Bangladesh and its neighborhood:

Bangladesh is a country in South Asia, the largest region in the world in terms of population. Nearly one in four of total human being on earth live in the region. Bangladesh is also a highly populated country. It has a population of 170 million, 90 percent of which are Muslims. The country is surrounded by Hindu majority, nuclear power India, the largest and the most dominant state in South Asia. Our border with the huge neighbor stretches 4,142 km making it the 6^th largest land border in the world. Geographically Bangladesh is like an island of Muslims surrounded by countries of different faiths. While India is a Hindu country, our only other neighbor Myanmar in the east is Buddhist majority. If we move further eastward, the first Muslim majority country we will find is Malaysia. In the western direction, Pakistan is the first Muslim country separated from Bangladesh by 2200 km of Indian land.

South Asia is a multi-ethnic, multi-racial, multi-lingual, multi-cultural and multi-religious region. The region consists of the three states that constitute the Indian Subcontinent (India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh), border state of Afghanistan that divides South Asia from Central Asia, the two land-locked Himalayan states of Bhutan and Nepal, and the two island nations of Sri Lanka and Maldives in the Indian Ocean. South Asia is a partly continental and partly sea region. Nuclear power India is the most pre-eminent state in the region in terms of men, material, economic and military capabilities. Another nuclear power Pakistan has been a challenger to the Indian aspiration to become undisputed hegemonic power in the region since partition of the subcontinent in 1947. From the ancient times, the region, as the people crossed the rugged hills of Afghanistan, was usually referred in records and literature as “India” or the “Indian Subcontinent.” The Persians and Arabs used the term “Hindustan” and “al-Hind”.  Most of the countries in South Asia have a long history of colonial subjugation.  India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Myanmar (a member of ASEAN) were under direct British colonial rule. Maldives in the Indian Ocean was a British protectorate. The gradual colonization of the Indian Subcontinent by the British started from Bengal in 1757 as the British East India Company and its local agents dethroned and killed the last independent Muslim ruler, Nawab Siraj-al-Doulah.  

Presently South Asia consists of 8 states. Among the regional cluster, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Maldives are overwhelmingly Muslim-majority, while the population of India and Nepal are predominantly Hindus, whereas Bhutan and Sri Lanka are Buddhist-majority. Administrative and economic structures in most of the states in South Asia are inherited from the Mughal Empire and the British Raj. In spite of these common characteristics, the states in South Asia have failed to coalesce with a sense of region, like ASEAN or the African Union. Inter-states conflicts have created formidable obstacle in the formation of any inclusive idea of South Asian identity, institutions and interactions. Many political scientists and academicians argue that unresolved issues attached to the 1947 Partition of India and the structural asymmetry in the composition of the region, whereby India is by far the most dominant in comparison to other states, have created an environment of suspicion, fear, hostility, and mistrust. 

Hegemonic aspiration of India:

India is by far the largest, the most populous, and the most powerful country in South Asia.  It shares a boundary with every country in the neighborhood except Afghanistan, but most of them do not share a border with another South Asian country. India is also the world’s most populous democracy, presently ruled by an extreme right-wing, Hindu nationalist party, the BJP.  Although the official country profile page of the Government of India describes the state as a “sovereign socialist secular democratic republic with a parliamentary system of government,” the current Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his party is known for its extreme Hindu nationalist agenda. Hindutva is the declared political ideology of the ruling BJP which harbors deep antagonism towards secular principles, and despises non-Hindu religious communities, especially Muslims. The BJP is the political front of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the oldest and most prominent proponent of Hindutva that thrives on the ideology that India should be a “Hindu nation,” where Muslims, Christians, and other minorities can only live if they accept Hindu gods and religious rituals in the guise of Indian culture in their personal and public lives. In other words, they can only live as a second class citizen with limited rights. Since 1947, most of the Indian leaders have dreamt to establish “Akhand Bharat” or greater India by absorbing Pakistan, Bangladesh, and parts of Afghanistan, Nepal, Bhutan, and Sri Lanka within its federal structure. India was encouraged to fulfil its dream when the people of East Pakistan revolted against the ruling elites of Pakistan in 1971. The emergence of Bangladesh as an independent state would not have happened in a short period of nine months of civil war without direct intervention of Indian military might in the War of Liberation.

It is an interesting twist of history that Bengali Muslims who decided overwhelmingly through a referendum in 1947 to join the Islamic Republic of Pakistan as the separate homeland for the Indian Muslims at the time of the Partition of the Subcontinent would quarter of a century later, seek assistance from Hindu India to wage a liberation war against their co-religionists in West Pakistan. The two wings of Pakistan (East and West) were geographically separated by 2200 km of Indian land, and had nothing in common in terms of ethnicity, language, and culture except the identity of the “Ummah.”  Islam has been an important part of the daily life of the majority-Muslim population of Bangladesh for over a millennium, and they comprise nearly 90% of the total population of the country.  Pakistan was the cherished sanctuary for the Indian Muslims persecuted for nearly two centuries by the British colonial administration and majority Hindu community in the Subcontinent.  However, the language movement of 1952, which sought to establish Bengali as the state language of Pakistan, radically changed the self-perceptions and the sense of identity of the people of the then East Pakistan, fomenting a separatist Bengali nationalism that gradually became stronger than either Pakistani affiliation or even Muslim identity.  The rise of ethnic and linguistic identity diluted the religious bonds between East and West Pakistanis, undermining the glue of national integrity, and eventually leading to secessionist demands.

The gulf created by the language movement between the two wings of Pakistan would be widened further under successive periods of military rule culminating in the full-fledged Liberation War in 1971, and the second partition of the Subcontinent. The proverbial last straw was the refusal of the West Pakistani political and military leadership to hand over power to Awami League and their leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, after they decisively won in the 1970 general election, which was the last parliamentary election held in the united Pakistan.  The military junta refused to accept the will of the people of East Pakistan and resorted to brutal genocide at midnight on 25 March 1971, which stamped the final seal on the dismemberment of Pakistan. Civil war commenced in East Pakistan in which India provided military training and supply of armaments to the Bengali freedom fighters. The civil war that commenced in March transformed into a full-fledged India-Pakistan war in December 1971 and Pakistan army surrendered in Dhaka, the capital on 16 December thereby ceding the eastern half of the country to its arch rival. 

But, it did not take long to sour the relationship between Muslim majority Bangladesh and Hindu India. The honeymoon of the people of Bangladesh with India ended as early as mid-1972. Indian interference in the affairs of Bangladesh along with the signing of the 25-year treaty with India gave the majority Muslim population a shock, and inspired almost a reawakening of the Islamic faith and identity that was previously eroding with the rise of Bengali nationalism during the Pakistan era. The identification of India as a hegemonic power became established in both the academic and political discourse of Bangladesh.  The question that started pricking many people’s minds was whether the Bengali Muslim identity had been changed by the creation of an independent Bangladesh? By embracing Bengali nationalism, do we need to shed our Islamic culture and heritage?

India was shocked by the strong revival of Islam as a religion and culture within such a short time after becoming successful to break Pakistan. India wanted to create an eastern neighbor that would dutifully follow all instructions from Delhi.  From a historical perspective, we may identify the following objectives of India in the formulation of its foreign policy regarding Bangladesh:

1. India desires to see a loyal regime in Dhaka that would support and complement its South Asia and China policy.
2. India wants to ensure that Bangladesh does not pose any security threat according to the perception of Delhi.
3. It can use the air, water, and land resources of Bangladesh for linking the insurgency-infested and geographically vulnerable northeast region with other parts of India through Bangladesh. India wants to use Bangladesh as a corridor for their civil and military operation.
4. India expects Bangladesh to always agree to adopt a bilateral approach to resolve disputes; any third-party initiative is unacceptable to Delhi.
5. Dhaka is expected to work as an extension of Indian security apparatus to control rise of any Islamist and anti-Indian tendency in Bangladesh.

However, India could not achieve its overt hegemonic objective in Bangladesh until Awami League under Sheikh Hasina came to power in the December 2008 election. She is an old and trusted friend of India. Indian intelligence developed relationship with Hasina’s father during Pakistan period, provided military assistance and diplomatic backing during the liberation war of Bangladesh, gave total support to Sheikh Mujib to consolidate absolute power in the post-independent Bangladesh, gave asylum to Mujib’s two daughters with their family for six years after his assassination in 1975, provided intelligence and logistic support to her party Awami League, and finally negotiated with Bangladesh army to facilitate her return to power in 2009. Sheikh Hasina is not only personally indebted to the Indians for the generosity she received during her Delhi stay from 1975 to 1981, she also had the opportunity to develop close personal relationship with many Indian leaders across various parties. As a result, both Congress and BJP government actively assisted Sheikh Hasina to maintain her absolute grip on power for nearly 16 years by manipulating the election system thereby making Bangladesh, a de facto single party state. A huge majority of Indian intellectuals and media believe that Hasina is indispensable to serve Indian interest in South Asia. Furthermore, the deep state in India usually prevails over the judgement of its political masters in the formulation of Bangladesh policy. Like many autocratic countries in the Islamic world, Sheikh Hasina was also successful in conducting three farcical elections in 2014, 2018, and 2024 where will of the people was cynically neglected. Every time there was international condemnation against electoral farce, India was there to use all its influence in the Western capitals to scale down the criticism. 

Unfortunately, India enjoys tacit support in its hegemonic aspiration in the region from the US-led Western world as their principal ally in South Asia in the larger strategic struggle against China and Islam. India had been trying to establish absolute control over Bangladesh since independence in 1971, but the fact that nearly 90% of the population are Muslim has been an unsurmountable obstacle to India’s hegemonic aspirations against this small state. As part of its strategy, Delhi’s aim had been to completely destroy pro-Islamic political forces in Bangladesh taking full advantage of Islamophobic world order. Post-9/11, the objective of Delhi converged with the policy of US to obliterate political Islam. In the wake of American occupation of Afghanistan in 2001, Bush administration accepted India as its strategic partner in South Asia to control Muslim states in the region and also to counter the threat of China. Bangladesh became a victim of the US policy.

Championing secularism to court US and its western allies, during 15 years of her rule, Sheikh Hasina made Bangladesh a virtual one party state. She destroyed all state institutions, completely chocked civil society, free press and cynically buried democracy. There was absolutely no space for the opposition political parties. Dissidents were hounded by the deep state as any criticism of the government was considered criminal offence. The authoritarian secularism of Hasina usurped all fundamental rights and freedom of the people. Arbitrary detention, inhuman torture in custody, extra-judicial killing and enforced disappearance were common practice to stifle any protest. The constitution of the country was amended at will to provide legal cover to commit wholesale atrocities. Empowered with a carte blanche to persecute the citizens of Bangladesh by India, the US appointed guardian for South Asia, Sheikh Hasina made Bangladesh a family fiefdom. We need to study the political philosophy of the July Revolution in the backdrop of the long persecution of the population under a puppet regime.  

Formation of Political Philosophy of July Revolution:  

During the 54 years history of independent Bangladesh, the following five events have played the major role in the formation of political character and philosophy of the nation.

• Indian control over Bangladesh received its first jolt by the fall of the one party regime of Sheikh Mujib, the father of Sheikh Hasina in 1975 in a revolt of a section of the army. The close cooperation between the Indian establishment and Sheikh Mijibur Rahman, the first President and Prime Minister of independent Bangladesh flourished in the 1960s’ during Pakistan era.
• In November 1975, the failure of India-sponsored counter-coup led by Major General Khaled Mosharraf further bewildered the Indian deep state. A military-people revolution, similar to 2024 July upsurge, played the most significant role to defeat the Indian design to bring back Bangladesh under the control of the regional hegemonic power.
• However, Indian interest made a comeback in the politics of Bangladesh by the killing of President Ziaur Rahman in 1981 in a military coup in Chittagong, the main port city in the country. Although the coup leaders failed to grab power as the main faction of the defense force remained loyal to the constitutional government, the killing of the nationalist president paved the way for another pro-Indian coup in 1982. The successful coup leader and the then army chief, General Hossain Mohammad Ershad remained in power until another mass upsurge in 1990.
• Bangladesh experienced an uninterrupted parliamentary democracy for fifteen tears from 1991 to 1996. While the two major parties, the nationalist, Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), and pro-Indian, Bangladesh Awami League (BAL) ruled the country alternatively, India patiently utilized the time to infiltrate into both government and non-government institutions.
• The global geopolitical situation underwent dramatic changes in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on America. Bangladesh also could not remain immune from the global effect. Prior to the shocking attack, the US policy towards Bangladesh was generally to support democracy as it was one of the few Islamic countries, where democracy was in practice. But post 9/11, the USA was clearly hostile to all the Islam leaning political parties in the Islamic world including Bangladesh. Washington establishment declared India as its strategic ally in South Asia thereby, implicitly accepted Indian hegemony in the region.

A US-India supported military coup with a different character was engineered in 2007 to pave the way for establishing an Islamophobic and puppet government of India in Bangladesh.  To avoid negative international repercussion, the interim government was given the name, “military backed” instead of more common, “martial law government”. Sheikh Hasina, a product of Indian deep state, was installed to power in the Bangladesh military-India maneuvered 2008 election. The stage was set for the rise of a fascist regime in Bangladesh with full Indian support and manipulation. According to the memoire of the late Indian President Pranab Mukherjee, the Indians came to a deal with General Moin Uddin Ahmed, the Bangladeshi military chief, in February 2008, with the understanding that the army would help Sheikh Hasina to win in the upcoming election in exchange for keeping the general at the top post of the Bangladesh military.               

As mentioned earlier, we need to know and analyze the history of the above five turning points of the nation to correctly understand the character and philosophy of the July revolution. The people of this country revolted against an autocratic ruler and shed their blood in 1975 with the dream to free the country from the hegemonic clutch of India. BNP, the political party that was born in the process of 1975 changes, brought up the issue of the national identity commensurate to the aspiration of the majority Muslim population of the country. India was clearly unhappy with the unexpected political development in its eastern neighbor, the country that it had midwifed by bifurcating arch-enemy, Pakistan with the help of superior military force. The South Asian elephant was able to exact revenge by killing the popular nationalist president in 1981 and installing a pro-Indian, military government. That government was eventually toppled in 1990 in a mass upsurge. However, the narrative that propelled the movement in 1990, was built more on the issue of restoring democracy without any reference of regional geopolitics.  Because of this rather narrow political goal to replace a dictator only, an unlikely unity among pro-Islamic, Nationalist, and anti-Islamic political forces developed for a short time in the nineties. As expected, the unity was shattered along the ideological line as soon as, the autocratic regime was toppled in the mass movement.

But the July revolution is completely different in character and philosophy. During the decade and a half of Sheikh Hasina’s rule, Bangladesh lost its sovereignty, and the people lost their freedom and cultural identity. With the strength of unflinching support from India, she manipulated all state institutions to deny people from exercising their rights of franchise. There were three consecutive electoral farces in 2014, 2018, and 2024 with the help of fully compromised election commission, bureaucracy, and judiciary to legitimize Sheikh Hasina’s fascist rule. People were enraged but yet, felt helpless. Years of frustration, anger, and simmering discontent boiled over within just a few weeks in the July Revolution. The speed at which the India-supported, brutal regime fell on 5 August 2024 in the dramatic mass upsurge led by the young students surprised many. Hasina’s fall is in many ways similar to the fall of Tunisian dictator, Ben Ali in 2010. Tunisian people toppled 23-year old dictatorial regime through an unexpected and spontaneous uprising as economic disparity and government repression became unbearable. Sheikh Hasina was many times more ruthless than Ben Ali. Her record on enforced disappearance, extra judicial killing, torture, and persecution probably unmatched in this century. The uprising in Tunisia was ignited by an act of shocking self-immolation of a vendor, Mohammad Bouazizi. Labour union played the leading role in the ouster of Ben Ali forcing him to flee to Saudi Arabia within less than a month after Bou Azizi’s self-immolation.

In the case of Bangladesh, young students are the vanguard of the revolution. The end game started with the students’ demand of abolishing the quota system in the government jobs that allowed Sheikh Hasina to monopolize the administration with her party cadres and pro-Indian elements among the minority population. The heroic act of the 25 year old martyred student, Abu Sayeed who faced a row of guns pointed at him by the police of the fascist regime with outstretched hands and received multiple bullets with a serene expression of defiance and courage, shook the entire nation. In the age of social media, instantly Abu Sayeed became the icon of July revolution. Final barrier to fear of brutal force of a repressive regime was broken in a unique act of courage. This act of bravery became contagious. Abu Sayeed was the spiritual son to every mother and brother to every sister. People from all across the country came to the street instantaneously with the single point demand of the removal of Sheikh Hasina from state power. As Bangladesh military informed Hasina about its organizational decision to withdraw support, Hasina had no choice but to step down and flee to Delhi. It took only twenty days from the 16 July daylight martyrdom of Abu Sayeed, to achieve final victory in the peoples’ revolution. Hasina fled to Delhi. Incidentally, she came to Bangladesh from same Delhi in 1981 after enduring six years of refugee life, now to return to her old den as a bitter, despised, and defeated politician. It is tragic that in the process, tens of thousands citizens of Bangladesh have either been killed, maimed or injured by the indiscriminate use of brutal force of law enforcing agencies. 

The fall of Hasina is arguably the greatest foreign policy disaster of India since 1947. India lost its influence in Bangladesh with the dramatic collapse of Hasina regime. Crushing defeat of Indian army in the 1962 Sino-Indian war still haunts Delhi. The ignominious retreat of Indian peace-keeping force from Sri Lanka in 1990 is also considered a failure of Indian hegemonic design. In Afghanistan, India had to hastily abandon all its assets twice in 1996 and 2021 as Taliban captured Kabul. But, the success of the heroic, unarmed revolution of the people of Bangladesh against Indian hegemonic aggression by toppling its puppet regime without any outside assistance is unique and should teach the most valuable lesson to India and its’ western backers. July revolution has proven that a hegemonic power, however enormous it might be, cannot depend only on a puppet, unpopular regime in a foreign country to serve its selfish geopolitical interest by ignoring the overwhelming sentiment of the population. Many analysts are describing the movement as the world’s first “Gen Z revolution”.

According to my study of July revolution and regional history, I think the following three narratives motivated the seemingly indifferent and docile population to explode with a combined and unprecedented force that toppled the notorious regime:

1. As the long, demonic rule of Sheikh Hasina became unbearable, the protest against an unjust system of patronage, soon snowballed into a one-point agenda, i.e. oust-Hasina movement.
2. It may sound ridiculous, but the reality in Bangladesh under Sheikh Hasina was that, the majority population of an OIC member country had to suffer the severe religious persecution for fifteen years under state created Islamophobic system. The July Revolution gave the persecuted majority the opportunity to obtain long-absent religious freedom in their own country. Therefore, a movement with initial secular motive relating to government job opportunity was further intensified to a much greater struggle for religious freedom.
3. And finally, the July Revolution was also a nationalist movement against the cultural and economic aggression of a regional hegemonic power. In my talk with Turkish media, Yeni Safak on Indian hegemony in July 2024, just couple of weeks before Sheikh Hasina fled to India, I expressed hope that India’s dominance in Bangladesh might not be sustainable and Hasina’s regime may collapse in popular uprising. In my PhD thesis, I concluded the India-Bangladesh bilateral relation section with the following paragraph:

“I conclude this section by arguing that India had succeeded in establishing its hegemonic control over Bangladesh with the assistance of its political and ideological allies, although there is serious resentment against Indian hegemony among the masses. India may continue to enjoy its hegemonic control in the affairs of Bangladesh as long as the current pro-Indian government would be able to cling to power, but it will never be able to earn the allegiance and trust of the people. The anti-India sentiment in Bangladesh has increased sharply over the last decade, largely due to current regime’s subservient foreign policy in regards to India; the interference of New Delhi in the domestic politics of Bangladesh; Indian support for the unpopular, authoritarian regime in Dhaka; the Indian media’s persistent negative projection of Bangladesh and its’ people; the threat perception of the common people arising out of the asymmetry of power; and the continued (and increasing) persecution of Muslims in India.”

Therefore, the political philosophy that propelled the great July Revolution in Bangladesh is both Islamic and secular in character.

Conclusion:

The revolution in Bangladesh in 2024 is also an interesting study in regional geopolitics for political scientists and historians. As the hegemonic aspiration of India is interlinked with the Bangladesh July movement, we need to identify India in the regional power structure. I have developed the behavior and characteristics of regional powers in the following table which may help the reader to place India in the regional hierarchy of South Asia:

India has behaved like a dominator since the subcontinent was partitioned in 1947 with the birth of Muslim-majority independent state of Pakistan and Hindu-majority independent state of India. To counter the domestic resistance to Indian hegemony arising out of a sense of exploitation by the huge neighbor and strong Islamic faith among the general masses in Bangladesh, New Delhi devised a strategy over time to install a subservient government by manipulating the military and civil administration in the country.

Indian government loved to project Hasina-led Bangladesh as one of its shining foreign policy successes. Modi ignored the fact that popular anger was brewing against draconian rule of his puppet in Dhaka. Young people resented that their right of franchise was denied and civic space drastically curtailed. India ignored the reality and blindly backed Hasina to the exclusion of everyone else without any Plan-B. Now the regional giant is left to sulk and lick its wound. I hope that Indian leadership will accept the failure in its foreign policy doctrine with humility to give some time for introspection. After all, Bangladesh is only the last in the list of many major geopolitical failures of India in South Asia. Buoyed by the electoral success of extremist Hindu majoritarian politics, the current regime in Delhi has alienated all its neighbors. India has become out of touch with public sentiment in the region and now facing the backlash. Unfortunately, in the aftermath of the revolution in Dhaka, the reaction from New Delhi has not been conducive for a healthy bilateral relationship. There has been a total failure by the policymakers in India to comprehend the long-held, genuine grievances against the puppet and repressive regime of Sheikh Hasina in Bangladesh. Delhi’s insistence on various conspiracy theories and playing minority card demonstrates its total failure to grasp the complexity of the situation. The Indian government underestimated the extent of peoples’ organic resentment against Delhi for its unflinching support to an undemocratic and brutally autocratic regime for so long and failed to appreciate the causes of massive uprising. It is now crucial for India to acknowledge that its ostrich policy in support of a hated regime in its neighborhood has failed. The populist Hindu nationalist policy of Narendra Modi has actually harmed India’s regional interests.

I would conclude that India behaved like a colonial master in the affairs of Bangladesh from January 2009 to 5 August 2024, the day Sheikh Hasina fled to Delhi under an undisclosed arrangement with Bangladesh Army and Indian deep state. With the departure of Hasina, one and a half decade of complete hegemonic control of India over Bangladesh has finally come to an end. Political shift in Bangladesh could now force India to change its hegemonic approach in the region. Delhi must accept the uncomfortable truth that strong anti-India sentiment gradually brewed among a large section of the population of Bangladesh during the last 15 years because of the widespread perception of Indian hand in keeping Hasina in power without democratic mandate.

Last Word:

Under the prevailing uncertain and evolving geopolitical situation, India needs to change its self-perception from that of a dominant hegemon to a well-intentioned leader in South Asia, a region that suffers from discord and enmity of historical nature.  India needs to cooperate with the neighborhood to transform South Asia into a peaceful and stable region from which it may emerge as a natural leader with the acceptance of all intra and extra-regional actors. The revolution can also be an eye opener for other autocratic rulers in the Islamic world that it may be a matter of time before the persecuted general mass can unite, revolt, and unseat puppet governments of global power.