The dramatic coup in Bangladesh on August 5, 2024, followed a violent day on August 4, 2024, which left more than 90 people dead, including 14 policemen, and over 300 injured. This series of events took everyone by surprise.
Five-term Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had to flee the country at 45 minutes’ notice, and she is in Delhi until a permanent stay is decided. Indian intelligence agencies and our foreign service officials possibly could not gauge the popular sentiment prevailing in Bangladesh, no doubt aided and abetted by many agencies. Now that the Army is in charge, the interim Government in Bangladesh will be dominated by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and the radical Jamaat e Islami, both hostile to India.
Bangladesh has been in the grip of violent protests against reservations since the first week of July 24. As per the reports, prior to the Sunday protests, some 200 people have been killed and another 1200 plus injured. So why has Bangladesh suddenly witnessed nationwide violent clashes, with massive damage to property and infrastructure? On the face of it, the unpopular reservation policy, along with news of competitive exam leaks, led to the flare-up. But the uprising and violence seem to be well planned, and all along, the aim was to overthrow Sheikh Hasina Government, which was seen as pro-India. It may be interesting to see how this uprising was planned, no doubt, with the tacit support of the Bangladesh Army under the current Army Chief General Waqar-uz-Zaman.
The chain of events reminded me of my visit to Bangladesh as part of the National Defence College delegation in the latter part of 2015. Since I was tasked to prepare the tour report, I went into great detail during our visit and had multiple interactions with the stakeholders. Awami League was back in power, and PM Sheikh Hasina restored India’s contribution to its freedom struggle in textbooks and public discourse. The previous BNP Government had obliterated all references to India in the freedom struggle of Bangladesh. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his first term, immediately improved relations with Bangladesh, and both nations quickly strengthened mutual cooperation with a focus on economic development. The people-to-people connection also improved, and a new era of Indo- Bangladesh relations was clearly visible. During our visit to the Indian Embassy in Dhaka, we were briefed about the radical elements and fundamental organisations like Jamaat-e-Islami having flourished under the BNP regime. The second major input was about the Chinese trying to dominate the affairs as part of its ‘String of Pearls’ policy. But the most important takeaway was the domination of the Bangladesh Army in the affairs and psyche of the nation. Bangladesh Army Chief is easily the second most powerful person in Bangladesh after the Prime Minister.
Bangladesh (earlier called East Pakistan) was liberated from Pakistan after the historic victory of the Indian Armed Forces over Pakistan in the 1971 war, which ended on December 16, 1971. India obviously was the first to recognise Bangladesh as a new independent nation. From Bangladesh, the fight for freedom was led by Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and the Mukti Bahini, the Bangladeshi resistance army, as a guerilla force, actively took part in the freedom struggle, aided and supported by India.
Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman became the Prime Minister of Bangladesh till January 1975 and became the President of the nation thereafter, till his assassination on August 15, 1975.
The current Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, is the daughter of the Bangabandhu, and she heads the ruling Awami League Party. The images of the statue of Bangabandhu who is treated as the father of nation in Bangladesh, being brought down by the miscreants seem unbelievable and most shocking.
Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman introduced the reservation system in Bangladesh in 1972, where 80 per cent of the Government jobs were reserved for freedom fighters, women affected by the 1971 war, including those from Mukti Bahini and extremely poor sections of the society. It was a grateful nation which was recognising the stellar contribution of the people involved in the freedom struggle. In 1976, the merit-based quota increased from 20 per cent to 40 per cent, which was further increased to 55 per cent in 1996. But based on the pressure from the Awami League, a new reservation system was introduced which assigned 30 per cent of seats to freedom fighters and their children/grandchildren, 10 per cent exclusively for women, 10 per cent for the candidates from the backward districts, 5 per cent for tribals/minorities and 1 per cent to differently abled. All this added up to 56 per cent of reservations in the government, public sector and education institutions. Thus, the merit-based recruitment and job opportunities were reduced to 46 per cent. Some sort of protests against this policy continued against the policy right from the 90s but from 2018 onwards, it became more vigourous. Under pressure from the public, particularly from the student community, the government eliminated most forms of reservation and brought it down to just 7 per cent reservation in Government jobs.
The trouble started when the High Court of Bangladesh reinstated the 2018 reservation policy on June 5. Some say that this reversal was done under the influence of the ruling Awami League headed by Sheikh Hasina. It led to protests by the students and public immediately, but these protests were largely peaceful, barring minor incidents of violence. However, the protests became violent once a Bangladeshi investigative journalist published a report on July 7, indicating that the Bangladesh Civil Service (BCS) and other Government jobs were compromised because of paper leaks for the last 12 years. Sounds familiar! This flared up the violent protests across the country. This forced the Government to do a fire fighting and Bangladesh Supreme Court reversed the High Court decision on July 21, bringing back 93 per cent merit-based jobs, 5 per cent quota for freedom fighters, 1 per cent for ethnic minorities and 1 per cent for the differently abled. But enough damage had been done by then.
This brings the question of the timing of the protests and how they would have unfolded so suddenly. PM Sheikh Hasina visited China on July 7 and, cut short her four-day visit and returned on July 10. Obviously, the visit did not meet her expectations. More importantly, she would have refused the Chinese overtures to wean away from India and take the economic debt trap route so famously engineered by the Chinese in many nations. China may not have taken kindly to this rebuff from Sheikh Hasina, and it is plausible that the Chinese hand is in the ongoing protests. The protests took a more ominous form after her return from China. Chinese have become masters in fishing in troubled waters. India’s North East has seen continuous interference, directly and indirectly, from the Chinese, and I have personal experience of fighting insurgency in the North East to boost the claim.
Now, it is emerging that Pak ISI has been collaborating with the elements of the BNP and Jamaat e Islami right after the January this year elections, which the opposition parties had boycotted. Notwithstanding the legitimacy of the Sheikh Hasina government, a large number of foreign agencies, including the CIA, may have planned the regime change in Bangladesh. The most crucial factor appears to be pro India image of Sheikh Hasina. It is also a fact that Bangladesh prospered economically under the leadership of Sheikh Hasina and emerged as one of the fastest-growing economies in South Asia. In this regard, the case of Bangladesh is different from a similar uprising in Sri Lanka in the year 2022, when the Sri Lankan economy collapsed.
In the last decade, Bangladesh has become India’s trusted ally, and PM Modi and PM Sheikh Hasina shared a great personal rapport. PM Sheikh Hasina attended the swearing-in ceremony of the Modi 3.0 Government on June 9 and became the first foreign leader to visit India for a bilateral visit from June 21 to 22 in the new Government. The visit made substantial progress on the Teesta River Project and further cemented the special relationship between the two countries. In fact, Bangladesh was a major partner in India’s Act East Policy and the most trusted partner in the BIMSTEC (Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation) grouping.
India will have to intervene to ensure the safety and well-being of Indian nationals working in Bangladesh. Bangladesh has about 8 per cent of its population as Hindus, which is the largest minority, numbering about 1.3 crore. This substantial population is being targeted by Islamist fundamentalists, and India has to strongly voice its concern for their well-being, as well as be prepared to accept a large number of Hindus as refugees. India’s commitment to the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), which was notified by the Modi 2.0 Government in March of this year, will be a ray of hope for persecuted and victimised Hindus of Bangladesh.
The security implications of the regime change in Bangladesh are immense for India, and our national security architecture will be put to full test and should be prepared for any contingency. The security and intelligence agencies of India may have to be prepared for a long haul in and around Bangladesh. Indian political leadership would have taken note of the perils of unjust reservations at the cost of meritocracy. I am sanguine that India would do everything to usher normalcy in Bangladesh and rebuild relations with Bangladesh for the greater good of the region.
