Delhi must focus on understanding the sources of the revolution led by the student movement in Bangladesh. It needs to reach out to the leaders of the student movement, get a sense of what they hope to achieve.
That the Indian ambassador to Dhaka, Pranay Verma, attended the swearing-in ceremony of Muhammad Yunus, the head of the interim government, should send a positive signal to the people of Bangladesh and calm the over-the-top strands in the discourse in Delhi about the tumultuous developments next door. India should reinforce the message with a clear statement of continuing support for Yunus and the armed forces towards restoring order and protecting the life, liberty and property of its citizens. The Indian leadership has rightly pointed to the importance of safeguarding the rights of minorities amidst widespread violence, especially against the Hindu community, in Bangladesh. But Delhi should resist the temptation of focusing exclusively on the plight of the Hindu minority in a way that could complicate the extraordinary challenges at hand in Bangladesh and cloud the prospects for relations between India and the new regime.
Amidst the political chaos and informational fog that predictably envelops the regime collapse in Dhaka, Yunus and the army leadership appear to be doing their best to prevent violence and secure the vulnerable state structures — like the police — that are crucial for the maintenance of peace. India’s explicit support to the new leadership in Dhaka is critical to prevent the situation from getting worse. Its perspective of the new dynamic in Dhaka is being unfortunately shadowed by a toxic domestic discourse that is ready to blame everyone else in the world — from America’s CIA to Pakistan’s ISI and the Islamists led by Jamaat to the Chinese Communist Party. That Delhi did not or could not foresee the approaching political tsunami in Dhaka and that it allowed a total identification of India with an increasingly unpopular and autocratic government next door is a cause for critical self-reflection and urgent course correction.
Delhi must focus on understanding the sources of the revolution led by the student movement in Bangladesh. It needs to reach out to the leaders of the student movement, get a sense of what they hope to achieve. At the same time, the government must order an internal review on why and how the government agencies turned a blind eye to the gathering political storm in Bangladesh. Corrective action is needed to prevent future failures in regional policy. Meanwhile, the overly grandiose but ill-informed sections of public discourse on foreign policy in India must recognise that Bangladesh “is not India’s to lose”. Illusions in Delhi about India’s regional hegemony that have gained ground in recent years were not rooted in a realistic assessment of the ground conditions. Delhi must view Bangladesh and, more broadly, the neighbourhood as “India’s to win” through sensible economic policies, political dispute resolution, and hard diplomatic work to build wider constituencies of support. At the same time, there is no reason for doom and gloom about India’s future in Bangladesh. Delhi should be confident that the relationship with Dhaka has acquired sufficient resilience over the last decade and has the potential to survive the current turbulence. Official Delhi’s strategic patience and civil society’s genuine empathy for the Bangla student leaders’ aspirations for positive change, hold the key for navigating a major regional crisis in the Subcontinent.
