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A WIDELY held perception in Bangladesh about India till the December 30 elections has been that it could get anything it wanted from Bangladesh even without reciprocity under the Awami League-led government. There are many reasons for the perception of which the most important reason is the historical role of India in the war of liberation in 1971 that the Awami League had politically led. That perception deepened manifold in the last two tenures of the Awami League in office (2009–2014 and 2014–2018) as the people of Bangladeshis saw India get its interests in the country fulfilled, in many cases even without asking and sometimes at the cost of Bangladesh’s own interests.
The way the Indian foreign secretary Sujata Singh had nakedly manipulated the elections in the Awami League’s favour through her visit to Dhaka just before the 2014 elections had underlined unquestionably and unequivocally New Delhi’s influence on Bangladesh under an AL-led government. That perception has been turned on its head by the outcome of the December 30 elections and the developments in the country soon thereafter. And in the process, the outcome has raised serious strategic questions in the context of just not Bangladesh-India relations but also Bangladesh-China relations and the region and beyond.
Every shade of opinion in Bangladesh believed leading to the 2018 elections that New Delhi would again help the Awami League return to power in the same manner as the 2014 elections. Thus one hardly paid any serious attention when the Indian external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj said in Dhaka in November 2017 that India wanted the 2018 Bangladesh elections to be free and fair with the participation of all parties including the Bangladesh Nationalist Party. The BNP itself did not believe it either based on its well-known distrust for India. The Awami League supporters also dismissed it because they were convinced that in the end, India would do everything for the Awami League to return to power, its call for participatory elections in Bangladesh notwithstanding.
The Awami League’s top leadership perhaps was not convinced that New Delhi would back the party like it did in 2014. The leaders were aware and nervous that Dhaka and New Delhi had exchanged a very few high-level visits leading to the 2018 elections unlike in the period leading to the 2014 elections. In fact, the AL leadership felt that the BJP government appeared to take the AL-led government for granted and did not feel the need to show its support for the party overtly as the Congress-led government had done. New Delhi even ignored the unusual step of the AL-led government to send its foreign secretary to Delhi in the pretext of participating in a multilateral event to announce that Bangladesh had reached a national consensus to join the Belt Road Initiative, or the One Belt One Road Initiative, or OBOR. That was in October 2017.
The BRI/OBOR is a Chinese strategy for regional and global leadership launched by Xi Jinping after he came to power in 2013 that India openly opposed from the beginning for obvious reasons. Only recently, India with the US and EU ‘deleted from all UN resolutions’ references to the BRI thus ‘dealing a blow to its (China’s) biggest strategic gambit’ underlining its deep opposition to BRI. Therefore, Bangladesh’s decision to announce that it had joined the BRI in New Delhi was taken to send a message to India that it was running out of patience waiting for its support in the Bangladesh elections with pressure mounting on it to hold free, fair and participatory elections that it was afraid it would lose. New Delhi ignored the message. The AL-led government nevertheless continued to repeat its interest to join BRI/OBOR and even went to the extent of telling India publicly that it should not be worried about its closeness with China that would not affect its relations with India. India paid no attention to these statements.
New Delhi was perhaps complacent that the Awami League was too heavily dependent on it to remain in power in Bangladesh to do anything for its lack of enthusiasm over the 2018 elections. Perhaps New Delhi was confident that the AL government would win the elections by whatever means was necessary that it did eventually. Nevertheless, New Delhi found to its utter concern after the elections were over that the Awami League had not taken New Delhi’s aloofness to support it in the 2018 elections the way Congress-led government had in 2014 lightly. The Awami-led government knew that if New Delhi had supported it like 2014, it would have not been forced to hold the elections the way it did that has left on it a stigma that has been far worse than the stigma it faced after the 2014 elections. Freedom House that evaluates the democratic credentials of a country has since the December elections omitted Bangladesh from its list of democratic countries.
The first sign that business between New Delhi and Dhaka was not going to be as in the past became obvious when the new cabinet of Bangladesh was announced. New Delhi found that in the 47-member cabinet, 27 ministers from the outgoing cabinet were dropped that was perhaps not unusual. However, from New Delhi’s perspective, the list of dropped ministers included a large number who were very close with India, some from the days of the war of liberation of Bangladesh. And, New Delhi did not have the slightest idea that these ministers were going to be dropped. That was something new and totally unexpected for New Delhi.
New Delhi soon realised that it had lost more in Bangladesh than just prior knowledge of the names of ministers of the AL-led government before it was announced through the December 30 elections; that China had made inroads in the country in the backdrop of its declining influence. In an interview with CNN/Channel 18 shortly after assuming office, Sheikh Hasina said: ‘India is such a big country and economy; it should not worry about OBOR (a part of BRI initiative).’ New Delhi remained complacent when Bangladesh had announced in New Delhi through its foreign secretary about its intention to join the BRI because it was confident at that time that the AL-led government would not be able to do anything it did not want. That confidence has been shattered when New Delhi found out it was in total darkness about the new cabinet.
Sheikh Hasina’s interview to CNN/Channel 18, coming after the decision to drop the senior ministers having warm relations with Delhi has, in fact, suggested a shift in Bangladesh’s relations vis-à-vis India and China in which China appears to have edged India to create a strategic space for itself that it did not have before when its relations with Bangladesh were restricted to business, trade and investment. For China, ‘the geography of Bangladesh’ was always ‘an attractive strategic determinant and one that is part of Xi Jinping’s flagship Belt and Road Initiative.’ It was unable to pursue its strategic interests in Bangladesh to the extent it needed because of India’s domineering presence. The December 30 elections will now perhaps give China the opportunity to pursue those strategic interests better with New Delhi’s influence over the AL-led government seemingly not as dominant as before.
The AL-led government is, therefore, expected to witness in the period ahead both New Delhi and Beijing vying with each other for its attention where strategic issues of interest of both would be involved. That in turn will call on the mandarins in Bangladesh’s foreign ministry to deal with both while trying to extract Bangladesh’s interests, an endeavour that is not going to be easy by any means bearing in mind that they have never conducted diplomacy of such complex and difficult nature against two countries that have master class diplomats. As for New Delhi, it will be dealing for the first time with an AL-led government that may no longer be ready to do as it wants with no questions asked.
Postscript: New Delhi’s disappointment over the Bangladesh elections has been reflected by the former Indian high commissioners to Bangladesh. They defended the controversial 2014 elections more forcefully than the Awami Leaguers encouraging the Indian media to do the same. These former Indian high commissioners and the Indian media have had very little to cheer in the Awami League’s latest victory perhaps because they knew that China had edged New Delhi for a strategic hold in Bangladesh through the December 30 elections.
http://www.newagebd.net/article/64330/has-china-edged-india-for-strategic-advantage
The way the Indian foreign secretary Sujata Singh had nakedly manipulated the elections in the Awami League’s favour through her visit to Dhaka just before the 2014 elections had underlined unquestionably and unequivocally New Delhi’s influence on Bangladesh under an AL-led government. That perception has been turned on its head by the outcome of the December 30 elections and the developments in the country soon thereafter. And in the process, the outcome has raised serious strategic questions in the context of just not Bangladesh-India relations but also Bangladesh-China relations and the region and beyond.
Every shade of opinion in Bangladesh believed leading to the 2018 elections that New Delhi would again help the Awami League return to power in the same manner as the 2014 elections. Thus one hardly paid any serious attention when the Indian external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj said in Dhaka in November 2017 that India wanted the 2018 Bangladesh elections to be free and fair with the participation of all parties including the Bangladesh Nationalist Party. The BNP itself did not believe it either based on its well-known distrust for India. The Awami League supporters also dismissed it because they were convinced that in the end, India would do everything for the Awami League to return to power, its call for participatory elections in Bangladesh notwithstanding.
The Awami League’s top leadership perhaps was not convinced that New Delhi would back the party like it did in 2014. The leaders were aware and nervous that Dhaka and New Delhi had exchanged a very few high-level visits leading to the 2018 elections unlike in the period leading to the 2014 elections. In fact, the AL leadership felt that the BJP government appeared to take the AL-led government for granted and did not feel the need to show its support for the party overtly as the Congress-led government had done. New Delhi even ignored the unusual step of the AL-led government to send its foreign secretary to Delhi in the pretext of participating in a multilateral event to announce that Bangladesh had reached a national consensus to join the Belt Road Initiative, or the One Belt One Road Initiative, or OBOR. That was in October 2017.
The BRI/OBOR is a Chinese strategy for regional and global leadership launched by Xi Jinping after he came to power in 2013 that India openly opposed from the beginning for obvious reasons. Only recently, India with the US and EU ‘deleted from all UN resolutions’ references to the BRI thus ‘dealing a blow to its (China’s) biggest strategic gambit’ underlining its deep opposition to BRI. Therefore, Bangladesh’s decision to announce that it had joined the BRI in New Delhi was taken to send a message to India that it was running out of patience waiting for its support in the Bangladesh elections with pressure mounting on it to hold free, fair and participatory elections that it was afraid it would lose. New Delhi ignored the message. The AL-led government nevertheless continued to repeat its interest to join BRI/OBOR and even went to the extent of telling India publicly that it should not be worried about its closeness with China that would not affect its relations with India. India paid no attention to these statements.
New Delhi was perhaps complacent that the Awami League was too heavily dependent on it to remain in power in Bangladesh to do anything for its lack of enthusiasm over the 2018 elections. Perhaps New Delhi was confident that the AL government would win the elections by whatever means was necessary that it did eventually. Nevertheless, New Delhi found to its utter concern after the elections were over that the Awami League had not taken New Delhi’s aloofness to support it in the 2018 elections the way Congress-led government had in 2014 lightly. The Awami-led government knew that if New Delhi had supported it like 2014, it would have not been forced to hold the elections the way it did that has left on it a stigma that has been far worse than the stigma it faced after the 2014 elections. Freedom House that evaluates the democratic credentials of a country has since the December elections omitted Bangladesh from its list of democratic countries.
The first sign that business between New Delhi and Dhaka was not going to be as in the past became obvious when the new cabinet of Bangladesh was announced. New Delhi found that in the 47-member cabinet, 27 ministers from the outgoing cabinet were dropped that was perhaps not unusual. However, from New Delhi’s perspective, the list of dropped ministers included a large number who were very close with India, some from the days of the war of liberation of Bangladesh. And, New Delhi did not have the slightest idea that these ministers were going to be dropped. That was something new and totally unexpected for New Delhi.
New Delhi soon realised that it had lost more in Bangladesh than just prior knowledge of the names of ministers of the AL-led government before it was announced through the December 30 elections; that China had made inroads in the country in the backdrop of its declining influence. In an interview with CNN/Channel 18 shortly after assuming office, Sheikh Hasina said: ‘India is such a big country and economy; it should not worry about OBOR (a part of BRI initiative).’ New Delhi remained complacent when Bangladesh had announced in New Delhi through its foreign secretary about its intention to join the BRI because it was confident at that time that the AL-led government would not be able to do anything it did not want. That confidence has been shattered when New Delhi found out it was in total darkness about the new cabinet.
Sheikh Hasina’s interview to CNN/Channel 18, coming after the decision to drop the senior ministers having warm relations with Delhi has, in fact, suggested a shift in Bangladesh’s relations vis-à-vis India and China in which China appears to have edged India to create a strategic space for itself that it did not have before when its relations with Bangladesh were restricted to business, trade and investment. For China, ‘the geography of Bangladesh’ was always ‘an attractive strategic determinant and one that is part of Xi Jinping’s flagship Belt and Road Initiative.’ It was unable to pursue its strategic interests in Bangladesh to the extent it needed because of India’s domineering presence. The December 30 elections will now perhaps give China the opportunity to pursue those strategic interests better with New Delhi’s influence over the AL-led government seemingly not as dominant as before.
The AL-led government is, therefore, expected to witness in the period ahead both New Delhi and Beijing vying with each other for its attention where strategic issues of interest of both would be involved. That in turn will call on the mandarins in Bangladesh’s foreign ministry to deal with both while trying to extract Bangladesh’s interests, an endeavour that is not going to be easy by any means bearing in mind that they have never conducted diplomacy of such complex and difficult nature against two countries that have master class diplomats. As for New Delhi, it will be dealing for the first time with an AL-led government that may no longer be ready to do as it wants with no questions asked.
Postscript: New Delhi’s disappointment over the Bangladesh elections has been reflected by the former Indian high commissioners to Bangladesh. They defended the controversial 2014 elections more forcefully than the Awami Leaguers encouraging the Indian media to do the same. These former Indian high commissioners and the Indian media have had very little to cheer in the Awami League’s latest victory perhaps because they knew that China had edged New Delhi for a strategic hold in Bangladesh through the December 30 elections.
http://www.newagebd.net/article/64330/has-china-edged-india-for-strategic-advantage
