Kolkata: Early on Thursday, exiled Bangladeshi medical practitioner and popular YouTuber Pinaki Bhattacharya put up a Facebook post telling Bangladeshi directors and actors not to work in West Bengal-based OTT platform Hoichoi or any other Indian platforms.
In the post, Bhattacharya appealed to Bangladeshi actor Mosharraf Karim to not promote his upcoming movie ‘Hubba’ for Hoichoi. The post ends with a veiled threat to Bangladeshi directors and actors. Bhattacharya wrote he hopes he would not have to be tough on them.
Bhattacharya’s Facebook post has riled sections of the Bangladeshi film industry. Although no one wanted to come on record and comment on a “political matter”, this new post has not come as a surprise as Bhattacharya has been putting out a series of videos criticising India’s interference in Bangladesh’s national elections on 7 January that brought Hasina back to power.
For over a month, Bhattacharya has been exhorting his 1.6 million subscribers through his videos to boycott Indian products in Bangladesh. In one such video posted on 23 January, Bhattacharya attacks PM Narendra Modi for constructing Ram Mandir in the very place where the Babri Masjid once stood, asks India to stop meddling in Bangladesh’s internal affairs and calls upon common people to identify and boycott Indian products.
In the video that has got 793K views in four weeks, Bhattacharya uses abusive words for Modi and his supporters among the Hindu community in Bangladesh.
Bhattacharya then listed out Indian companies like Marico, Emami, Dabur, Asian Paints, Godrej and others in the video and called for a boycott.
As an avowed friend of India, Blitz magazine editor Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury said he is worried about this ‘Boycott India’ campaign that has been gaining social media traction in his country ever since Sheikh Hasina came back to power for a historic fifth term in office in January.
Choudhury feels if it is not nipped in the bud, the campaign has the potential of destabilising Bangladesh’s strategic partnership with India and bringing its main opposition party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), back in the political game.
Talking to ThePrint over phone from Dhaka, Choudhury said the campaign is designed to hurt not just Indo-Bangladesh trade relations but also Bangladesh’s economy by keeping Indian products off the shelves in the country.
“The BNP believes Hasina came back to power in Bangladesh with India’s support. It now wants to mobilise a popular movement against Hasina by tapping into anti-India sentiments in certain sections of Bangladeshi society. After being away from power for 15 long years, this is the only game left for the BNP to play,” said Choudhury.
Though the BNP has not officially endorsed the campaign, Choudhury said its leaders are behind those influencers who are powering the campaign against Indian products on social media.
What has begun as a campaign to boycott Indian products from local markets, may turn anti-minority in no time, Choudhury said, and thereby benefit the politics of the BNP and its former political partner Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami. Ironically, the campaign is being powered by a Bangladeshi Hindu: Pinaki Bhattacharya.
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Mirroring Maldives, attacking India
In one of his videos that has garnered 7.1 lakh views within five days, Bhattacharya has compared Hindutva to Zionism, expressed concerns over India’s growing influence in the world and named Choudhury as both an Indian and Israeli agent in Bangladesh.
The video names and shames Choudhury and calls him an enemy of the people.
“Bhattacharya has taken a leaf out of the India Out campaign in Maldives. The problem is other social media influencers are also coming on board to support the Boycott India campaign by fanning anti-India sentiment among people,” Choudhury said.
“The anti-India movement has surged online, fuelled by user-generated content. Photos of crossed-out Indian products like Amul butter and Dabur honey are circulating alongside barcode identification tips to boycott these goods. A single post highlighting the 890 prefix used in barcodes for Indian products garnered more than 1,000 shares, showcasing the movement’s online reach,” Al Jazeera reported 7 February.
Gono Odhikar Parishad, a political force aligned with the BNP, is promoting the boycott movement, Al Jazeera wrote.
“It’s now crystal clear that India did everything possible to keep the regime in power since 2014,” BNP international affairs secretary Rumeen Farhana told Al Jazeera.
The BNP has not officially associated itself with the Boycott India campaign. Nitai Roy Chowdhury, vice-chairman of the party’s central committee, told ThePrint, that BNP supports a free market economy and has nothing to do with the campaign.
“There may be market forces at work here. This campaign may be the handiwork of multinational companies which want to enter Bangladeshi market by keeping Indian products out. Why would my party support such a campaign?” Roy Chowdhury said.
Dhaka journalist Maruf Hasan, who covers the BNP, said the party may not be in a position to launch and sustain such a campaign. “Before the elections, many top BNP leaders were sent to jail. Many more workers and activists of the party were also put behind bars. They are gradually being let out. The party may not be in a position to go against India at the moment,” Hasan said.
A ‘flawed’ election & a gutted Opposition
While distancing the BNP from the Boycott India campaign, Roy Chowdhury said it is high time for New Delhi to ask itself if it wants the death of democracy in its neighbourhood.
Though the Awami League won 223 seats out of 300 in parliament and Hasina came back to power for a historic fifth term, Roy Chowdhury said it was a rigged election.
His party had boycotted the election when Hasina refused to accept its demand of stepping down before the 7 January polls and allowing a neutral caretaker government to be put in place for a free and fair election.
“The 7 January election was rejected by the people of Bangladesh. Too few came out to vote. The official voting percentage of 40 percent was a lie,” Roy Chowdhury said.
The veteran leader said there is palpable anger on the streets against Sheikh Hasina for turning Bangladesh into a one-party state.
Dhaka’s political watchers say a headless BNP perhaps would not have been able to defeat Hasina even if it contested the polls. The party’s chairperson Khaleda Zia has been informally prohibited from making political moves by the ruling dispensation. Zia’s son and BNP acting chairman Tarique Rahman is in exile after being convicted in the 2004 grenade attack case. He conducts the party’s affairs remotely from London. And many of the party’s other leaders were sent to jail before the January 7 polls.
All these factors make the current Boycott India campaign the perfect opportunity to come back into the game without dirtying its hands, said Bangladeshi academic Sharin Shajahan Naomi, currently a postdoctoral fellow at KREA University in Andhra Pradesh.
Naomi said since the BNP had to officially sever ties with the Jamaat owing to its fundamentalist agenda, it has cultivated a vast network of online activists and unofficial spokespersons like Pinaki Bhattacharya.
“These individuals in turn maintain close contacts with internal human rights bodies and foreign press and feed them negative news on the Hasina administration and its close ties with India. Many so-called neutral political observers, who are of Bangladeshi origin but are now settled abroad and appear on foreign TV news, have been cultivated over the years by the BNP. The Boycott India campaign is a perfect example of how smooth their operations have become,” Naomi told ThePrint.
“The India-Bangladesh strategic friendship has deepened over the years. The BNP has already caused some worry by stealthily coming back into the game with the Boycott India campaign. Neither India nor Bangladesh should take this lightly.”
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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Boycott india
95% of Bangladeshi are aligned with this “India Out” or “Boycott India” campaign. This is not designed by Pinaki Bhattacharjee or some other else. All the Bangladeshis own this campaign. This is the result what India or Indians people has achieved from the relationship with Bangladesh. Nobody is our friend and off course Indians were never our friend or never will be. We think on that day India will be our true friend when they give commercially sanction on us. We will be very happy and will appreciate if India banned Bangladesh and reject all relationships with us.
Whether making CAA operational would provide material to these inimical forces to stir feelings against India.
Pinaki is our hero to boycott India …