Shikha Mukerjee | Yunus’ hostile Dhaka sets a huge challenge for Delhi

Dhaka’s formal demand for Hasina’s extradition, which New Delhi is unlikely to accept, will only intensify the friction.

The problem is embedded in the ideology and political practices of the BJP and its parent RSS. Its cadres and the bhakts seem to have been programmed over decades to react to certain signs. The Congress is one red rag and if there is a way of linking this object of dislike with the BJP-RSS’ ideological obsession about Muslims, the response is an automatic release of a tide of verbal vitriol that even the Supreme Court has described as “hate speech”. In a mirror reflection of this, specific political parties and extravagantly Islamist, that is, “radical” organisations in Bangladesh see India as a source of threat to the identity of this Muslim majority nation. In power and out of power, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, the Jamaat-e-Islami and the newer Hefazat-e-Islam are deeply suspicious of India, Hindus and other minorities in that order, and see them as a packaged source of destabilisation.

India’s neighbourhood has hugely changed. The compulsions of domestic politics in the neighbourhood require countries to sustain a high-pitched search for symbols and people who can be targeted as trouble-makers intent on destabilisation. Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India has made it difficult to negotiate with equally touchy neighbours to maintain cordial relations. India has for a long time been part of domestic politics in Bangladesh. Under pressure from the BNP to hold elections, which Muhammad Yunus has promised to do by the end of 2025, the Modi government will have to find ways of dealing with the inevitable increase in anti-India rhetoric that will be a part of the political campaign.

During Sheikh Hasina’s times, the radical Islamist sections like the Hefazat-e-Islam or the Jamaat-e-Islami routinely spewed the type of venom that slogans like the BJP's “Ek Hain toh Safe Hain” or “Batange toh Katange” reflect. The difference was that she downplayed it and kept the India-Bangladesh relationship on an even keel. The Yunus regime cannot afford to function in the mode that Hasina did.

India has to be prepared to handle the rhetoric and the attacks that the resurgent BNP plus the radical Islamist elements will indulge to mobilise the masses. To put it mildly, the Modi government is seriously under-prepared to do so, as the tote bag incident revealed. Having used the illegal Muslim migrant from Bangladesh whose sole purpose, as the pitch for the Jharkhand election exp-lained, was to bring about a demographic change by targeting women, land and assets, the Modi government has made it harder for India to handle its relationship with Bangladesh with any semblance of maturity.

Changes in the neighbourhood require that the conduct of politics within India, especially of Members of Parliament from the ruling BJP, calibrate their knee-jerk reaction in ways that do not embarrass the Modi government. This was evident from BJP MPs' and the immensely influential media machine's vicious reaction to newbie MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra's tote bag, calling for solidarity with Bangladeshi Hindus. The demand was entirely in line with the Modi government’s bid to try and build bridges with the interim government led by Muhamad Yunus and the military-political establishment that supports it. Not only had the Indian Prime Minister raised the matter in his first conversation with Mr Yunus, but it was part of foreign secretary Vikram Misri’s agenda during his recent visit to Dhaka. He did speak to the interim government about the violence and attacks against Hindus, especially Chinmoy Krishna Das, formerly of Iskcon, in Chittagong, where legal services have been denied by the ultra-conservative and militant Hefazat-e-Islam agitators and lawyers.

In its mindless competition to score points against the Congress and the celebrity status of Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, the BJP committed a grave error. Coincidence or otherwise, Bangladesh's high court has commuted the death sentence on Paresh Barua, chief of the United Liberation Front of Asom (Ulfa) and a listed terrorist by both countries to life imprisonment. The reduction of the severity of his punishment in an illegal arms shipment case from 2004 coupled with the acquittal of Bangladesh Nationalist Party's former minister Lutfozzaman Babar and five others, is a message that India cannot afford to misread: the current Bangladesh regime is very different from the one led by Sheikh Hasina. The timing of the commutation of the death sentence and the acquittal indicates that the Yunus regime is conveying a clear message to India. And that message is certainly not friendly.

The “symbiotic relationship” that once existed between India and Sheikh Hasina’s Bangladesh and before that during her father Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s lifetime, is now ended. Just as the Modi government has been relentless in identifying Bangladeshis as illegal migrants and branding them hostile Muslim infiltrators, who on arrival in India become terrorists or potential trouble-makers armed with an agenda to swamp the Hindu majority in terms of population, the current political dispensation in Bangladesh have said things like “Choke the Chicken’s Neck”, referring to the narrow corridor that connects India’s Northeast with the rest of the country, that are seriously hostile.

Wriggle room to ease the current levels of mistrust has shrunk. As the head of the interim government, Yunus was pushed into defending his regime by describing the facts of temples being attacked, Hindus assaulted and killed and the general sense of insecurity as “propaganda”. For reasons of its own, Bangladesh could not have done it any other way, because that would be tantamount to an admission of human rights violation which would make the Yunus regime vulnerable in the eyes of the world.

When signs open to different readings and of course mis-readings take over, the conduct of complicated foreign policy to deal with complex issues becomes enormously difficult. The court in Bangladesh by commuting Paresh Barua's sentence has delivered a live bomb to India that will test Mr Modi’s capacity to handle foreign policy issues that significantly impact volatile domestic problems, especially in the Northeast, not just in Manipur but also in Nagaland. The vast improvement in the relations between Bangladesh and Pakistan is the other major problem that has emerged for the Narendra Modi government, accustomed as it was to lashing out at Pakistan as the source of forces, including terrorists, intent on destabilising India.