddhist-majority with constitutionally guaranteed Buddhist orientation (Bhutan and Sri Lanka), and three are out and out Islamic (Afghanistan, Maldives and Pakistan). The case of Maldives is particularly conspicuous. Leave alone its Islamic character, it is hundred percent Sunni. If a Maldivian while abroad marries someone from any other religion, including sect, for example, Shia, s/he is debarred from re-entering the archipelago.
Insofar as Bangladesh is concerned it has been playing hide and seek with secularism. It started off as a secular country after its creation (1972), but turned into an Islamic state within four years and then again became dubiously secular after a decade or so. Given the present realities it is likely that the constitutional amendments that may be introduced would clearly dilute all the vestiges of secularism.
Does it mean, therefore, that in South Asia only Hindus can be secular? Let this complex question wait for another discussion. The present indications are not very positive. The Hindutva forces in the country routinely ridicule the idea and tauntingly abuse the secularists as ‘sickular’. In the other secular Hindu-majority country, Nepal, the royalists are down but not out. In any conducive situation they will reinstate the Monarchy and declare Nepal once again as a Hindu nation. It is alleged that the idea has the support of the RSS.
What is happening in Bangladesh or similar things that routinely happen in the region, should not necessarily lead us to despondency. From my long experience of reading and writing about South Asia as well as interacting with all kinds of people in the region I have the sense that there is an intrinsic civilisational connectedness in the region.
The SAARC (now defunct) experiment failed to read this essential reality for the regional leaders could not liberate themselves from their conventional wisdom on international relations. They could not appreciate that there was also a world beyond their international relations framework. By prescribing that SAARC would not discuss bilateral and contentious issues they conceived their Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark. During the India-Bangladesh secretary level meeting held on December 9 Bangladesh pleaded for the revival of SAARC. India must pick up the suggestion.
Partha S. Ghosh is a retired professor of South Asian studies, JNU.
This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire & Galileo Ideas – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.
