Sheikh Hasina was India's best friend in the neighbourhood. And now she is gone. The exit of Bangladesh's pro-democracy icon for the last 15 years was unceremonious, to say the least. She has left behind a country plunged in political, social and economic uncertainty. For India, her exit has now turned the friendly neighbour into a potential thorn in the flesh if we don't play our cards right.
Since 2009, when Sheikh Hasina was elected prime minister for the second time – she had led the country earlier from 1996 to 2001, India put all its diplomatic eggs in one basket: with the Awami League and Sheikh Hasina. No one in India's diplomatic ecosystem will ever say it out loud but it was a diplomatic imperative.
As a result, Delhi has had almost no truck with Begum Khaleda Zia, former prime minister and chief of the main opposition party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). And none with Jamiat-i-Islami, viewed as an Islamic fundamentalist outfit that is a power centre in Dhaka, so powerful that Sheikh Hasina had to dally with it once and BNP does so even now.
With Sheikh Hasina now out, will India have to deal with all these players in Bangladesh or pay a price for this one-basket policy?
Early signals from Dhaka are that the students who led the movement to oust Sheikh Hasina want Nobel Laureate Professor Mohammed Yunus to lead the country now. But the political parties, in talks with the Army and the President about an interim government and early elections, are so far mum on the subject. These parties include the Jamiat and the BNP, neither of whom are known to be friends of India.
In fact, the BNP and the Jamiat, which was banned by Sheikh Hasina last week as a 'militant and terrorist' outfit, lead the drumbeat of anti-Indian sentiments in that country which peaked over Sheikh Hasina's 'victory' in the flawed general election in Bangladesh this January. The two parties and a section of Bangladeshi voters believe that, after 2009, Sheikh Hasina won every general election -- in 2014, 2019 and 2024 -- only because of 'Big Brother' India's support. And that India continued to support her despite criticism from the United States and the European Union and despite the alleged 'corrupt and authoritarian' avatar into which she transformed.
These Bangladeshis also feel the Delhi-Dhaka relationship was not give-and-take but mostly give-and- give. That is not accurate, of course, but it is a perception that exists, one that snowballed this January, just ahead of the elections, into an India-Out campaign, much like the one in the Maldives last year. There are suspicions that China fanned the anti-Indian agitations.
No doubt India benefited from Sheikh Hasina's friendship.The biggest benefit was her crackdown on militants from northeastern India and other fundamentalist terrorists sheltering in Bangladesh.
The members of the separatist outfit United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA), one of India's worst headaches, hid in Bangladesh for years before Sheikh Hasina took over and flushed them out. Terror groups like the Jamiat-e-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) set off 500 bombs across that country in 2005.The JMB set up a network in West Bengal that came to light after the Khagragarh blast in Burdwan district on October 2, 2014. The horrific massacre at the Holey Artisan Baker in Dhaka in 2016 was the handiwork of the Harkat-ul-Jihad-ul-Islami (HuJI).
Sheikh Hasina's crackdown on these elements was unwavering.
On the economic front, the transit and transhipment agreements with Bangladesh over the years have come as a boon to India. It can now ship goods from the mainland to the northeast by rail, road and waterways across Bangladesh.
Till these deals were done, India's only link to the northeast was through the Siliguri Corridor to West Bengal's north, also known as the Chicken's Neck. At its narrowest, the corridor is just 22 km wide. Overlooking it are the southern reaches of the Doklam plateau in the Himalayas at the trijunction of India, China and Bhutan.
India backs Bhutan's claim on the plateau in the latter's dispute over it with China. In 2017, Chinese construction on the plateau led to an India-China clash. The transit deals with Bangladesh have given India vital alternative routes that will ensure that we will not be entirely cut off from the northeast if China ever violates the Chicken's Neck.
Bangladesh too has benefited hugely from the give-and-take with India -- the transit deals have opened up the Nepal and Bhutan markets for it and much more.
But all Bangladeshis are not convinced. Anti-Indian slogans even surfaced during the quota agitation last month. India's biggest task will be winning over this antagonistic section of Bangladeshis now and the political parties set to replace Sheikh Hasina.
The fact that Sheikh Hasina is camped in New Delhi waiting for asylum to a friendly country is not helping quell the anti-Indian sentiment. That such a sentiment should even exist is of course ironic. After all, India played a key role in the Liberation of Bangladesh in 1971. But the sentiment exists and India's policy towards the new Bangladesh will have to factor that in.
Senior Indian diplomats suspect a China or Pakistan or even American hand in Sheikh Hasina's ouster. There may well be: after all, who wouldn't want to control a market of 170 million and a country so strategically placed on the Bay of Bengal.
Given India's security concerns in the region, it can't afford to be nudged out of the race. A good start could be a policy of not supporting the person who comes to power in Bangladesh but the people who put him or her there. Sheikh Hasina is a glaring example how costly this flawed policy has been. It is a policy that India is pursuing in Myanmar, too, and could boomerang as badly.
Sheikh Hasina's eviction from the country that India helped her father to found should then serve as a lesson underlining a truth every stock-market operator lives by: hedge your bets.
