Why Hasina’s fall was not a surprise — and what India must prepare for now

How did things in Bangladesh come to this?

What has happened was not a surprise.

After weeks of violent street agitation and the Bangladesh government’s resolute refusal to bend to the demands of the protesters, the developments on Monday seemed unexpected and surprising. And yet, the downfall of the 76-year-old Sheikh Hasina ought to appear as a surprise only to those who were unwilling to see the writing on the wall.

Indeed, the deterioration of the situation in Bangladesh in multiple fields has been staring the world in the face for months, even years, now.

Politically, consecutive elections in 2014, 2018, and 2024 were allegedly rigged — with the opposition either boycotting or being forced out of the contest following crackdowns. Hasina’s party, the Awami League, won 234, 257, and 224 seats out of 300 in the three elections respectively.

Hasina has been unwilling to accommodate the political opposition, and the personal authoritarianism of the daughter of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, once seen as an icon for democracy, has grown steadily over the years. Her autocratic rule has seen mass arrests of political opponents, activists, and dissidents, forced disappearances, alleged extrajudicial killings, a crackdown on press freedoms, NGOs, and critics, including Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus.

Hasina’s main rival, the ailing former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, 78, was sentenced to 17 years in prison in 2018 for alleged corruption. Khaleda has been in hospital, top leaders of her BNP party are in prison, and her son and political heir Tarique Rahman is in exile in the United Kingdom.

The Covid-19 pandemic hit the Bangladeshi economy hard and stalled its celebrated growth model. The collapse of demand abroad impacted Bangladesh’s textile and garment industry, the engine of its manufacturing-led growth.

Since 2022, the Bangladeshi taka has depreciated more than 40% against the dollar, and its reserves of foreign currency have more than halved. In 2023, the country took a $4.7 billion loan from the IMF, and its total external debt had crossed $100 billion by the end of the year. The current rate of inflation is close to 10%.

More than a quarter of Bangladesh’s 170 million population is in the age group of 15 to 29, according to data from the International Labour Organization (ILO), and Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics data quoted by the Bangladeshi daily Prothom Alo say 1.8 million to 1.9 million young people join the job market every year. In a time of economic distress and acute job scarcity, the restoration by the High Court, on June 5, of a 30% quota in coveted government jobs for freedom fighters and their progeny, unleashed waves of protests by students and young people that ultimately forced Hasina from power.

Islamist extremism could return to Bangladesh.

Monday was a sad day for progressive forces who have suffered a grievous setback in Bangladesh.

The ousted Prime Minister represented the secular and modernising version of Bangla nationalism, and her uncompromising politics was for long a bulwark against radical extremism that has already shown the potential for creating significant security challenges for India, besides taking Bangladesh itself in a regressive direction.

However, Hasina’s relentless effort at fostering her own version of Bangladesh’s fraught history on the critics within, and her refusal to engage with the other side was unsustainable.

Bangladesh was born amid blood and deep social fissures — the nation has been from the beginning divided vertically between secular nationalists and the Muslim nationalists who did not support the war of liberation against Pakistan in 1971.

Over the years, Hasina has dealt with the Muslim nationalists and their biological and ideological successors with an iron hand — and she had repeatedly said that the ranks of the protesting students had been infiltrated by cadres of the Jamaat-e-Islami and other Islamist forces.

In an early reaction to the street violence, Hasina had asked rhetorically why the protesters resented the freedom fighters’ quota, and whether they believed that the benefits should instead go to the “grandchildren of razakars”, using a derogatory word used in Bangladesh to describe the cadre of brutal mercenary collaborators set up by the Pakistani army to crush the nationalist movement led by the Bangabandhu.

In the end, it was precisely her undemocratic governance that has cleared the way for the resurgence of Islamist, anti-Hindu minority, and pro-Pakistan politics in her country. The schizophrenia of the Bangla society rooted in the politics of partition lives on, as the developments of Monday have shown.

New Delhi now faces a formidable diplomatic challenge.

During Hasina’s tenure as Prime Minister, relations between India and Bangladesh improved steadily. Her crackdown on anti-India extremists was welcomed by New Delhi. Through the recent crisis, India has maintained that the unrest is an internal matter for Bangladesh.

India’s big challenge in recent years though, has been to distance itself from the authoritarianism of Hasina while continuing to work with her on building a more cooperative state-to-state relationship with Bangladesh. While there has been much progress on the latter under Hasina’s rule, the costs of identification with her have been significant as well.

Now that Hasina is gone, New Delhi must actively work to limit the damage, and ensure the high stakes in the relationship are protected. This could involve some near-term setbacks.