Dhaka, Delhi, and DC: Trio that tried to tango

Here is what is being suggested: The United States (US) is responsible for the ouster of Sheikh Hasina. The American deep State was always unhappy with the Awami League and, therefore, both publicly and privately, overtly and covertly, was backing the political opposition and protests. The US wants to have a pliable regime in Dhaka that can be used as leverage against India; it is all a part of a US design to both use India but also keep India unstable so that India never grows strong enough. And one way to do that to keep the region in ferment by encouraging unrest. Dhaka is evidence.

This theory is born out of a kernel of fact and is then layered with dollops of fiction or at least claims that have no basis in evidence.

Here is what’s true. The Americans haven’t been good at reading Bangladesh in general and have limited credibility when it comes to the country. Washington DC can never live down its role in 1971 and its active complicity in abetting a genocide in East Pakistan. Its role in undermining Indian security remains embedded in the consciousness of every Indian official. And the US has no moral ground to speak of human rights abuses or democratic aspirations, when it is abetting unprecedented Israeli brutality in Gaza and crushing the Palestinian right to self-determination at the moment.

It is also true that the US has, for close to two decades now, been uncomfortable with Hasina’s dominance in American politics. It played favourites, especially by politically encouraging Grameen Bank founder Muhammad Yunus, at a time of internal churn when the army was in charge.

But Americans had also been making what was a strong policy argument. And that went something like this: Hasina is authoritarian. But her consistent crackdown of the opposition, of civil liberties, and her manipulation of the electoral game through State capture was leading to a severe crisis of legitimacy, especially at a time when popular disillusionment was growing.

This was what was behind the refusal to invite Bangladesh to the summit of democracy, a decision steeped in characteristic American hypocrisy given that Pakistan was invited. It was also behind the repetitive criticisms of Dhaka by US state department spokespersons, thanks to the persistence of a few Bangladeshi political activists masquerading as journalists in DC, at press briefings, giving the impression that the US was way more invested in the issue than it really was.

India was making its own good-faith argument to the US. It told the Americans directly that DC’s assessment was wrong, that it was overestimating Hasina’s authoritarian bent and underestimating the links between the opposition and Islamists, and that Hasina’s replacement wouldn’t be a liberal paradise but chaos and extremism. India had real security interests at play, this wasn’t a distant debate, and after decades, there was relative peace on its eastern frontier thanks to a friendly Dhaka. The US must not do anything to jeopardise it.

Events have shown both sides had a point. Hasina had a real crisis of legitimacy and couldn’t last, as the US warned. Hasina’s exit is leading to greater violence, including against minorities, and may see extremism get State support in a future dispensation, as India warned.

One can agree or disagree with the American argument. But while making its point, given that Hasina did conduct and win three extremely flawed elections thanks to Indian support, it appears that the US let India take the lead. This doesn’t mean it didn’t support the opposition — who knows what American intelligence really did. But it means that over-reading a policy disagreement as a deep US conspiracy to undermine India is theorising of the kind that doesn’t help national security decision-making.

Hasina had an interest in telling Indian officials that the US was undermining her to undermine India and even told interlocutors that the US was doing the same directly in the Northeast. Indian officials who have advocated for Hasina and underplayed the domestic challenges she confronted had an interest in telling their political bosses that it was all due to the American hand. And Bangladeshi opposition figures had an interest in playing up the support they got from the West.

But think about it logically. At a time when the US has invested an extraordinary amount of geopolitical capital in deepening ties with India due to a shared threat from China in India’s east, how does Washington benefit in undermining India in precisely the east? At a time when Chinese ingress in the Indian neighbourhood has led to much deeper cooperation between Delhi and Washington DC across South Asian capitals, with both sides benefiting, how does it help the US to minimise Indian influence in Dhaka? At a time when both countries have spent two decades deepening cooperation against Islamist terror, how does it help the US to actively encourage an extremist regime in Dhaka? At a time when the US and India agree that Myanmar’s situation is dire — even if they, like in the case of Dhaka, disagree on what to do about it — how does it help to create instability right next door?

The situation in Bangladesh is grim. Helping the country embark on a political pathway that is both democratic and moderate and does not lead to an expanded Chinese role — all shared goals — requires Delhi and DC to work together with urgency and seriousness. Both governments know that. The public sphere needs to treat the difference on Bangladesh between India and the US as just that, a genuine difference that came from different histories and different judgments. Don’t treat that difference to manufacture conspiracies and deepen distrust. That will only help Bangladeshi extremists, China and Pakistan.

The views expressed are personal