Here are some straightforward reasons why the Indian establishment of the day liked the Sheikh Hasina regime in Bangladesh.
For the most part, it held the Islamist forces at bay, thus keeping Hindu minorities in safe-keeping, without asking questions about Hindutva forces and their doings in India.
It pursued a model of economic development very conducive to Modinomics, enriching the rich and impoverishing the poor; although it must be noted that, remarkably, the Hasina regime managed better scores on the global hunger index than did Modi’s India.
It absorbed considerable quantities of Indian investment in infrastructure of various definitions, keeping the Chinese in second place, if that.
And, most agreeably, it rendered Bangladesh, over time, an opposition-mukt elected autocracy, centralising political power to protect a centralised monopolist economy.
So, the chicks came home to roost, as they so often do, no matter how iron-clad the clampdown.
Admittedly, the rebuke to the Bharatiya Janata Party in the general elections just concluded was a comeuppance rather than a repudiation wholesale, but those that have sagacity learn to read the sign of the times.
That comeuppance undoubtedly signified a very considerable refusal of communal politics along with a rebuff to Modinomics.
Most instructively, if the full content and shape of the Indian election campaign were to be studied, it expresses disgust at shallow but dangerous cultism, and punctures its hubris with open chagrin.
Overall, the collapse in Bangladesh therefore is not without lessons for both the state and polity in India.
Also read: India’s ‘Neighbourhood Last’ Policy
As to what India might now do vis-a-vis the new politics shaping in Bangladesh, consider this: There was a time when Indian diplomacy took care not to put all its eggs in one basket. Its policy orientation tended more towards issues and people than power-structures merely.
Our contemporary global scenario seems to be one where foreign policy is much more a matter of cosy, subjective equations between autocrats than any enlightened foresight about what sorts of axes of relationship may most further a democratic and emancipatory outcome for both countries and peoples.
At the least, realpolitik, now most favoured by small-minded leaders, should suggest that our relationship needs to be with Bangladesh rather than any single leader.
Ease-loving diplomacy of course prefers confabulatory settlements among top guns, but a more far-sighted vision of the region and of global affairs would require a patient and accommodative address to the forces now shaping up in Bangladesh.
Great diplomacy is that which turns the hostile to the friendly without botching up on major political/ideological preferences.
Given how the deep state in Pakistan is pushing India back several notches in Jammu and Kashmir, it would be folly to antagonise the anti-Hasina forces in Bangladesh out of a sense of cultist loyalty.
What is imperative is that rabid sectarian voices in India be discouraged from shouting imprecations at Bangladesh now. Incidents of violence against Hindus there – though condemned by the country’s student movement and civil society and even various political leaders – has given these voices a handle.
Since Amit Shah may find it cumbersome to use the Citizenship (Amendment) Act to offer citizenship to a crore and forty lakh Bangladeshi Hindus, his government must be careful not to stoke embers of fear-mongering and alarm.
The Modi dispensation may do well to take a page from that lost Nehruvian vision which understood and absorbed the complications of identity politics with acuity and humanist broadmindedness.
It’s time to keep hot-heads in thrall and leave the field open to sensible peace-makers.
Badri Raina taught English at Delhi University.
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.
