India’s Narendra Modi, acting like a ‘cry-baby’, turned to powerful America’s Donald Trump and shared his government’s concerns about the Bangladesh situation after the ouster of New Delhi’s most favoured ruler Sheikh Hasina, albeit as a result of student-mass uprising against her fascist rule!
We watched how callously an Indian media representative, at the joint press conference of Trump and Modi at the White House on 13 February 2025, insisted on the US President’s commenting on what he claimed as evident involvement of the American deep state in changing regime in Bangladesh during the Biden administration in August 2024.
Trump denied outright any such role and Modi kept mum, only publicly, about the leading question. But Trump’s gesture towards Modi saying ‘I will leave (the) Bangladesh (issue) to the Prime Minister’, elated some Bangladeshi-origin social media visitors, who obviously became sad at Hasina’s exit. Their insinuation is: Trump gave responsibility of Bangladesh to India, where their leader Hasina has taken refuge escaping the wrath of the surging masses in Dhaka on 5 August 2024.
So when the key reason for their elation is the fantasy of Hasina’s reinstatement to power with America-endorsed Indian scheme overriding the country’s sovereign status, the Bangladeshi millions who forced her to flee the country, reacted, on the social media, to the euphoria of her men demonstrating their political and psychological servitude to foreign powers.
On 5 February as well, we witnessed the repercussions to Hasina’s ‘address to the students’ broadcast on Facebook from India that led to the raging to the ground of the house built by her father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman on road 32 in Dhaka’s Dhanmondi area in the 1960s.The protesters called that house an icon of fascism of Hasina, an accused of killing more than 1,000 people in July-August and murdering many others earlier for perpetuating her rule.
So Hasina should have been extradited to Dhaka, in the first place, for facing the trial on charges of mass murder and extrajudicial killing and also stealing and siphoning off public money amounting to billions of dollars. Instead, India has provided her shelter and allowed her to make provocative statements, formally and through leaked telephone conversations, despite Chief Adviser Professor Muhammad Yunus’ overture that Hasina must keep her mouth shut while staying in India.
In her speech delivered exactly six months after her quiet departure from the scene, she showed no sign of being remorseful for record crimes during her one-and-half-decade rule.
Neither did New Delhi express any regret for not stopping an absconding Hasina from broadcasting the speech during her legally and diplomatically questionable stay in India, other than coming up with an ambiguous excuse that Hasina made comments in individual capacity. She no longer holds a Bangladesh passport, nor has she been given political asylum in India.
Retired Indian diplomats who once served in Bangladesh, too, proved insensitivity to the Bangladeshis by not condemning ever the violation of people’s rights by the Hasina regime overtly and covertly supported by India.
Under the Hasina rule, Delhi gained a variety of things – from transit to trade and business facilities, from security guarantee to northeast India to special privileges given to the Indians, and political dominance to making Bangladesh India’s satellite state. In exchange, Hasina earned India’s blessings to stay in power and do whatever she liked.
The fall of Hasina from ‘heaven’ has been a public relations disaster for India around the world that exposed weakness of her foreign policy, particularly relations with the neighbouring countries. For measuring how much India is likable inside Bangladesh, one may wait to count the seats and votes pro-Indian parties and candidates would bag in the next parliamentary polls.
Until then, New Delhi hardly possesses any argument that Indian leaders want friendly relations with the Bangladesh people, by giving permission for using Indian soil in dubious manner, to an unloved Hasina who, as Awami League president, robbed victory in three consecutive elections in 2014, 2018 and 2024.
It seems that the Indian policymakers do not see or hear Hasina giving order for shooting the democratic demonstrators in spite of a ‘happy marriage’ between the two governments. But the UN’s latest report on atrocities committed during the last days of the Hasina regime said otherwise – Hasina herself was involved in the killing.
Notwithstanding policy failures and criticisms of Delhi and Hasina’s stigma of being an Indian puppet, India and Hasina have never distanced from each other. WHY?
The answer will be available if we ask who has so far served as Delhi’s most reliable strategic asset in Dhaka, had Bangladesh been considered a greenfield for India at its birth in 1971. And we may recall two statements by the same person that “It is my father who created this country, so…” and “India will never be able to forget what I have given them (Indians)… I give more than I receive”.
So, one may find element of gratitude in India’s decision not to dump Hasina when dividend from investment in the ex-Bangladesh dictator has almost entirely been drawn. However, India’s hosting of Hasina suggests, Delhi is unwilling to sell off all stakes in her for future political ploy, be it revitilisation of Awami League.
In foreign policy pursuits, fortunately or unfortunately, mindsets of some leaders and nations cannot be read in the light of sophisticated knowledge and behaviour pattern of other dominant nations of the civilised world.
India may claim her external affairs policy to be unique in terms of neutrality in relations with powerful nations and showing muscle to smaller powers. Modi’s bonhomie with Trump has still failed to reverse the US move to deport thousands of Indians from the US as taken by Trump after his assumption of office in January.
Delhi’s blind compliance with Chanakya Kautilya's kutaniti or diplomacy – the cornerstone of Indian foreign policy while maintaining relations with neighbours as well – could not make it a trusted friend of a single nation in South Asia. Kautilya rather would have considered Bangladesh an enemy state.
Knowing full well of the psyche of the Bangladesh people, Delhi had invested heavily in building a client-patron relation with a politician named Sheikh Hasina after the assassination of her father and other family members in 1975. She returned to Dhaka directly from India in 1981.
India immensely benefited from the concessions Hasina made when she was in power that now proved to be her investment to take shelter in India when she would need it the most.
Since India, despite being a democratic country, ignored Hasina’s anti-democratic policies and actions in Bangladesh, she remained a captive ruler subservient to New Delhi. Thus the Indian authorities did not hesitate in welcoming her when the Bangladesh people hated her the most.
However, foreign policy of a country cannot be equated with love affair between two individuals. Still, perhaps the Indian leaders believe that they may never get someone like Sheikh Hasina for serving their interests so obediently.
*Khawaza Main Uddin is a senior journalist.