New Delhi, Oct 21 It has been more than a year since the interim government in Bangladesh came into being under the leadership of Muhammad Yunus, and the country has gone through a political reset, both internally as well as in its foreign policy.
Internally, the largest political party -- the Awami League -- and its affiliates are banned, Islamists have revived, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s legacy downplayed and even attacked, and the history of the 1971 Liberation War is up for debate.
Post-Sheikh Hasina Bangladesh, hailed as the "new" Bangladesh, has also been wrought with violence of all kinds -- communal, ethnic, gender, mob, and political. Inevitably, the country’s law and order is in a constant state of compromise. However, the interim government, whose prime responsibility behind its establishment was to bring the country’s stability back on track, dodged all accountability via two ways -- denial and labelling it a "conspiracy" of "outside influence".
The ostracisation of Awami League was predictable, considering Yunus’s personal animosity with Sheikh Hasina.
This year, therefore, witnessed the interim government, using all means -- political, judicial and administrative -- to witch-hunt League loyalists and activists on one hand and create a political atmosphere where Bangladesh’s apparent newly-earned democracy is one without opposition.
Human Rights Watch, in May, reported that the interim government has risked Bangladesh’s fundamental freedoms via a series of legislative measures. In a recent report, HRW also accused the interim government of abusing the recently amended Anti-Terrorism Act to target and imprison thousands of political opponents, especially the alleged supporters of the now ousted Awami League, on dubious charges to shut down dissent. Indeed, the report rightly pointed this is not the path to democratic transition.
Bangladesh’s own rights groups, too, have been critical of the interim government’s highhandedness—following the script of its predecessor that it claims to be so against, as it observed a disturbing rise in violations of human rights and crimes across Bangladesh under the interim government.
In its efforts to suppress the Awami League and positing itself opposite to everything it stood for, the interim government resorted to keeping a cold distance from its neighbour, India.
Calling it a ‘balanced geopolitics’, the Yunus-led interim government and its supporters, including political leaders, manufactured a new narrative—that India is an ‘ally’ of Sheikh Hasina and the Awami League.
Through shameless misconstruing of Indo-Bangladesh diplomatic relations, anti-Hasina forces are now competing against each other to appear as the guardians safeguarding Bangladesh’s democracy, one that the country’s so long lacked due to Hasina’s pro-India foreign policy tilt. While political parties, especially opponents of the Awami League, have always used anti-India rhetoric as their election campaign, the same by the interim government reflects its ultimate defence mechanism when faced with accountability.
The Chief Advisor ventured to create a fearmongering attitude among Bangladeshis that India’s ‘hegemony’ is the reason behind its own present political crisis. Oftentimes, especially when the inefficiency of law enforcement forces has been questioned, as in the case of the February Bulldozer Procession of 32 Dhanmondi, the interim government put the blame on "external forces" for its internal crisis. His close associates, along with other advisors of the interim government, too, made provocative remarks targeting India’s border security.
Communal attacks have witnessed a surge in Bangladesh since the fall of Hasina. When India raised concern about this worrying trend, the interim government quickly dismissed it as political attacks, and not communal, and even called the reports "exaggerated". It echoed the same about reports of communal attacks by the Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council, calling it "misleading" and "false".
In a recent interview with a US journalist, Yunus took yet another anti-India jibe, calling anti-Hindu violence in Bangladesh "fake news", one that is a "speciality of India", whereby Bangladesh remains a "beacon of religious harmony".
This is notwithstanding the US Religious Freedom report that revealed the state of minorities in Bangladesh to be concerning.
Given the collective failure in providing security to Hindus during the celebration of their biggest religious festival, Durga Puja, last year, the same concerns were raised when the media reported a few cases of idol vandalism days before the onset of Puja this year. This year, the home advisor warned to take tough action against those involved in 793 Durga Puja pavilions for allegedly "hurting religious sentiments" and blamed the "neighbouring country" for having a connection behind the falsehood surrounding Durga Puja. Such statements by an advisor were noted to encourage communal violence and persecution of minority populations, minority Hindus being always under the radar of proving their nationalism. This year, at least 49 untoward incidents have taken place at puja mandaps across Bangladesh has been reported during Durga Puja.
The recent ethnic violence in Khagrachhari in Chittagong Hill Tracts, another pressing issue in Bangladesh, showed the systemic nature of violence in the hills, whereby miscreants continue to enjoy a culture of impunity under the interim government. Here too, the government was quick to put the blame on ‘fascist groups’ sheltered in the neighbouring country, who are being allowed to create conditions to destabilise Bangladesh. New Delhi’s response was calling a spade a spade—dismissing the allegation as bizarre and pointing to the interim government’s tendency to shift blame elsewhere to camouflage its own inefficiency in maintaining law and order.
To cover up its failure, despite a year in power, the interim government has been shifting the blame game on India. This is not only an insult to the conscience of Bangladeshis but also to their very democratic aspiration. Through the manufactured narrative of "conspiracy of external force to destabilise Bangladesh", the interim government is deliberately delaying the democratic transition that its people are desperately awaiting.
Even though India has made it clear that it awaits a smooth, inclusive, just democratic transition in Bangladesh, where New Delhi is willing to work with any government that comes to power (as bilateral relations should be), the interim government is repeatedly resorting to arrogant statements to hold onto the chair. One can only hope for the national election to resolve this deliberate deadlock by the interim government, so that bilateral ties reach new heights in the near future.
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