India's challenge: Sheltering Hasina while securing its strategic interests in Bangladesh

That said, New Delhi must build good relations with our eastern neighbour, which is actively being wooed by China and Pakistan into an anti-India alliance.

There is an active minority of Islamists in Bangladesh who show hostility to India and its own secular Constitution.

The head of Bangladesh’s interim administration that took charge after a violent uprising against the Hasina government last August, Muhammad Yunus, had been penalized by the Sheikh Hasina regime and doesn’t seem charitably inclined towards the former ruler.

Yunus presides over a regime that has entertained frequent visits by officials of Pakistan’s armed forces and intelligence agencies, and whose key personnel have made threatening remarks about the isolation of India’s Northeast, should the ‘chicken’s neck’—a narrow land corridor between Bhutan, Nepal and Bangladesh—be blocked.

It is up to India to mobilize Bangladesh’s non-Islamist majority in India’s favour, so that it would be against the will of Bangladeshis for Dhaka to act against our interests. We have vital links of culture, trade and historical association that can facilitate such an effort.

Bangladesh is far behind India in terms of economic complexity and tech capability. But its per capita income is close to ours, thanks to robust exports that leveraged its underdevelopment to secure low-duty access to key Western markets. Indian investments in textile and garment production across the border have granted our investors an easier path to such markets than is possible directly from here.

Apart from petroleum products and various daily-use items, Bangladesh imports power from India and our power grid enables the sale of Nepalese hydroelectric power to it as well.

For us, links between Tripura and Bangladesh’s Chittagong port offer the easiest freight passage to India’s Northeast. The Hasina regime had worked with New Delhi on building two links between that port and Tripura: Maitri Bridge over the River Feni to enable cross-border haulage and a 12.2km rail link between Chittagong and Agartala.

It is in our logistical and strategic interest to keep this route open and shield it from Beijing’s designs. While Dhaka’s ties with China had been warming even earlier, Chinese activity around Chittagong has risen lately and last October’s ‘goodwill’ visit to its port by two Chinese naval ships had raised eyebrows.

While Bangladesh under Sheikh Hasina may have shown traits of a ‘swing state,’ her regime was fully on board with India in matters like denying refuge to separatist groups in India’s Northeast.

While the rise of anti-India forces in Bangladesh with links to extremists in Pakistan may be viewed in the context of fraught sectarian politics in the subcontinent, we need to re-educate people of India’s role in Bangladesh’s 1971 liberation from a Pakistani army on a genocidal rampage.

The US, with its own designs in play, had sought to smudge out what happened, but a concerted effort on our part could elevate the truth of Bangladesh’s birth.

Right now, Dhaka’s crackdown on Hasina’s Awami League party could trigger street resistance and even a civil war. While sheltering Hasina, India is not obliged to defend her government’s misdeeds. It is a fine line that New Delhi must walk in strife-torn Bangladesh.