You would have read many learned pieces about why Sheikh Hasina was forced to flee, so let me assure you at the outset this is not going to be another one of them. What interests me about what happened to Sheikh Hasina is the conviction that she brought this upon herself by showing complete contempt for the fundamental rules of democracy.
It is a shame that our mishaps in the Olympics knocked the events in Bangladesh into second place. There are lessons that we can learn from what happened there. You would have read many learned pieces about why Sheikh Hasina was forced to flee, so let me assure you at the outset this is not going to be another one of them. What interests me about what happened to Sheikh Hasina is the conviction that she brought this upon herself by showing complete contempt for the fundamental rules of democracy. When a leader that powerful is forced overnight to flee for her life, it is usually because she has disrespected basic democratic rights.
Let us not pretend that we did not know that she had become unpopular. The last election that she fought and appeared to win was openly unfair. It was no surprise that all it needed was a trigger for mobs, led by students, to take to the streets in protest. Her response was to call them terrorists and traitors, and order her security forces to shoot to kill. Now, let me come to the first lesson that we can learn from this.
In India, described often by our Prime Minister as the ‘mother of democracy’, when Muslims took to the streets to protest what they believed was a discriminatory clause in the Citizens Amendment Act (CAA), they also were called traitors. Perhaps there were some among the protestors who were jihadi troublemakers. But remember that they carried the Indian Constitution in their hands to remind the Modi government to respect it. The response from the Home Minister was to order voters in the Delhi election to ‘press the button so hard that they can hear it in Shaheen Bagh’. At another rally, a senior minister incited violence against Muslims with a slogan that said traitors should be shot. In Bangladesh, student protesters were called terrorists. Similarities like this must be acknowledged and in India, they are less forgivable because our democratic roots are deeper.
Narendra Modi is extraordinarily skilled at portraying himself as India’s greatest ‘nationalist’. He wraps himself in the flag at every public meeting and tells the people that real patriotism has blossomed only since he became prime minister. Taking the cue from him, BJP spokespersons often confuse dissidence with treason. The term ‘urban Naxals’ is routinely used to malign dissidents. I have no sympathy for Naxalites or leftists of any shade, shape or size, but believe that in a democracy they have a right to express their views if they do not openly spread hatred and violence. When middle-aged professors and priests are arrested and jailed as ‘urban Naxals’, it defiles democracy.
What should worry us more is that a small group of Hindutva ‘nationalists’ now decide who is anti-national and who is a patriot. It is they who hand out certificates of patriotism. In a region where autocracy and military dictatorships thrive, it is India’s greatest achievement to have survived for 75 years as a democracy. This would not have happened if dissent had been crushed in the name of ‘nationalism’. At this point, it is important to remember that the suppression of dissent did not begin with Modi.
It began when the revered founders of our Constitution brought a first amendment that took away important freedoms like the right to property and the limited right to free speech. It may have been done with the noble intention of bringing about land reforms to uplift the degraded lives of the peasantry, but it was not a good thing to do. As time went by, it was used to ban books and films the government did not like. We should remember that it was Rajiv Gandhi who first drew attention to Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses by banning it in India. The Ayatollah may not have noticed this book if we had not banned it.
So, it is wrong to suggest that democracy has only been weakened in the past decade. What is true is that the process of crushing dissidence has gathered speed. And crushing it is seen as nationalistic, which is more worrying still. This would not be happening if India were truly democratic. So international democracy watchdogs have taken to calling India an elected autocracy and they have a point. Another lesson that India can learn from what just happened in Bangladesh is that no amount of economic transformation compensates for political autocracy. In the end, people resent leaders who cancel democratic freedoms.
In India, we are lucky that despite some hysterical allegations by opposition leaders, elections continue to be free and fair. Modi would have ensured a full majority for himself if the recent Lok Sabha election had been rigged. It might be possible that jailing two opposition chief ministers worked against him. If they are guilty of corruption they must be tried and punished, but trying them first is necessary. And keeping politicians, journalists and student leaders in jail without trial has damaged Modi’s image much more than he seems to have realised yet.
There are things that Sheikh Hasina could do in Bangladesh and get away with for a while. What we can learn from her mistakes is that they cannot and must not be made in India. As the only democratic country surrounded by tyrants of one kind or other, India must remain a shining model of democracy.
