Recently ousted Bangladeshi leader Sheikh Hasina has sought asylum in India, its closest foreign ally. Reports suggest that Hasina is likely to remain in India for the time being after unsuccessfully seeking asylum in the UK, Canada and the US.
Her son, Sajeeb Wazed Joy, has said the fallen leader has no plans to leave India and she now appears to be plotting a strategy to fight back against the rebellion that toppled her long rule.
So far, Hasina's approach appears to involve aligning with India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its Hindutva allies, which could give India greater political influence in Bangladesh if she returns to power.
To understand what is at stake, it is essential to understand the dynamics of the relationship. The Indian government has consistently acted as the protector of Prime Minister Hasina and the Awami League, turning India-Bangladesh diplomatic relations into a patron-client relationship reminiscent of Russia-Belarus.
In 2014, Prime Minister Hasina effectively secured victory in the elections before the votes were even held after the main opposition BNP boycotted the polls.
Ahead of this contentious election, the BJP's then external affairs minister, Sushma Swaraj, met with leaders of the Bangladesh Bharatiya Janata Party and encouraged their participation, helping to lend a semblance of legitimacy to what was widely perceived to be a rigged election.
In 2018, Hasina's Awami League won another controversial election victory with a staggering nearly 95% of the vote reminiscent of North Korea, a victory tainted by unprecedented electoral fraud orchestrated by government officials and law enforcement agencies in favor of the ruling party.
Despite widespread international condemnation of the election as rigged, the BJP-led Indian government was quick to congratulate Hasina and provide significant international support to bolster her government, and it is widely believed that the Indian administration was fully aware of the blatant vote-rigging that took place at the time.
As the 2024 elections approached, Western countries began to pressure Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to hold free and fair elections. However, the Indian government acting on her behalf was reportedly successful in mitigating the backlash from these countries, particularly the United States, and holding another flawed election.
The depth of the ties between the two countries was further highlighted in 2022 when then Foreign Minister AK Momen revealed that he had asked India to do all it could to keep the Awami League in power.
Awami League general secretary and former minister Obaidul Quaid-i-Ahmad echoed this sentiment, saying “as long as Delhi is here, we are here,” and assured that India would prevent any constitutional threat to the Awami League's dominance.
Awami League parliamentary candidates campaigned as “Delhi candidates” and openly acknowledged their reliance on Indian support. Now Prime Minister Hasina's son Sajeeb Wazed Joy is reportedly urging India to pressure the caretaker government to hold elections within 90 days.
Hasina's sudden ouster sent shock waves through the Indian political establishment, leaving Bangladesh without a functioning government for several days and widespread anarchy erupting in the power vacuum.
Over the past 15 years, the Awami League has turned party offices and police stations into centres of repression, extortion and corruption.
Amid the ensuing unrest, local communities, fed up with years of abuse, decided to take matters into their own hands: hundreds of police stations and party offices were burnt and Awami League leaders were killed in the violence.
About 10 percent of Bangladesh's Muslim population is Hindu and represents a minority within the Awami League, and therefore Hindus are prominent in the party's leadership.
The mobs targeted both Hindu and Muslim leaders of the Awami League, raising questions about whether these attacks were motivated by religious identity or political affiliation.
Overall trends suggest that Awami League ties were a key driver of the attacks. India's BJP-affiliated media was quick to blur this distinction, largely ignoring Muslim casualties within the Awami League and reporting the violence as an attack on a religious minority.
This portrayal portrayed Hindu leaders and activists as victims of religious persecution, distracting attention from the underlying political context of the unrest.
In response to the escalating violence, swift steps were taken to protect the homes and temples of ethnic minorities. These actions could be seen as a civic duty, but they also had a strategic dimension. Some may have perceived that the Awami League and BJP-aligned media could use the narrative of minority victimization to weaken and destabilize a post-Hasina government.
Indian media and X (formerly Twitter) heavyweights aligned with the BJP have chosen to portray the situation in a way that suits their right-wing political agenda.
Misinformation and doctored video clips have spread rapidly, fuelling false narratives: fires at restaurants and markets have been wrongly reported as temple arson, and shocking footage of a mob lynching a Muslim Awami League leader has been misrepresented as violence against Hindus.
In one case, the house of former Bangladesh cricket captain Mashrafe Mortaza was set on fire because of his ties to the Awami League in a disputed election, but Indian media wrongly reported this as an attack on cricketer Liton Das on religious grounds.
Similarly, the fire that spread from Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's residence to the home of Rahul Anand, a member of the band Jorel Gaan, was misrepresented, even though Anand said it was an accident.
Independent fact-checkers like Boom, Dismisslab and AFP are working hard to counter the proliferation of fake news coming out of India, but they face an uphill battle: for every piece of misinformation they correct, numerous others spread quickly on social media.
There has also been notable criticism of protesters who toppled a statue of Hasina's father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who is often portrayed as the driving force behind Bangladesh's independence.
This criticism often fails to take into account the fact that the Awami League government has elevated Mujibur Rahman to an almost mythical figure, erecting fairy-tale-like statues and murals across the country worshipping North Korea's Kim family.
Overall, India's pro-BJP media is seizing the opportunity to galvanise its support base after the party's worst electoral performance in the past decade.
Hasina's son Sajeev appears regularly in the Indian media, repeating the BJP's narrative by pinning the blame on fictitious enemies such as Pakistan's ISI and America's CIA, and actively promotes a narrative of violence against Hindus in his television appearances.
But even Sajeev and Hasina have been unwitting victims of careless reporting in the Indian media. The Print newspaper recently carried a statement alleging that Hasina had resigned, and Sajeev was quick to denounce the report as false and fabricated. The incident suggests that the Awami League may be desperately trying different theories to see which one will hold.
In Bangladesh, the Awami League appears to be capitalizing on contrived issues: in Sylhet, there are reports that Awami League leaders have launched false flag attacks against the Hindu community.
Moreover, party leaders and members of its student wing, the Bangladesh Chhatra League, have been organising protest rallies to portray the actual Hindu victims killed by Hasina's security forces as victims of the current caretaker government.
The rallies have also adopted the slogan “Jai Shri Ram” (Glory to Lord Rama), which is associated with the BJP's Hindutva movement but is unfamiliar to Bangladeshi Hindus. Govinda Pramanik, leader of the Hindu Grand Alliance, has already accused the Awami League of manipulating Hindus to regain power.
Responding to these media reports, prominent right-wing Indian politician Subramanian Swamy proposed annexing northern Bangladesh.
In a YouTube video, he suggested Indian troops should surround the Bangladesh border and launch a military operation to restore Hasina to power.
Hasina has been a staunch ally of India and her current support may be seen as a return of that loyalty, but this approach risks undermining the long-term diplomatic relationship between India and Bangladesh and their peoples.
On the bright side, many rational voices within India recognize the broader implications of this aid, express strong solidarity with the Bangladeshi people, and call for a more balanced and principled approach to a volatile situation that is likely to continue to have twists and turns.
Tauqir Aziz is an economic, financial and political analyst specialising in Bangladesh's political economy and financial sectors and their intersection.
