India’s Bangladesh Policy Quagmire: Big Brother’s Recalcitrance and the Chinese Embrace |
The Pulse | Diplomacy | South Asia
India’s Bangladesh Policy Quagmire: Big Brother’s Recalcitrance and the Chinese Embrace
The BJP, or its allies, are now in power in all five Indian states that share a border with Bangladesh.
With its victories in the recent state assembly elections in West Bengal and Assam, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), or its alliance partners, are in power in all five Indian states that share a border with Bangladesh. This should make New Delhi’s task of implementing its Bangladesh policy an easy cake walk, since it will no longer attract opposition from the state governments. However, it doesn’t necessarily mean a reset in India-Bangladesh ties. In fact, a mismanaged hardline policy, lacking in nuance, could alienate Dhaka further, disincentivizing its present mood to repair ties with India.
The new Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) in Dhaka congratulated the BJP on its victory in West Bengal, which unseated the Trinamool Congress (TMC) party. The BNP described defeated Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee as an “impediment” to the signing of the Teesta River water-sharing agreement and expressed hope that the new BJP government in the state would be different. At the same time, it voiced apprehension regarding the possible growth of Indian attempts at “pushing in” people who New Delhi describes as illegal Bangladeshi migrants. Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) personnel will stay alert for such incidents, Dhaka’s Home Minister Salahuddin Ahmed announced. Foreign Minister Khalilur Rahman was stern, promising that “Dhaka will act” against such moves.
Pushing out so-called illegal Muslim migrants from Bangladesh has been a priority for the BJP. Promises of forcible deportations may have contributed to the party’s electoral victory in West Bengal, making it expedient for the new state government to attempt, in tandem with the directives from India’s Home Ministry, to execute such a policy. However, in the absence of a consensus between New Delhi and Dhaka on the issue, the latter isn’t expected to take such action kindly.
India, in April, appointed Dinesh Trivedi, a BJP politician from West Bengal, as its new envoy to Dhaka, parting ways with a long tradition of placing only career diplomats in that position. The reason behind the move wasn’t articulated by the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA). Perhaps, in New Delhi’s calculation, a politician is better suited than a diplomat to attempt to smooth feathers in Dhaka ruffled by India’s refusal to extradite former Bangladeshi Prime Minister Shaikh Hasina. However, as long as the BJP’s domestic politics continue to cast Bangladesh as a country that tolerates the persecution of minority Hindus and BJP leaders refer to Bangladeshi migrants as “termites” who threaten India’s national security under a sinister policy of demographic invasion, Trivedi’s room for maneuver will remain limited.
Extraditing Hasina, who has been awarded a death sentence in absentia for her role in the violence accompanying the July 2024........