Watching Bangladesh from India (and West Bengal): Past, Present and Future

The series of extraordinary events that have unfolded in the People’s Republic of Bangladesh since July and August 2024, leading to the ouster of Sheikh Hasina from the position of Prime Minister took most Indian citizens, including those of us of the State of West Bengal, by surprise. While, it might seem in hindsight that something like this was a long time coming, when it did come, we woke up slowly, reacted variously and here we are now, trying to grapple with a very unfamiliar reality. 

An interim government led by Muhammad Yunus has taken oath, though it is debatable, to what extent it has taken charge. Most importantly, interested Indian citizens, including those of West Bengal are wondering about the same question that many citizens of Bangladesh are probably wondering too: Where is all this headed? In this piece, I shall ask more questions than provide answers, which hopefully will help formulate some sort of congruent answer to the set of incongruent questions that are emerging from various stakeholders of our common subcontinent.

Dhaka’s place

The Indian Union and the State of West Bengal has loomed large in the internal discourse of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh ever since its formation. State of West Bengal has shrunk as a distinct discourse within the People’s Republic of Bangladesh but the place of India has expanded. By discourse, I mean visible media and public statements by people of importance to the People’s Republic of Bangladesh. Even before the July mass movement that toppled the Awami League government, India had been a major focus of discussion in Dhaka’s talk shows, social media and newspapers and among political circles, academics, chatterati, diplomats, exiles, fact-checkers and conspiracy theorists. That has only increased after the new government took over in August. 

But the question is: What has been and presently is Dhaka’s place in narratives inside India and West Bengal? As opposed to the narrative of countless “Bangladeshis” flooding India in droves, actually existing Bangladesh figures minimally in domestic narratives of West Bengal and even less so in rest of India. This is an important point to appreciate. Historically, after the formation of sovereign Bangladesh, barring the 1971-1975 period that saw a deepening of civic and cultural engagement between Kolkata and Dhaka and hence, a consequent expansion of actually existing Bangladesh in West Bengal’s internal news and narrative space, there have been very few points in time when West Bengal and India has kept abreast of what goes on inside Bangladesh. 

These rare points in time include the declaration of Islam as State religion, the fall of Ershad, the 1992 attacks on Hindus including Dhakeshwari temple, Taslima Nasrin, 2001 post election violence on Hindus including the case of Purnima Rani Shil, the Nobel Prize win of Muhammad Yunus, Shahbag movement of 2013, attacks on Durga Pujo in 2021 and inauguration of Padma bridge. Attribute this to 24-hour television or the coming of age of social media but none of these compare to the fortnight or so for which Bangladesh exploded in West Bengal’s media space and for a week after 5th August,it became the main media story in West Bengal and a major story in media in rest of India, before shrinking again to near nothingness. Curiously, in West Bengal, the protests around the rape and murder of a Bengali lady in Radha Gobindo Kar Medical College, which were partly inspired by social media images, songs and slogans of the Quota Reform movement of Bangladesh as refracted and received in West Bengal curated by its own lens, helped sweep both real and fake news about Bangladesh away from West Bengal’s headlines. For the rest of India, that happened earlier still. The isolated appearance of an article or news item about Bangladesh now is exactly that – isolated. Bangladesh is now already yesterday’s story, until next time.

However, in the last decade, “Bangladeshi” has become one of the commonest words thrown around in domestic politics in India and West Bengal. Some of these narratives are laughable if not for their toxic internal effects. For example,  there are 2 crore (20 million) Bangladeshi Muslims in West Bengal alone, claimed BJP’s erstwhile West Bengal chief Dilip Ghosh. The “Bangladeshi infiltrator” issue is one of the important axes, if not the most important one, around which internal politics of Assam revolves. “Bangladeshi” has been a term that has been used by BJP, including its top leaders like Narendra Modi and Amit Shah, have abundantly used. The aggressive political weaponisation of the term “Bangladeshi” by BJP and its allied media (which is most of English, Bangla and Hindi mass media in India) has led to widespread attacks and vilification campaigns on both Hindu & Muslim Bengalis of West Bengal in BJP ruled States. 

A Bengali in India is a “Bangladeshi” unless proven otherwise – such has been the toxicity and expansiveness of this narrative. This has been used by various Non-Bengali ethnic groups as an excuse to attack Bengalis of India, including physical attacks as well as formulating laws to strip them of full citizen rights.“Bangladeshi” has become a common word of abuse in domestic politics of West Bengal and outside West Bengal, anti-BJP parties are labelled as “Bangladeshi-friendly”. If you are in the wrong place at the wrong time in India where someone may mark someone as “Bangladeshi”, the marked man may be in very serious trouble. “Are you Bangladeshi?” is a sentence many Bengalis of West Bengal increasingly hear from Hindi-Urdu speakers or Central government personnel even in West Bengal if the Bengali states that he doesn't know Hindi. Hardly a day goes by when the present author is not abused and called “Bangladeshi” on social media.

The Hindu question

If one takes a summary look at the list of notable time points provided earlier when Bangladesh broke into the headlines and mindspace in West Bengal and India, it would be clear that the condition of Hindus in Bangladesh figures prominently in that list. Why does India and/or West Bengal care about what happens to Hindus in Bangladesh? A few reasons can be listed, not necessarily in order of importance. Firstly, Millions of erstwhile Hindus of Bangladesh/East Pakistan/East Bengal are now citizens of India – not out of voluntary migration but out of various other reasons, including terror and fear. This stream has sometimes gushed, sometimes has been a trickle, but has never really stopped. Thus, these now-Indian citizens are a domestic political constituency in India and West Bengal and hence their sensitivities matter. Secondly, many Bengalis in India, especially in West Bengal, Assam and Tripura have millions of relatives who are citizens of Bangladesh and hence what happens to them matters in the same way concerns of British Bangladeshis or Bangladeshi Americans about happenings in Bangladesh are voiced often by the British or US political establishment. 

Thirdly, there is an undeniable psyche in some sectors of India and West Bengal and if I may add, minorities in Bangladesh, that looks upon the separation of East Bengal in 1947 as an unwanted event. This was followed by what is considered a betrayal of the Nehru-Liaquat pact of 1950 by the Pakistan side and hence a very lopsided volume of migration between the two Bengals. In terms of numbers, this is borne out by the monotonous decrease in Hindu percentage during the Pakistan period, which continued during the Bangladesh period. When this is contrasted by the monotonous increase in Muslim percentage in West Bengal and India in the same period, what emerges is a broad comparative conclusion about the minority situation in India and Bangladesh, considering the act of leaving one’s own homeland as the ultimate sign of desperation. While there have been attempts to explain this by looking at comparative fertility figures between Hindus and Muslims of Bangladesh and that does account for some part of the decrease in Hindu percentage but not all of it, what still remains to be explained is why are there fertility rate differences between Hindus and Muslims of Bangladesh still prevalent given education and economic situation being the two primary determinants of fertility rate and it would be patently absurd to say that Muslims have not been able to make up for their relative backwardness in education and economy in 75+ years of Pakistan and Bangladesh. 

Fourthly, one can consider most Hindus of Pakistan as involuntary and unwilling Pakistanis and it can be argued that this feeling of being unwanted or second class has continued in the Bangladesh period, except in the brief period around the 1971 Liberation War. If so, what is a good way to describe them from the India and West Bengal psyche? Let me use a provocative term here – Stranded Indians. It is for this reason that declarations are made by all political players in West Bengal and India that minorities (read Hindus) of Bangladesh will forever be welcome come to West Bengal and India and there are half-hearted, politically motivated legislations to that end, but often this ‘welcome’, especially in the last decade has been less than welcoming with Hindu of Bangladesh who have migrated to India post 1971 being persecuted outside West Bengal as Bangladeshis, that is, foreigners.

In the post-Hasina period, there have been many reports of attacks on Hindus that have found huge coverage in India and especially West Bengal. There are three narratives about this emerging about Bangladesh. One, that almost all of it is fake news. Two, that Hindus were targeted not because they were Hindus but because they were related to the fallen Awami League regime. Three, that this happened in a lawless period of uncertainty after the Hasina regime fell and in such a situation, the vulnerable parts of any society are the chosen targets of those who want to take advantage of such a situation and Hindus, being minorities, are vulnerable, in that sense, as minorities are, in any society.

A recent analytical report in Prothom Alo details district-wise the number of attacks on Hindus and mentions attacks of Hindu places of worship separately. If one takes this to be of some credibility, a disturbing pattern emerges. Firstly, while a subset of incidents circulated in the media in West Bengal and India was certainly fake, it is also true that a lot of incidents were not fake. Thus, while calling out fake news is important, using “fake news” as a catch-all term to stop discussion on real news, makes the label “fake news” fake. It would be useful to tally up all the reports in any media anywhere in the world, and then have independent fact-checking in this world of post truth. Is Bangladesh obligated to do it? No. Would it help varnish the image of Bangladesh as a transparent and free media society after the flight of Hasina? Most certainly. 

Secondly, it is undeniable that Hindus of Bangladesh have historically politically sided disproportionately with the Awami League. Thus, it is understandable that there would be more Hindu functionaries and Hindu inordinate beneficiaries and Hindu collaborators of a Awami League government than say a BNP government or a Jatiyo Party government. If one considers the theory that those Hindus who were targeted have been targeted as Awami Leaguers and many, many more Muslims were targeted as Awami Leaguers, then we arrive at an interesting point. Considering Hindus were targeted as Awami Leaguers and also considering that Hindus are over-represented within Awami League (though this has not been true for the Awami League’s top body, the Presidium, for a very long time), then we shall arrive at some percentage of total attacks. 

It can be ten, twenty or even thirty percent. It doesn't really matter if another question is asked. As far as attacks in the post Hasina period on places of worship go, what percentage of those attacks happened in places of attacks of Hindus, it would surely be a much greater percentage than the percentage of attacks on Hindus as Awami Leaguers compared to the total number of attacks on Awami Leaguers. This much greater percentage tells us something disturbing. If we add the attacks on shrines of Pirs to this list, given that it is also termed a quasi-idolatrous form of worship by the ideology of attackers, it might emerge that nearly 100% of the attacks on places of worship were on those that are Hindu or considered Hindu. Thirdly, on the question of lawlessness and the vulnerable, that is a universal truism but the direction of the vulnerability does define the architecture of a society. If a societal architecture of power becomes worse for an already  vulnerable after an event, whatever that event might be, it is not a revolution for them, at the least.

The Hindu question of Bangladesh should matter to Bangladesh more than India because the situation of the most vulnerable is the best bell-weather to determine which way the wind is blowing. Living and negotiating with plurality are characteristics of societies with democratic ethos. Democratic ethos is what performative democracy assumes when it engages in tangible expressions of it like free, fair and participatory elections, etc. A slip in democratic ethos renders the performative part that much divorced from the intent of such performance. This is important at a time when Democracy Index has slipped across South Asia, including India, and the world beyond.

It is up to Bangladesh to solve its Hindu question but there are non-Bangladesh stakeholders in India and beyond who live with the consequences of how exactly Bangladesh goes about its solution. “We are all Bangladeshis” as a blanket of silence on asymmetrical vulnerability along the religious axis is a rhetorical solution that will only engage non-Bangladesh stakeholders in ways that will then be translated within the Bangladesh establishment as enmity. Pointing to India’s own minority situation is a way to counter such unwanted engagement but then Bangladesh has to explain how it, with a decreasing minority population percentage, has moral parity with one that has an increasing minority population percentage. In democracy, numbers matter. Percentages matter even more.       

Delhi’s stake

Let me first say what will not happen. Delhi will not cut and run. It is clear by now that in spite of Delhi centric media narratives, there is an emerging school of thought that it was a mistake to have a foreign policy in Bangladesh that centred so much around Awami League – putting all the eggs in one basket, as it were. This is in partial consonance with voices within the pragmatic part of the Bangladesh establishment, the “we can’t change neighbours and we have to engage with India, whether we like it or not” part. How can one be sure that Delhi will not cut and run? A good recent example in the neighbourhood is Afghanistan. India sided staunchly with the Northern Alliance, an important part of the post-Taliban power group and had developed deep security, strategic and economic ties. And then the regime melted away with the US occupation ending and a victorious Taliban taking Kabul. After a very brief period of policy paralysis, India has re-engaged with the Taliban regime in Afghanistan – a regime that India does not officially recognise till date. This re-engagement also includes crores in monetary assistance to this day, as evidenced by the Government of India’s detailed Budget document presented this year in the Parliament of India. Afghanistan is no Bangladesh. Neither in terms of India’s engagement nor in terms of the importance of Bangladesh domestically within India. In short, Bangladesh matters much more.

Sheikh Hasina is in India. She is not the first Head of State or Head of Quasi-State or major political figure or family or foreign cultural figure facing threats whom India has hosted indefinitely. The most famous example is of course Tibet’s Dalai Lama. Would Beijing want him back? Sure. Would India send him back? Very unlikely. Nepal’s Prime Minister Bishweshwar Prasad Koirala had a long exile in India after his ouster from Prime Ministership. So did Girija Prasad Koirala, who was in exile in India when he became General Secretary of Nepali Congress which later became the ruling party of Nepal again and Girija Prasad Koirala became Prime Minister. The Indian High Commission in Maldives, which technically is sovereign Indian territory, reportedly hosted Mohamed Nasheed, former President of Maldives. India hosts the family of Mohammad Najibullah, ousted and murdered President of Afghanistan. This parallels the first hosting of Sheikh Hasina after the assassination of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. 

Take the case of BNP Standing Committee member Salahuddin Ahmed, who was purportedly abducted from Bangladesh, ended up in the Indian State of Meghalaya, got charged for illegal entry, was cleared of these charges by a Shillong court in 26 October 2018 and his acquittal was upheld by a higher court on 28 February, 2023. What was his status in India after acquittal? Without the Government of India’s consent, could he have moved back to Bangladesh immediately after the fall of Sheikh Hasina? Does India really have all the eggs in the same Awami basket? These are open questions. What should be considered is that the long and stable governance continuity in India, and its self-assumed role in South Asia and the unanimous agreement on such a role across the political spectrum in India, make Sheikh Hasina’s extradition to Bangladesh a politically impossible task for any Government of India to perform. If the extradition issue is made a precondition for any sort of Indo-Bangladesh engagement, that is going to be a non-starter. Of course India does not host anyone and everyone who asks for refuge. That decision is naturally tied to Indian interests. But what kind of interests? 

One can approach this question in reverse. Could the Government of India afford not to host Sheikh Hasina, especially given the narrative within India about the relative security of Hindus in Bangladesh during her regime and that her ouster signals an Islamist turn? No. What signal would a refusal by India to host Sheikh Hasina send to major political figures in India’s neighbouring countries who have informal ties with India in the emerging India-China competition in the neighbourhood? A signal of complete untrustworthiness. However, rank matters. Some major Awami League figures who have tried to cross into India by land have died or have been captured by Bangladesh authorities under mysterious circumstances after crossing into India. Either the fall of Hasina took Delhi by surprise or it had no plan to rescue Awami League beyond Sheikh Hasina and her innermost family circle or the current Government of India does not have the appetite for a post 15th August 1975-like policy when Kader Siddiqui and many of his pro-Mujib die-hards were hosted by the Government of India.

Over the last decade and more, India as well as Indian corporates, especially Gujarati corporates, have had expanding economic and business interests in Bangladesh. While some of them had come under criticism by the Opposition during the Sheikh Hasina government, it is to be noted that not a single Indian business installation was attacked, in spite of the sharp anti-Indian rhetoric that has only sharpened ever since Sheikh Hasina’s ouster. While the power supply deal with India’s Prime Minister’s favourite businessman Gautam Adani seems to be under scrutiny, India’s Ministry of External Affairs has indicated that the sovereign guarantees by Bangladesh need to be upheld as per International Law, however “revolutionary” any change of government may be. 

Kolkata scene

In spite of historically being Bangladesh’s geo-political and ethno-cultural twin, West Bengal under Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is driven more by hard-nosed self interest of West Bengal than any fraternal relationship. The Government of India, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has sincerely wanted the Teesta Water treaty with Bangladesh to happen but it has not happened due to staunch opposition from the West Bengal government as West Bengal stands to gain nothing but only lose from such a deal. No amount of hilsa diplomacy has changed that.

The emergence of Bengali Nationalist organisation Bangla Pokkho (of which this author is the general secretary) adds to this mix where in a peculiarly West Bengal-based Bengali Nationalist political current has emerged, a current that has neither any romantic or absurdist vision of United Bengal nor any sort of special affinity with Bangladesh, but is bent on maximally negotiating the rights of West Bengal and Bengalis within the Indian constitutional framework. In practice, more often than not, this has put West Bengal’s emerging Bengali Nationalist political current at severe odds with the nature of Indo-Bangladesh relationship during the Modi-Hasina years. 

For example, Bangla Pokkho staunchly opposes any sort of Teesta water sharing to the detriment of West Bengal, demands a rollback of the Land Boundary agreement between Delhi and Dhaka that saw about 10,000 acres of net West Bengal land being transferred to Bangladesh, opposes the usage of Chittagong port for India’s North-East bypassing the Kolkata port and much more. They also oppose Delhi’s ratification of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea that led to a huge loss of India’s and hence West Bengal’s de facto marine areas in the Bay of Bengal. Bangla Pokkho is a trenchant critic of the Government of India’s inability to protect the interests of Hindus of Bangladesh in spite of purportedly having a lot of bargaining chips to pressure Bangladesh into prioritising the concerns of Hindus of Bangladesh. This stems from the fact that it is West Bengal which largely has to bear the burden of Hindu migration from Bangladesh.

While some in Bangladesh now want review and potential cancellation of certain Indo-Bangladesh deals during Sheikh Hasina’s rule because of their charge that Sheikh Hasina had compromised on Bangladesh’s interest in lieu of being propped up by New Delhi, Bengali Nationalists of West Bengal want the same because of their charge that West Bengal’s interests were compromised by New Delhi while dealing with Dhaka ever since Narendra Modi took over as Prime Minister. If Sheikh Hasina was indeed an Indian stooge as is alleged, then those who allege so should call for all actions, deals and agreements by the Government of Bangladesh involving India during the Sheikh Hasina regime since 2008 to be reversed. Bengali Nationalists of West Bengal would welcome that, for very different reasons as mentioned above. After Sheikh Hasina’s ouster, Bangla Pokkho has demanded that the Government of India pull out from the Land Boundary Agreement and publicly declare that no Teesta Water Treaty would be in the offing. 

While BJP in West Bengal also riles against the treatment of Hindus in Bangladesh after Sheikh Hasina’s ouster, they remain silent about Bangla Pokkho’s demands of restoring the parts of West Bengal that were handed to Bangladesh by Modi.

The ouster of Sheikh Hasina was met with jubilation by Islamist political groups in West Bengal, who were also active in downplaying reports about anti-Hindu atrocities in Bangladesh. Interestingly, some of the same groups had organised the largest mass rally in the world in Kolkata against the Trial of Liberation War criminals where they had called for the ouster of Sheikh Hasina for her supposedly anti-Muslim political stand. That was a decade ago. These are the same political circles that had publicly bereaved in West Bengal the demise of Delwar Hossain Sayedi in Dhaka.

Quite different from the above, left-wing urban campus groups, especially those on the far left have been visibly excited about the students’ movement in Bangladesh, right from its inception. Multiple rallies were held by such groups in Kolkata, in direct support and solidarity with the Quota Reform movement. In such rallies, parallels were drawn by these left-wing groups between the authoritarianism of Sheikh Hasina and Mamata Banerjee. It is these groups who initially acted as the bridge via whom images, art works, slogans and songs of the July movement traversed the border and broke into West Bengal’s public consciousness, albeit through social media. These can be considered the most Bangladesh-friendly political constituency inside West Bengal at present though their power to influence Indo-Bangladesh ties, or for that matter, the attitude of West Bengal government, is practically zero. Interestingly, some of these groups were at the core of the mass protests that erupted in West Bengal after the brutal rape and murder of Moumita Debnath in Radha Gobindo Kar Medical College in Kolkata and it is hard to miss the similarity in slogans, road-painting styles, social media campaign styles and most importantly, the mass participation at the West Bengal  wide mass vigil on the night of 14th August, 2024. It seemed that the visual appeal and style of the Dhaka protests had hit Kolkata’s psyche but had been repurposed for a different cause.

Strangely enough, the “Ek Dofa” (One Point) demand that culminated in Sheikh Hasina’s ouster had also been repurposed in West Bengal, with both BJP and CPI(M) copying Dhaka slogans to demand the resignation of West Bengal’s democratically elected Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee – “Dofa Ek, Dabi Ek, Mukkhomontrir Podotyag” (One Point, One Demand, Resignation of the Chief Minister). Political exigencies still have the potential of decontextualising anti-Hasina slogans from Dhaka, only to be used in West Bengal by Sheikh Hasina’s purported ally Narendra Modi’s party BJP, among others.    

What is to be done?

For now, Bangladesh no longer figures in the hearts and minds of the public or the media in West Bengal or Rest of India but that does not change the fact that they live in mutual consequences of whatever happens next.

Firstly, dust has to settle. As far as India is concerned, it has to know who it will be dealing with. Will it be a BNP government that will be elected in, say, 6 months time or will it be looking at a Nagorik Oikyo 2.0 sort of government for some indefinite period? Will Awami League fight the next elections whenever it is held or will it be banned? Does India have or is developing a Salahuddin Ahmed type of channel in any potential political formation that might emerge out of the students’ movement? Will Jamaat-e-Islami, Khilafat Majlis and Hizb ut Tahrir types of ideologies hold greater sway in Bangladesh than they have ever had or some sort of Civil Society-Military-BGMEA-FBCCI alliance will make sure that international image does not take a hit? 

Secondly, in the present, what happens to Indian Government projects and its Line of Credit? Do they go on? Do they get renegotiated, which is easier said than done? What happens to Bangladesh’s dues to Adani? Will they be paid? Will Adani continue to supply power to Bangladesh? What about projects of other Indian corporations? When will Indian private professionals feel safe to return to their erstwhile jobs in Bangladesh? Will they be allowed to return to erstwhile jobs? Will those jobs and projects even exist?

Thirdly, what will be the role of China in Bangladesh? Will they be taking on the infrastructure development role, especially in strategic sectors? What will be Pakistan’s role in a new Bangladesh to which it has offered Visa-Free travel at a time when Indian Visa has become very limited? What will be the relationship between the old-new DGFI and ISI? Will safe havens for secessionist movements in India be rekindled in Bangladesh territory? What does one make of new Bangladesh when Mujib statues are toppled, Liberation War Hero sculptures are defiled and seminars on Mohammad Ali Jinnah are held in Dhaka by members of the Bihari community among others? Is this an exception in an exceptional period or a trend for times to come? Will the US act fully independently of India in Bangladesh? Will the US start viewing Chittagong port, CHT, Arakan areas as an area of strategic intervention to disrupt one of China’s alternatives to the Malacca Straits bottleneck? If so, how will this impact India’s North Eastern States given Muhammad Yunus’ not-so-cordial reference to the same? Will there be a strong and stable Government of Bangladesh that unites the polity inside and projects its sovereignty outside or will Bangladesh now have an internal political scene made up of multiple, mutually-competing foreign proxies? What will be the regional consequences if the Tat Ma Daw regime of Myanmar falls?

The answers to these would determine the contours of Indo-Bangladesh relationship in future.●

Garga Chatterjee is a Harvard scholar and political commentator specialising in South Asian politics and culture.