Despite India's efforts for cordial ties, rising anti-India sentiments within Bangladesh's hardliner-dominated interim government pose a major challenge

The harsh fact is that however much India may concede, it will not have cordial relations with Bangladesh’s interim government. This may surprise many who believe that Muhammad Yunus, the chief advisor, whose position is analogous to a prime minister’s, is neither an India hater nor a dyed-in-the-wool fundamentalist Islamist. He is a survivor with whom one can do business.

Even if one goes with this assessment, and believes that he wants good relations with this country, the trouble will be with those who call the shots in the interim government--the student leaders, the coordinators of the Anti-Discriminatory Students’ Movement (ADSM) that caused Sheikh Hasina’s exit. They reportedly elevated Yunus to his present position and, heeding the Bangladesh Nationalist Party’s (BNP’s) demand, also got Lt-Gen Jahangir Alam Chowdhury (Retd) to replace Brig-Gen Shakhawat Hussain (Retd) as advisor, Home Affairs, supposedly because the latter had made “pro-Awami” league remarks. Brig-Gen Hussain has been given the ministry of Textiles and Jute.

Most of the coordinators are intensely—and, to go by their conduct, incurably-- hostile to India. The manner in which they and multitudes of students sprang to blame India for the floods in the eastern districts of Bangladesh in August, 2024, clearly indicated their pathological hatred towards this country. Attributing the deluge to India opening the sluice gates of the Dumbur dam on the Gumti river flowing into Bangladesh, without warning to the latter’s authorities, and thus providing them no time to prepare to deal with the consequences, they took out processions and held rallies condemning India and mouthing threats to it.

According to a report in The Daily Star (August 22, 2024) headlined “Students protest blaming India for flash floods,” students of several public universities staged demonstrations, rallies and torchlight processions, blaming India for the flash floods and chanting slogans like “Bharatiya agrashon rukhe dao jonogan” (“People, halt India’s aggression”). The report further quoted a coordinator, Golam Kibria Chowdhury Mishu, as saying, “For the past 53 years India has been torturing Bangladesh in different ways.”

Similar slogans were shouted, and vituperations against India mouthed, in other processions and rallies in most of the important universities across Bangladesh.  A report in the daily sun (August 22, 2024) carried under the heading “Protest at DU [Dhaka University] blames India for the flash floods,” quotes Hasib Al Islam, a coordinator of the ADSM, as saying, among other things, “Delhi, forget your dominance and aggression. The time of the Fascist Hasina is over.”

According to a report in The Daily Star (datelined August 22, 2024) carried under the heading “India has shown ‘inhumanity’ by opening the dam, says Nahid,” Md Nahid Islam, a coordinator and an advisor holding multiple portfolios including Information and Broadcasting, said while briefing journalists in Dhaka at the end of an advisory council meeting, “We can see upstream water coming in and creating a flood situation. India has shown inhumanity and non-cooperation by opening the dam without prior warning.”

He added, “We will urge, and hope that India will refrain from this kind of policy against the people of Bangladesh soon. We must find a solution on how we can protect the people of India and Bangladesh from this kind of natural disaster together.” That the second sentence within the above quotation reflected a fraudulent effort to show a desire to do business with India, is clear from what else he said, “Students and people of Bangladesh are angry with this policy of India” and that the people of Bangladesh are struggling for their share of the water for a long time—implying that India had been denying it to them.

India showed subsequently that the floods were triggered by unprecedented torrential rainfall in the contiguous areas of India and eastern Bangladesh and not any of its actions. No thunderous anti-Indian pronouncement on the deluge has since been heard from Bangladesh’s student “revolutionaries” in shining armour.  What they said and did, however, indicated two things. The first is a deep-rooted hatred for India which bursts forth in instantaneous accusations on the basis of suppositions and not verified information. Nahid Islam’s outburst mentioned above is an example of this, which is particularly reprehensible because, his being an advisor, his pronouncements bear the stamp of the government’s authority.

Second, the rallies and protests showed that there is either an organisational infrastructure for expressing anti-India sentiments through action, or an ability and intention to use the mobilizational mechanism deployed in the ASDM to condemn India.  In other words, it showed a mindset that waits for any opportunity to condemn India, and which will be very difficult to eradicate.

In any case, a serious effort to eradicate this mindset is unlikely to be forthcoming given the composition of the council of advisors, which is dominated by people hating this country.

Consider the case of advisor for home affairs, Lt-Gen Jahangir Alam Chowdhury (Retd). His intense hatred for India was in evidence a number of times when, as a major-general, he was director-general of Bangladesh Rifles (now Border Guards Bangladesh). During a visit to India for talks with the then director-general of the Border Security Force (BSF), Ajay Raj Sharma, he had, on September 28, 2004, mockingly dismissed the detailed information India had provided about the location of training camps of north-east India’s secessionist rebel groups in Bangladesh, saying, “There is not a single camp in Bangladesh. We looked for the camps’ locations given in the BSF list. Some of the addresses were of our cantonment area and our headquarters…. Some addresses even pertained to the Bay of Bengal.” During the same visit, he had said in respect of illegal Bangladeshi entrants into India, “Why should people come from Bangladesh to India? Your economic situation is not better than Bangladesh’s. There are 50,000 Indian in Bangladesh who have entered the country illegally.” He had added that if India’s economy was better than Bangladesh’s, “You would not have gone for work in (the) Middle East and the Arab countries.”

Advisor, Religious Affairs, AFM Khalid Hossain, is a Nayeb-e-Ameer of Hefazat-e-Islam Bangladesh (Hefazat) and an advisor to Islami Andolan Bangladesh, both bitterly hostile to India. Thirteen persons were killed and scores injured in clashes between Hefazat’s supporters on the one hand, and the security forces and Awami League activists on the other, during the violent protests it staged against Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Dhaka on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Bangladesh’s independence on March 26, 2021. Chief advisor Yunus had a cordial meeting with leaders of the Hefazat on August 31, 2024.

Given all this, India needs to deliver a simple message to the interim government: we want good relations with you, but do not mess with us and do things like resuming the sanctuary and support some of the earlier governments of your country gave to north-east India’s secessionist rebels. And please remember that we can cause you far greater trouble than you can cause to us.

(The author is Consulting Editor, The Pioneer. The views expressed are personal)