Opinion | India, Pakistan, US, China: The Great Geopolitical Game In Bangladesh, And Where Delhi Will Land

Students paint graffiti on a wall in Dhaka on August 10, nearly a week after Sheikh Hasina's ouster as PM following a massive student protest.

Source : PTI

When Sheikh Hasina woke up on the morning of August 5, one wonders if she imagined where she would be by that afternoon. The morning was probably similar – in unpredictability and shock – to that of August 15, 1975, which saw the massacre of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and most of his family members by a bunch of soldiers. So, for Hasina, when the moment came, pragmatism was the preferred route, and she flew out and landed in India.

Sheikh Hasina has been great for India, and, in many ways, for Bangladesh. But like most high performers in politics, as her personal sense of legitimacy grew on the performance front, she clearly started taking short-cuts on the conformance front. 

Managing incumbency is a great art in politics – as power has a natural tendency to attract advisers who trade reassuring delusions to the leader in return for favours, in the process, gradually distancing them from reality. 

People get tired of even the best performers, and not all high performers know how to ride one wave to another like a skilled surfer. Also, as new issues and leaders emerge out of the great moral vortex of society, a powerful incumbent leader is prone to taking the cosy way of denying, shunning, and suppressing them – rather than engaging, co-opting and sharing with them, which is the foundational process by which democracy funnels the latent political anxieties and energies of a society.     

At The Intersection Of Major External Interests

While the street action continues in Bangladesh, a much more important question is the nature of forces that will come together to prevail in the aftermath to provide a hopefully sustainable new government. This, in some measure, is also related to what global and regional interests may play out in the process. Bangladesh sits at the intersection of four major external interests – those of India, Pakistan, US, and China. 

Indian interests are premised on stability, secularism, and sensitivity vis-à-vis China. Chinese interests primarily revolve around partnership and access against India and the US. American interests revolve around partnership against China. Pakistani interests revolve around leverage against India. A lot of other conversations around democracy, human rights, economy etc are unfortunately only relevant – especially in these times of ferment – either from a stability and sustainability point of view or from a perception point of view.

Pakistan At Play

With Hasina out, Pakistan will focus on maximising the leverage it has in the new dispensation. It suits it very much to foment unrest against minorities, steeped in its own founding belief that Islam can bind a nation, and that Bangladesh’s 1971 defiance of this principle – and putting language above religion – was an aberration. 

Also, it’s a game that Pakistanis believe they know how to play and, hence, they have meticulously built deep assets among the Bangladeshi Islamists and military over decades. It also works naturally against India. 

To that end, the pro-Pakistan forces in Bangladesh are doing their utmost to cast Hasina and India in a hyphenated perception by redirecting a lot of the blame to Delhi for the situation. A nation with little to be excited about recently, it would be a clear breakthrough if Pakistan could have it their way. It allows them to activate the ‘eastern front’ – and create the spectre of a three-front war for India down the line.

Hasina, India’s Friend

India had a great friend in Sheikh Hasina, a relationship honed since her father’s time – through her years in India after his assassination, and steeled by a strong policy alignment in the last 15 years. This relationship was great for India, but also worked wonders for Bangladesh, as its per capita income surpassed that of India in a delightful trajectory of sustained growth. Despite the upset, the support for Awami League’s ideology remains rooted deep in the Bangladeshi sense of nationhood, language, and culture. That support is the most powerful leverage for India. 

All said and done, the last 15 years – with India as a friend – were the most stable and progressive years for Bangladesh. The truth is, Bangladesh can never be a peaceful and prosperous country without a constructive and additive relationship with India.

What US Wants

The US establishment, on its part, has mostly treated Bangladesh with benign negligence over the past two decades. Part of it was as India would have wanted it. Part of it was Bangladesh being mostly a democracy, even if with hiccups (which, when compared to next-door Myanmar, still felt like a blessing). Also, unlike Sri Lanka, Bangladesh largely conducted itself responsibly on the economic front until quite recently, when the Ukraine war hurt its forex reserves deeply. And, of course, on China, US and Indian interests mostly converged with Sheikh Hasina’s policy. 

However, a lot has changed in the last few years. The Indo-Pacific pivot and the steady but firm ramping up of the new Cold war meant that the US was increasingly worried about Sheikh Hasina’s undemocratic impulses and, hence, the resilience of the status quo model. The US has also been a witness to India’s rapidly deteriorating ability to maintain dominance in the Maldives, Sri Lanka, and Nepal. 

So, under Biden, once the US managed to rebalance Pakistan in its favour away from the CPEC lobby, the clear next big task was to get a better and direct handle on the two possible gateways to the Bay of Bengal for China – Myanmar and Bangladesh. 

Where things stand, Muhammad Yunus, seen as favourable to the US, has taken over as the chief adviser, at the head of a group at least not overtly comprising any active Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) or Jamaat members. Given that student organisations have demanded that the army remain out of this, it’s possible that the army may maintain a low-profile on the face of it. However, with the army as the sole guarantor of a peaceful transition and continuation of any new model, it will certainly have a big say in the background. 

Certain sections of the army and BNP-Jamaat elements lurking in the shadows of power, pro-China industrialists, all these are conduits to different degrees for Pakistan to exert its influence in Bangladesh politics. However, an ideal government that the US would want is – a model less vulnerable to Islamists and pro-China forces, and one open to lending itself to healthy electoral democracy eventually. 

Bangladeshi politics dominated by Pakistan can very quickly pivot to China, given that the Pakistani game in recent years frequently attempted to bid China and the US against each other. So, an ideal model from the US point of view would mean: 

1. Stabilise the government with Yunus at the head of an opposition coalition and army as local guarantor. It’s happening. 
2. Reset and resolve low-hanging fruit that fueled the current movement, a process that has already begun. 
3. Allow the disarray in and discontent with Awami League to subside – without (or with) Sheikh Hasina. It may take a year or two for the incumbency factor to start swinging.  
4. Call for an election down the line and hope that an alternative emerges that’s sufficiently democratic and secular, is not controlled by Pakistan or the Bangladesh military, and potentially upgrades relationships with the US at the cost of China. 

It’s important to note here that the more elections are delayed, the greater the chances are of the Awami League maintaining the bulk of its vote bank. It’s also important for the US to manage the ‘revenge factor’ within the bounds. 

The trickier parts on this path are getting Pakistan to play ball without being too duplicitous; India and Pakistan’s ability to work with each other; and the fact that there are words about the army chief having some leanings towards China.

The China Factor

The last and probably the most underrated-yet-powerful play could be from China, which has a great convergence of interests with Pakistan. This is South Asia. China believes it’s not the US’ business to get involved here (where India has so far concurred with it, albeit selectively). 

Pakistan believes that, with China at its back, it has an upper hand. It believes that China’s successes in the Maldives, Sri Lanka, and Nepal over the last two decades work to its favour. When allowed to choose, it would rather have China in Bangladesh than the US, hoping the former will allow it to be its trusted junior partner working the works in the deep, while China itself can focus on economic and military matters, sans all the preaching on democracy, human rights and terrorism. 

Pakistan would like to be China’s satrap in South Asia. But since China has shown a tendency to go direct in many countries so far, a great role in Bangladesh can certainly revive that hope all over again. 

China, however, has a lot less respect for Pakistan than Pakistan would like to pretend. It would want a pro-China polity, of course, allowing unfettered access for its military, but also economic interests. But it would also want a semblance of stability and, towards that, a quasi-democratic model guaranteed by a pro-China army suits it just right. 

It will not want Islamists to create too much trouble, even as it would want anti-India sentiments to take deeper roots. Its financial muscle will try co-opting the industrial and political elites at the back of major investment projects and collaborations, hoping the intelligentsia fall in line. In any case, a deeper engagement with China, even without the army on the political scene, may mean stronger infiltration of pro-China lobbies on both sides of the political divide – including the post-Hasina Awami League – as seems to be roughly the case in Nepal.

Brothers-In-Arms

So where does that leave India in the net calculations? First and foremost, India needs to approach this with an open mind. Sheikh Hasina is 76 and has ruled for 15 years. Bangladesh needs a new leader and a new script. With due respect to the Awami League, it needs to find that new script. 

India needs to pragmatically recognise that, without the US, it can’t effectively counter China in the subcontinent, and build a deeper and stronger collaboration with the US (with the US recognising that India is the lead partner here). Along with the US, Canada, Europe, Japan, and Australia, it needs to forge an economic blueprint for Bangladesh that effectively betters what China can bring to the table, raising hopes for the unemployed youth. 

If needed, it should be willing to work with Pakistan to restore a normal democratic process, using the US to keep Pakistan’s more destructive impulses in check. It’s not easy to be Pakistan these days. West Pakistan always treated East Pakistan – as Bangladesh was known before independence in 1971 – as beneath it, but the irony of the times is that, today, Pakistan is poorer than Bangladesh. A no-limits Pakistan looking for leverage against India can only destroy a country a la Afghanistan. But then the US has had decades of hands-on and successful – even if half-satisfying – experience in using the Pakistani army to serve its core interests.

The key to keeping China out is countering its economic dominance in Bangladesh – it will take a village of rich democracies to do that. And to counter Pakistan, India needs the American stick, apart from a shared distaste for Islamists and unpredictable instability. 

In the interim, India needs its long-cultivated clout in Bangladesh as well as to dial up the idealism of the student leaders – who are the soul of this upsurge – to keep the Islamists off the steering wheel, counter anti-India narrative on the ground effectively, and keep emotions in check at home. 

It also needs to stand for restoration of a healthier democracy and keeping the army out of politics in the long run. An open-minded engagement with the new reality – drawing a wider arc – are great starting points for India. 

The great thing is what’s good for Bangladesh – vibrant democracy, secularism, focus on economic progress, friendly relations with the closest neighbours, its economic and strategic independence, deep cultural relations with India – are also largely what’s good for India. Now that should be an easy one to follow through on.

Prashant Kumar is an author, media strategist and CEO, and a commentator on media, economy and strategy

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