The ouster of former Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, with whom India had built strong ties, is a strategic setback for New Delhi, which could see its influence wane in a country that was its closest ally in South Asia, according to analysts.
“This is a serious challenge for India given that for over 15 years, there was a government which was largely sympathetic to Indian sensitivities,’’ Harsh Pant, vice president for studies at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi, told VOA.
“So after years of relative stability in the relationship, the political uncertainty that now confronts Bangladesh is discomfiting,” said Pant.
Stable ties with Bangladesh, with which India shares its longest land border, were important for New Delhi in a neighborhood where it confronts Pakistan and China across disputed frontiers.
Hasina stepped down Monday after student-led protests to abolish job quotas snowballed into a movement to oust a leader blamed for democratic backsliding and authoritarianism. She fled to India, where she is presently staying.
During her tenure, both countries built strong economic ties. Hasina had also clamped down on Islamic militant groups that used sanctuaries in Bangladesh to mount attacks in India’s northeastern states.
An interim government, headed by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, is due soon to take charge in the country and begin to prepare for elections. The leader of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, Khaleda Zia, has been released after years of house arrest.
As Bangladesh confronts a political vacuum in the coming months, China could gain a stronger foothold in the country, setting back New Delhi’s efforts to contain its influence in the South Asia region, according to analysts. While seeking investments from Beijing and joining China’s Belt and Road Initiative, Hasina also took into account India’s sensitivities in the region.
“There will be concerns about China playing a bigger role in Bangladesh,’’ Pant said. ‘’Sheikh Hasina had balanced Chinese and Indian interests quite effectively from New Delhi’s perspective. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party, on the other hand, had been seen as a pro-China party in the past when it was in power.”
Dhaka was seen as critical for helping to limit China’s expanding footprint in the Indo-Pacific region. Last November, a pro-China administration took charge in the Maldives, an archipelago in the Indian Ocean.
India’s first task will be to build ties with opposition parties that are expected to step into the political vacuum in Bangladesh. But analysts say it will not be easy for a country whose close association with Hasina and her Awami League Party had alienated ordinary citizens and the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, which had a rocky relationship with New Delhi in the past.
India was seen as Hasina’s strongest supporter through her 15-year tenure. Unlike the United States and U.K., which said that elections which brought Hasina back to power in January were not free and fair, India did not question the credibility of the polls. In Bangladesh, many viewed India’s silence as contributing to erosion of democracy in their country.
“India needs to reflect on its old policy of how it related to the previous government and to the people of Bangladesh,” Debapriya Bhattacharya, distinguished fellow at the Centre for Policy Dialogue in Dhaka, told VOA. “But it is now time to rebuild the relationship on a new footing. Bangladesh has learned to live with changing governments in Delhi. India will have to do the same.”
In New Delhi, analysts say there are fears of a setback to the strong linkages the two countries had built. Over the past decade, they had signed a land boundary agreement to settle border issues, boosted bilateral trade to about $13 billion and launched road and rail link projects.
“Instability in Bangladesh could affect all the gains that were made,” Chintamani Mahapatra, founder of the Kalinga Institute of Indo Pacific Studies in New Delhi, told VOA. “The hope is that the developmental activity that has taken place between the two countries will provide the foundation for the relationship to go ahead, but of course that will depend on whichever dispensation finally takes power.”
Meanwhile, the immediate challenge for New Delhi are reports of sporadic violence targeting minorities including, Hindus emerging from Bangladesh. In a statement in Parliament on Tuesday, Indian External Affairs Minister Subramanyam Jaishankar welcomed initiatives by various groups to ensure their protection, but he said, “India will naturally remain deeply concerned till law and order is visibly restored.”
Yunus has appealed for calm. Asking people to get ready to rebuild the country, he said in a statement on Wednesday, that “if we take the path of violence, everything will be destroyed.”
