Opinion Express View: The fall of Sheikh Hasina

Sheikh Hasina’s downfall is a surprise only to those unwilling to see the writing on the Bangladesh wall. Though Hasina’s party, the Awami League, won a third consecutive term in January, the credibility of the election was clouded by boycott by the main Opposition parties and allegations of rigging. Arrests of Opposition leaders, suppression of dissent and crackdowns on free speech — a disturbingly recurring feature of the Hasina regime in the past decade — seemed to have become more frequent in the past six months. The development narrative, once Hasina’s trump card, has been past its utility date for at least four years now. Though Bangladesh continues to be amongst the fastest-growing economies in South Asia, progress has not kept pace with people’s aspirations in a country where more than 60 per cent of the population is in the 15-65 age group. Many enterprises have still not recovered from the Covid-induced crisis. For several weeks last month, Bangladesh was wracked by its most serious episode of civil unrest in two decades. What started as a peaceful agitation on campuses against the controversial quota in government jobs for descendants of freedom fighters, in less than a week, swelled into nationwide unrest. The Supreme Court’s decision, on July 21, to scale down the reservation led to only a temporary lull. When the protests resumed on Saturday, the Hasina government responded with its over-used strong arm. More than 100 people have lost their lives to trigger-happy security men in the past two days — and at least 300 have died in the past two months. Mounting anger against her has forced Hasina to resign and flee the country. Her fate is a cautionary tale — whatever its temporary returns, the quest for total domination and an Opposition-mukt politics is doomed to fail.

It is also true that Hasina represented the secular and modernising version of Bangladeshi nationalism. However, her relentless efforts at pushing the Awami League’s version of history and refusal to engage with other arguments and forces were unsustainable in a country that has been vertically divided between secular nationalists and Muslim nationalists who did not support the war of liberation in 1971. Time and again, the former PM made the Awami League’s leadership of Bangladesh’s freedom movement her calling card. Her denunciation of the agitating students as “razakars” — a pejorative term used for collaborators with the Pakistan Army during the liberation struggle — aggravated the outrage against her. Her authoritarian rule may have unfortunately cleared the way for the resurgence of an Islamist minority and pro-Pakistan politics in the country. The schizophrenia of Bangladesh society, rooted in the trauma of Partition, continues to stoke anxieties.

Advertisement

A big challenge for India in recent years has been how to distance itself from Hasina’s authoritarianism while working with her to build a more cooperative state-to-state relationship. While there has been much progress on the latter under Hasina’s rule, the costs of identifying with her have also been significant. New Delhi should be worried that Islamists were amongst the ranks of the protestors. It must now actively work to limit the damage from Hasina’s fall and ensure that the high stakes relationship is protected. This could involve near-term setbacks that must be handled with strategic patience.