Sunanda K. Datta-Ray | Delhi, Dhaka need to mend fences: Could Hasina help?

A plump 77-year-old widow’s feud with a world-famous 83-year-old Nobel Prize-winning economist should not be allowed to distort India’s complex relations with Bangladesh. On August 5, Sheikh Hasina Wajed was forced to flee her country after resigning as Prime Minister, a job she had held for nearly 20 years, and escaped in an Army plane to India as vengeful mobs stormed her mansion in Dhaka. Following her flight, Muhammad Yunus, hailed as “banker to the poor” and awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for transporting peasants from poverty to prosperity, was elevated to be the Bangladesh government’s de facto head.

India is Bangladesh’s biggest, closest, richest and most powerful neighbour. The world’s fifth longest land border straggling for 4,096 km along five Indian states separates and unites the two countries that were once one. It’s difficult to separate the personal from the political in the sequence of events that haunts troubled Bangladesh. But the acrimony that flared up on August 13 after some fairly innocuous comments on the social media by the exiled Ms Wajed suggest that although Dhaka may not have made a formal request for her extradition, it is waiting for a chance to turn the tables on the former Prime Minister. Mr Yunus wants her silenced and repatriated to Bangladesh to face a public trial for alleged “atrocities” committed on her watch. Unable to forget or forgive how the leaders of the August 1975 military coup slaughtered her father, mother, brothers and sundry other relatives, Ms Wajed is determined to resist the move.

No one is sure exactly why and when she and the benign-looking Mr Yunus fell out. But unimpressed by the praise lavished on him, she once called him a “bloodsucker” of the poor and accused his Grameen Bank of charging exorbitant interest rates while her courts sentenced the octogenarian economist and social worker to six months in jail for violating labour laws. One theory is that Ms Wajed has been determined to discredit him ever since he toyed with the notion of setting up a political party to rival the governing Awami League founded by her late father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, dubbed “Bangabandhu” or “Friend of Bengalis”. Ms Wajed may also have suspected Mr Yunus of being close to her arch-rival, Begum Khaleda Zia, widow of the also assassinated dictator Gen. Zia-ur Rahman, and now leader of his Bangladesh Nationalist Party.

Whatever the reason, Mr Yunus’s trial provoked a wave of global interest. Irene Khan, Amnesty International’s former head and now a UN special rapporteur, who was present, told AFP that it was “a travesty of justice”. In August, more than 170 global celebrities, including former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, Virgin Group founder Richard Branson and U2 lead singer Bono, asked Sheikh Hasina to stop Mr Yunus’ “persecution” and “continuous judicial harassment”. But no one responded to her invitation to international experts to assess the legal proceedings.

Beyond the bickering while the fugitive former Prime Minister is holed up in an Indian safe house looms the bigger issue of justice for 170 million Bangladeshis, including nearly 14 million Hindus who feel insecure and persecuted in a Muslim-majority country. Bangladesh has yearned for economic progress and political stability ever since it was violently torn out of Pakistan’s womb in the brief but bitter 1971 liberation war. India cannot be indifferent to this quest or ignore the plight of Hindus who are frequently the target of attacks and expropriation by Muslims.

Even Muhammad Yunus does not deny this although he finds Indian versions “exaggerated”. His explanation is that Bangladeshi Muslims are not communal. But they see Bangladeshi Hindus as supporters of Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League which they regard as India’s catspaw. He admits, however, that some local Muslims might be tempted to seize Hindu property. In fact, the process began in 1947 when Bengal was divided on religious grounds between India and Pakistan. It has continued ever since. Bangladeshi Hindus often don’t differentiate between Awami League and BNP supporters, seeing both at some socio-economic levels as opposed to the Hindu population, which has dwindled from 22 per cent of the total to only eight per cent. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had this beleaguered minority across a porous border in mind when he controversially amended immigration laws to make it easier for certain categories of Hindus (as well as Sikhs, Jains, Parsis and Christians) abroad to reclaim their Indian identity.

To be fair, Ms Wajed has been discreet about events since her resignation as Prime Minister and panic-stricken August 5 flight. In her only public statement since then -- which her US-based businessman son, Sajeeb Ahmed Wajed Joy, posted on his X handle on social media, presumably with her consent -- she demanded “justice”, saying that those involved in recent “terror acts”, killings and vandalism should be investigated, identified and punished.

This outraged Mr Yunus, who immediately denounced the comment as an “unfriendly gesture”, asserting that Ms Wajed would have to remain silent to prevent discomfort to both countries until Dhaka requested her extradition. “It is not good for us or for India” he added, explaining: “If India wants to keep her until the time Bangladesh wants her back, the condition would be that she has to keep quiet.” Mr Yunus had clarified earlier that while Bangladesh values strong ties with India, New Delhi would have to move “beyond the narrative that portrays every other political party except the Awami League as Islamist and that the country

will turn into Afghanistan without Sheikh Hasina”. While treaties with India on transit through Bangladesh, sharing the Teesta waters, buying electricity from Gautam Adani and other issues can be reviewed, the public trial and punishment of Ms Wajed that he speaks of sounds like a witch-hunt that assumes guilt in advance. That is hardly India’s style.

Mr Yunus himself has unwittingly suggested a solution to such problems.

“She is there in India and at times she is talking, which is problematic. Had she been quiet, we would have forgotten it; people would have also forgotten it as she would have been in her own world. But sitting in India, she is speaking and giving instructions. No one likes it,” he said.

Discretion is the better part of valour. Whatever her grievances, the fallen Bangladeshi leader’s silence now might help to build a rewarding future for both countries. Her hosts must impress on Ms Wajed that it is in her interest, as well as in India’s, to avoid any follow-up to the August 13 post. New Delhi and Dhaka urgently need the respite to rebuild fences.