India makes sense of Bangladesh upheavals
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Govt briefs all parties amid Bangladesh upheavals
By Manish Anand
New Delhi, August 6: An all-party meeting is underway in parliament in the backdrop of the fluid situations in Bangladesh. The students’ leaders in Bangladesh in messages have called for tasking Nobel laureate Muhammed Yunus to lead an interim government in Dhaka.
The Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) under the chair of the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, had met yesterday. Union Minister for External Affairs Subhrahmanyam Jaishankar will brief the floor leaders of all political parties on prevailing situations in Bangladesh.
The US State Department during a press briefing has called for investigations into the killings during violence in Bangladesh. The US State Department has also called for the formation of a “democratically elected government” in Bangladesh.
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The all-party meeting in parliament in New Delhi may discuss the fallouts of the ouster of Sheikh Hasina, former prime minister of Bangladesh, and the comeback of Islamist hardliners in the power command structure. The all-party meeting will also make a sense of the geostrategic consequences.
The US State Department had been vocal against Hasina-led dispensation in the run up to the last election. Hasina-led Awami League had won the election.
But the speed with which the Bangladeshi Army Chief Waker-us-Zaman reached out to Bangladesh National Party, Jatiya Party, and Jamat-e-Islami has alarmed the diplomatic community in New Delhi. The Army Chief also speedily worked out the release of the BNP chief Khalida Zia from the jail.
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Bangladesh’s leading daily, Daily Star, front-paged details of communal violence against the minority Hindus. The Dhaka-based daily reported a mass scale killing, looting, and arsons against the Hindu religious, business, and residential places.
The Opposition leaders will seek to know from Jaishankar on steps India may take to safeguard the minority Hindus. The government is wary of a largescale exodus of the minority Hindus from Bangladesh.
Hundreds of Indian students had already fled Bangladesh after the outbreak of the violence. While India has a consensus approach in matters involving external affairs, the Opposition may probe the government on the scale of the involvement of China and Pakistan in riling up protestors in Bangladesh against Hasina.
Yunus, who is likely to head an interim government, has complained on several occasions that “India maintained relations with just one party and one person in Bangladesh”. Yunus may not change his opinion so soon, say diplomatic experts, because he was slapped with numerous cases by the Hasina government.
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Besides, the Jatiya Party and the Jamat-e-Islami are known to be rabidly anti-India. The Bangladeshi Army has said that national election will be held quickly. Experts see least chance of Bangladesh being ruled by the Army as had been cases in the past.
But the chances of the new regime in Dhaka take adversarial position on the Awami League may not be ruled out as Hasina reportedly had brought her party workers on the street to deal with the student protestors.
Yet, Bangladesh upheavals have revived the 2022 collapse of Gotabaya Rajapaksa regime in Sri Lanka. Bangladesh has been reeling under nine per cent plus inflation for the past four years.
On the lines of Sri Lanka, Bangladesh too was faced with dwindling remittances. Bangladesh majorly relies of remittances for dollar reserves, as had been the case with Sri Lanka.
Thus, the new regime in Bangladesh may knock at the doors of China to avert a sovereign default on the lines of Sri Lanka. The political parties in India will also be wary of China gaining a firm foothold in another neighbouring country with which several of the states share borders.
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