As Bangladesh faces political upheaval, it’s crucial for India to not overreact to emergent negative sentiments or social media abuse, avers the author who has vast experience and knowledge of matters geostrategic and geopolitical. Strategic patience, maintaining national interests without arrogance, and enhancing bilateral ties through proactive diplomacy and military collaboration should guide India’s approach, especially amidst potential regional adversarial alliances.

The diplomatic and strategic security hierarchies of India are fully seized of the plethora of geopolitical challenges which have come in India’s path as we fought our way out of the pandemic and restored our balance over the last two years. Simultaneously, with improving economic prospects as the fastest growing large economy and our aims quite clearly set upon achievement of various benchmarks, clearly there is now a need for an even more pragmatic approach to national security. Wars of any kind would be anathema at such a time and sub conventional threats even worse for their longevity and all-pervading impact on society.  The world is at a juncture where clarity in developing geopolitical situations is indeterminate and decision making strewn with challenges. In purely strategic security terms such a time is best handled through immense forbearance and maturity needing a ‘think through’ approach with an eye on second and third order impact. In many ways this could also be defined as the era of ‘strategic patience’.   There is plenty of evidence that doing nothing in geopolitical terms is many times a very good strategy but that isn’t what strategic patience alludes to.  Individuals, leaders, organizations and society often have an ‘action bias’, virtually a psychological compulsion to act while procrastination is considered politically passe. In such times both could prove dangerous, insensitive and depicting imbalance. How does this philosophy apply to the situation which has just emerged on India’s eastern flank with violent and revolutionary regime change in Bangladesh. Perhaps India’s search for an appropriate response to the crisis lies in the aforesaid explanation but the application of strategic patience is not just a black and white affair. It is nuanced within, and always takes recourse to seeking opportunities and remaining alert to developments.

Let us get a clear understanding of how revolutions pan out, all over the world. It usually starts with great hopes vested in a regime which mostly professes to be democratic or quasi democratic. Over time the effectiveness of the government wanes and the democratic credentials of the leaders start altering. As dictatorial trends gather pace, a part of the  population remains happy with the quality of life, but sooner than later intellectuals, elders, academics and many others of their ilk start to get restive with restricted freedom and democratic rights and a possible downturn in economy. That is when movements for change of ways commence and convert to movements for change of government. This is subject to the availability of the appropriate leadership. Non- descript collective leadership emerges many times in place of a personality-based one. This takes time and may receive support from external powers who have strategic interests there. Counters to this commence softly with a few detentions and cascade quickly to arrests leading to demonstrations and street turbulence for release of the arrested. All this happened in Bangladesh but then it went well beyond where the government wishing to talk and negotiate had no idea how far to go in its coercion before the agitators and their leaders would relent. The leader at the helm usually finds it difficult to calibrate in these situations and invariably overplays the cards.  The military may cooperate up to a point. In the case of Bangladesh, the Army held back and the Police became the villain. It helped in a way that in the post-event situation the Army remained the stabilizing factor but the Police became the target of social vendetta. The vicious cycle culminated as it usually does, with the abdication of the  head of the government; in this case Sheikh Hasina, who could not correctly judge the proportionality of the response against the uprising and had very few confidantes who could advise her and make an approach to the rebel leaders. The cycle of violence does not end with the overthrow but gets renewed with the arrival of a new consensus leader and the spiral gets initiated again as the rebels take charge. Vendetta, reprisals through atrocities and pillaging continues till realisation of the impact on the larger interests of the nation. The coming of Mohammad Yunus as the Chief Adviser, his tentativeness in taking charge, the influence of the long bottled up Bangladesh National Party (BNP) and the sudden release of a large number of radicals and others, many of whom are counted as terrorists, cast a spell of a virtual national paralysis over the country. It became even worse with the surge of atrocities on Hindu minorities and the pillaging of institutions which are symbols of Indo Bangladesh friendship.

At the beginning of Aug 2024 when all the above was in progress I spoke with several Bangladeshi friends who tweaked my analyses with some inputs which appeared to indicate that we in India had misread the mood in Bangladesh. It appeared that despite the good work done on the economic front, the lifting of several millions from poverty etc, the Bangladesh intelligentsia, youth and the people on the street were unrelenting about the flawed democracy that Sheikh Hasina provided to the nation. Many said that Indian analysts continued to harp on the dangers of greater Islamisation due to their inherent fears of what India had witnessed in J&K and the sponsored proxies elsewhere in India. That forced us to stop building bridges with alternative interest groups beyond the Awami League.

So even if we have no hesitation in admitting that most of us were wrong or just too late in realising the potential of a street revolution in Bangladesh, it’s now more important to be correct about the threat pattern emerging from the altered environment in that country and take the necessary steps to neutralise that as best as possible. There are two assumptions to be made at this moment. First, a situation such as the one  obtaining in Bangladesh tends to cause sudden panic in any security establishment, especially after certain comfort levels have been reached in a bilateral relationship over many years; everything seems to have turned around and one tends to see the work of the devil in every utterance. Secondly, the current sentiments emanating from Bangladesh may not be fully a reflection of the reality in the context of Indo Bangladesh relations or linked with Bangladesh’ strategic interests. It is natural that these sentiments are influenced by the revolutionary fervour of the streets, although many attempts are being made to balance out the negative sentiments. It will be some time before counsel based on the reality of Bangladesh’s national interest emerges.

In the midst of all the passion emerging from regime overthrow and a perceived ideological makeover in process, there have been several social media interjections with fairly abusive anti India content. A bigger power in the region will always be at the receiving end of allegations of a dominant approach and failure to take others along. It should not perturb our policy makers. Even more importantly it should not instigate Indian citizens to respond in kind. Ignoring such sentiment is the better response although it cannot always be guaranteed. What the common Indian finds difficult to accept or understand is that India’s military and other assistance in the creation of Bangladesh now appears anathema to the Bangladeshi citizen. Indian sentiment is justified but this seems to negatively affect Bangladeshi self-esteem. We will have to play this sentiment differently. We will need to be more vociferous on our partnership that existed in removing Bangladesh from Pakistan’s hold; the role of the Mukti Jodha, although well recognised in India needs a higher platform in Indian projection.  Negative response to these Bangladeshi observations are best avoided, especially on social media. Our influence and information handling must drown out the naysayers against Bangladesh as a measure of our National interest. There is no issue of National ego here. India’s National interest is met by this.

While Pakistan may be licking its fingers and its lackeys already projecting the need for Pak- Bangladesh cooperation in targeting Indian interests in North East India and elsewhere, it is imperative that the political, strategic and intelligence communities of both nations strengthen their networks rather than compromise them. Bangladesh may imagine that its interests lie in cooperating and coordinating with Pakistan, despite the nature of relations the people have enjoyed with that country in the past. It’s up to the Indian communities to work on adequate messaging and proactive diplomacy to convince Bangladesh that its long term interests cannot be divorced from those of India. Indian media must play a relevant role in this without attempting to grab eyeballs which  focus continuously on the negative aspects of the recent events and current situation. All this has been unfortunate but the media cannot axe India’s feet by a short sighted approach towards dealing with Bangladesh. This is where the concept of strategic patience plays a major role. Preparatory measures must be put in place to exploit by both sides when the sentiments subside. The political, economic, social, diplomatic, psychological  and military domains are the natural compartments in which our efforts must fall. Some will fetch early results, some will be ignored and some will provide grounds for later day development. We can see that in the social domain the two national cricket teams of Bangladesh and India are already carrying forward the sports sentiment without trying anything retrograde. Everyone in India needs to applaud that. In the military domain Bangladesh’s full scale involvement with UN Peacekeeping must be supported by Indian staff officers at DPKO and by our permanent mission. No nation can be quicker than the Bangladesh Army in deploying formed troops for UN Peacekeeping role than the Bangladesh Army.

Military to military engagement is always diplomatically impactful too. We need faculty exchange at the two National Defence Colleges and more senior officer/veteran officer exchange for speaking assignments at the academy, staff college and the war college. It will establish ourselves as the major stakeholders of peace here.

Everything achieved by the above measures can all evaporate if the demands for extradition of Sheikh Hasina are not adequately and sensitively handled. We need to obtain broader support for her continued asylum here and need not be unduly perturbed on this score. Yet, it is not an issue which can be ignored.

As the Indian economy flourishes, getting Bangladesh on board in economic terms will serve many purposes. A4 billion US$ loan has been sought, of which the US has just allotted 222 million US$. At some stage India will need to chip in with more but that should be our investment in Bangladesh’s future and our security of the East too.

People angry at their inadequacies blame many things on neighbours. We need to gnash our teeth and resist responding. Reviving the spirit of the Mukti Jodha and giving the survivors a higher platform will help revive bonding among former comrades in arms.