With China gambit, Muhammad Yunus now has India’s attention

There is a realisation that New Delhi can no longer afford to wait out Muhammad Yunus, delaying engagement with Bangladesh until an elected government is in place

The meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Bangladesh chief adviser Muhammad Yunus on the sidelines of the BIMSTEC summit on April 4 was an attempt at course correction by New Delhi to repair relations between the two countries, which have been at their worst since the dramatic ouster of Sheikh Hasina as Bangladesh prime minister on August 5, in a public uprising against her. 

For eight months, India cold-shouldered the Yunus-led interim administration. Yunus’ request, soon after taking charge, for a meeting with Prime Minister Modi elicited no response. A meeting in New York between the two foreign ministers, and the Indian foreign secretary’s visit to Dhaka could not bring the two sides together for a meeting of the two leaders. The message from New Delhi — a staunch supporter of Hasina during her 15 years in office, and has given her refuge in exile — was that it was prepared to wait until the elections and engage with the government that would be formed then. 

Then Yunus went to China. India noted the welcome to the former Nobel laureate in Beijing. But what really set off alarm bells in New Delhi was Yunus’ speech at the Boao Forum — a Davos-style platform for Asian political and business elites, hosted annually in Beijing — in which he described Bangladesh as a “guardian of the ocean” for the seven “landlocked” Indian states in the north-east, and his invitation to China to see this opportunity as “an extension of the Chinese economy”. The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) did not react officially, but India's foreign policy influencers, who often speak the government's mind, cried foul, and warned Yunus against playing with India's national security.

Some have called it Yunus’ naivety, but others might say it was a clear-eyed gambit. After all, China is the only leverage Bangladesh has over India. Even the Dhaka visit by Pakistani army officials did not raise too many hackles in New Delhi, because all said and done, India knows there are still generations of Bangladeshis who have not forgotten their struggle for liberation, even if Father of the Nation Sheikh Mujibur Rehman's home has been burnt down by radicals who want to erase their history. But China being invited by a third party to trade in India's north-east is something else. The gambit worked. Yunus got his meeting with Modi, even though days ahead of BIMSTEC, the MEA stated that no bilateral meeting was planned between the two leaders.

For now, New Delhi appears to have concluded that it can no longer afford to wait out Yunus, hoping to engage with an elected government that will follow. The chief adviser's statements in Beijing suggested that the head of the interim government may have more ambition than just holding the next elections. 

Perhaps, there was also the realisation that BIMSTEC was in danger of becoming another SAARC, held up by a bilateral problem. India blames Pakistan for the collapse of SAARC. If BIMSTEC stalled, New Delhi would find it difficult to pin it on Bangladesh. 

Does this mean that after journeying through several stages of grief after Hasina's removal, India is now at the stage called acceptance? Not really. The continuing trust deficit surfaced within hours of the Yunus-Modi meeting, with India contesting Bangladesh’s version of the meeting. Then came the big stick. India’s decision to end Bangladesh’s transhipment of its exports to third countries through Indian territory, using Indian facilities. This was clearly New Delhi’s response to Yunus’ expansive invitation to China to set up shop in Bangladesh, close to India’s strategic Siliguri corridor to the North-eastern states, known as Chicken’s Neck.

By all accounts, the Yunus-Modi meeting itself was cordial, free of acrimony. Yunus reminded the Indian Prime Minister of a previous meeting at the 2015 Indian Science Congress at Mumbai, where Modi presented him the gold medal that he had been awarded. The two met another time at the 2017 edition of the Congress. But their talking points suggested that the two sides had much distance to cover to arrive on common ground. . Dhaka wants New Delhi to send Hasina back to stand trial for various alleged crimes. It wants New Delhi to stop her from making inflammatory comments about the interim administration. New Delhi wants Dhaka to act decisively to ensure the security of the Hindu minority, and expeditiously investigate all acts of violence committed against them. 

Additionally, Modi expressed his support for “a democratic, stable, peaceful, progressive and inclusive Bangladesh”, a formulation that pointed to the Indian expectation that elections would be held soon, and would not leave out any political party. He also conveyed that India's relations with Bangladesh were not with a political party, but with the “people of Bangladesh”.

Bangladeshis were quick to point out that the word ‘inclusive’ was not in New Delhi's diplomatic lexicon when Hasina was in office. The flawed elections held during her three terms were described then by Indian officials as Bangladesh's ‘internal’ matter.

As for the security of Hindus, the controversial Waqf Bill, widely seen as a move to undermine India's Muslims, the country's largest minority, passed in the Lok Sabha just two days before Modi and Yunus met. In an interview to this author, well-known Bangladeshi economist Debapriya Bhattacharya observed that the welfare of minorities across South Asia was interlinked — “a minority in one country is the majority in another”. 

Bangladeshis also question how people-centric the relationship is if New Delhi continues to harbour Hasina, who is alleged to have directed security forces then under her command to shoot down protestors, or take measures to disrupt Bangladesh’s economy, such as the denial of transhipment facilities, especially at a time when even the smallest, poorest countries have enough on their hands, dealing with the tariffs imposed by US President Donald Trump. The withdrawal of these facilities is expected to hit Bangladeshi garment exports to Western countries, air freighted through Indian airports. The MEA cited congestion as the main reason for withdrawing the facility from Bangladesh. A MEA spokesman said Bangladesh exports to landlocked Bhutan and Nepal would not be impacted.

This is the kind of baggage that accumulates and will be carried over into India’s engagement with an elected government, whenever one takes office, just as the blockade of the India-Nepal border remains a fraught memory for the people of Nepal.

For now, the silver lining is that Bangladesh has sent a high commissioner to its mission in New Delhi, six months after withdrawing its top envoy amid the acrimony in the aftermath of Hasina’s removal. Also, trade between India and Bangladesh still continues. India is Bangladesh's second-largest trading partner after China. Bangladesh relies on Indian imports for essential goods and industrial materials, including for its garment sector. But the cut back by New Delhi on visas has affected the travel of businessmen.

Medical tourists have also been hit by the visa cutback. China has offered to fill the gap. Bangladesh is said to be considering direct flights Chittagong-Kunming flights to facilitate medical travel. 

India could win friends if it began giving more visas. It could also adopt a more humane attitude to ‘illegal’ border crossers. Killings of Bangladeshis at the border are a constant source of tension. After all, if Modi can appeal for a humane approach to Indian trespassers in Sri Lankan waters, why not practice the same with Bangladeshis? It would definitely make New Delhi look more people-centric in its approach to Bangladesh, much more than seeming to punish every Bangladeshi for friend Hasina's sorry fate. 

Nirupama Subramanian is an independent journalist. X: @tallstories.

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.