PM Modi wants US to protect Hindus in Bangladesh. Hasina’s debacle must not be India’s

Bangladesh has dumped Sheikh Hasina. Are we dumping Bangladesh in turn? We can’t choose our neighbours. But you know what, we can choose to be the kind of neighbour we want to be.

Illustration: Prajna Ghosh | ThePrint

In these frightfully prickly times, trifles tend to become controversies in our geopolitical debate. You could see the issue over the difference between the Indian and US readouts of the Narendra Modi-Joe Biden phone call earlier in the week in a similar light, and dismiss it as a joke.

So, big deal if Washington didn’t mention Modi’s concern over the fate of Hindus in Bangladesh. Grow up, India.

That ‘grow up, India’ admonition might apply, though for entirely different reasons. We will argue, in fact, that these reactions of widespread indignation are no joke. This is serious business. The most serious is the fact that an Indian prime minister, at the head of a strong and stable government no less, needed to seek Washington’s good offices to protect the Hindus next door. It necessitates us raising some serious questions. For example:

• Do we remember when an Indian prime minister last called his American counterpart—now our essential strategic partner—and sought his help to protect Hindus in our neighbourhood?

• Or the last time such a call was made asking a foreign power to control/restrain the situation any which way in our neighbourhood? There have been calls aplenty to ask the world to restrain Pakistan from unleashing cross-border terror on India, But does India really care what the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) or 10 other lashkars with fancy names do within Pakistan? Check out what the TTP is doing to the Pakistani army colonel they’ve kidnapped. You can even watch him grovelling in a video the TTP has tweeted.

• Has India ever conceded that another power has any legitimate role to play in our immediate neighbourhood, the Subcontinent? In the Indira era, even something seemingly as minor as a Voice of America transmitter in Trincomalee had made us neurotic about a foreign power finding a foothold in our region.

• Hindus have often complained of victimisation in Pakistan and thousands have sought refuge in India. Tamils (mostly Hindu) were earlier driven out in lakhs from Sri Lanka. In Nepal, the Madhesis have often complained of discrimination and looked to India for support. Would India ever imagine calling Washington or the Europeans to intercede?

• The final question follows, then: Are we now admitting that the Americans have more leverage in Bangladesh than us? This, when we issue almost two million visas a year to Bangladeshis from our high commission and four consulates?

The simple answer to all these five questions is never, never, never, never and no. For decades now, in fact since December 1971, India’s larger strategic interest has rested on three principles.

First, India’s territorial boundaries must not diminish any further.

Second, India must have total autonomy over its nuclear weapons, or to use that euphemism, strategic assets.

And third, the Indian Subcontinent (the description we prefer over the think tank-invented South Asia) is a zone of its pre-eminence. If at all, stronger Indian governments would expand it. A shrinking is unacceptable.

These principles have been established, elaborated and strengthened over the past 53 years under 12 prime ministers. The third principle is now under threat.

This is not the India of the 1980s. Its economy is reaching $4 trillion and is soon to be the world’s third largest. It’s the only nation outside the P5 to drive nuclear missile submarines (SSBNs). It has a key role in the Quad. It believes it has the moral authority and strategic weight to play peacemaker in Ukraine.

That’s why it’s intriguing if its prime minister now wants his American partners to help protect the Hindu minority in Bangladesh. That’s conceding to the Americans a pre-eminence India has always contested, resented and feared.

It is true that the treatment of Hindus in Bangladesh is a troubling issue. This arose as a result of then Pakistan prime minister Liaquat Ali Khan failing to keep his part of his pact with Jawaharlal Nehru on the treatment of minorities (April 1950). He was assassinated soon afterwards (October 1951), and Pakistan saw no sanctity in such sovereign commitments.

The large minority has often been targeted in the past, sometimes in the course of domestic political turmoil and sometimes because of events in India. Significant examples of the latter are the Hazrat Bal incident in Srinagar in 1963 and the Babri Masjid demolition in 1992.

Millions of Hindus among the 10 million-plus East Pakistanis who sought refuge in India during the genocide of 1971 chose not to return. Besides these, there had been multiple waves of the flight of Hindus in the 1950s and 1960s. The fact, however, is that the exodus became a trickle in the 1970s and then mostly faded.

The 15 Hasina years were the calmest for the Hindus and some of them also found key positions in the power structure. Even in these years, a riot and an attack was just a whisper away. In 2013, when the Bangladesh Supreme Court barred the Jamaat-e-Islami from contesting elections, the mobs turned on Hindus and their places of worship. These are recorded, undisputed facts.

Even in the wake of Hasina’s dramatic meltdown now, Hindus and their places of worship were targeted, as were symbols of Indian presence, including the Indira Gandhi Cultural Centre. However, the interim administration spoke up at the highest level—Muhammad Yunus himself—to bring back some security.

That his administration acted with such alacrity, I would submit, was also because India spoke up strongly. However nasty the anti-Indianism on the street might be, Bangladeshi elites know it is their most vital relationship. They cannot permanently annoy or harm India, although there are forces—especially on the Islamist Right—who might wish to do so. The basic point is that this response is evidence that India enjoys sufficient clout of its own to secure safety for the Hindus in Bangladesh. Then why that appeal to Biden?

The Modi government will need to reflect on that. It was likely directed at the domestic audience. It is just that it is self-defeating and self-demeaning to believe that your Hindu constituency in India would be more reassured with you seeking Biden’s influence in Bangladesh rather than using your own.

As we highlighted earlier, it threatens that third postulate of your fundamental strategic imperatives: pre-eminence in the Subcontinent. Nobody ever achieved or protected it by inviting the elephant inside your tent.

How irritated do we get when other countries, including neighbours and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), lecture us on our Muslims? Does India now want to be the OIC equivalent of Hindu interests all over the world? That isn’t the moral positioning for one wanting to be a vishwamitra (friend to the world) if not yet the vishwaguru (teacher to the world).

Finally, how do you balance your domestic political needs with strategic interests? We Indians are not the only ones who pore over or over-analyse everything done or said about us in our neighbourhood. The neighbours, all a fraction our size, track every word spoken here. The raging anti-Muslim politics in Assam now, Himanta Biswa Sarma’s repeated use of the word ‘miyan’, (dogwhistle for Bangladeshi-origin Muslim) won’t help find a new balance for the relationship with Hasina’s successors or the public opinion there.

Bangladesh has dumped Sheikh Hasina and the Awami League now. Are we dumping Bangladesh in turn? Hasina’s debacle must not be India’s. It would be very unwise to keep moping and waiting for Bangladeshis to ‘come to their senses’. A sovereign country will go where its people take it. We can’t choose our neighbours. But we can choose the kind of neighbour we want to be.