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Ancient India’s visionary strategist Chanakya gave six-fold policy deals on war and peace with the neighboring states, how a king should assess his power, and what actions he needed to take to deal with the states.
Nearly 2316 years ago, the Indian philosopher, economist, jurist, and royal advisor professed diplomatic principles that still have relevance in modern diplomacy.
Chanakya who lived around 300 BCE was a key figure in the establishment of the glorious Mauryan Empire and is known for writing Arthashastra, an ancient Indian treatise on politics and economics.
Unfortunately, the South Block in New Delhi is manned by chosen blue-eyed civil officers who inherited the legacy of the British Raj instead of the marvel of Chanakya’s diplomacy.
South Block in New Delhi houses the Prime Minister’s Office, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), and the Ministry of Defense.
India had invested heavily in her continued hegemony among the neighbors, which has adopted a much trumped-up policy of ‘Neighborhood First’.
Earlier Delhi pursued the ‘Look East Policy’ to yield positive results in the region and Bangladesh and several South Asian countries were partners in progress and economic development.
Not to be misunderstood for the ‘Neighborhood First’ policy, but the Hindutava (an ideology or movement seeking to establish Hinduism and Hindu culture as dominant in India) pursued by the governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has irked most South Asian nations.
Presently India’s relationships with neighbors are blowing hot and cold. Some countries have developed love and hate with India after arch-enemy China made a dent in the region with China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) mega projects, especially in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Maldives, and Bangladesh. Now those countries are on the fresh list of disapproval by the helms of affairs in Delhi’s South Block.
Bangladesh on the diplomatic front is the opening batsman in a bid to bring to life the weakened SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation). Bangladesh is expecting the SAARC foreign secretary-level meeting will be held soon, which has been halted for the last 10 years.The SAARC summit has also stalled for 10 years, because of the India-Pakistan conflicts.
“SAARC appears dead but it should not be buried,” Touhid Hossain, a Bangladesh Adviser for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs remarked. The regional cooperation was extremely important for improving trade and economy and reducing poverty in the South Asian region, the adviser said.
Yunus told the New Age, “India is not responding seriously. Indians explain that they have problems with Pakistan.” The bone of contention between Bangladesh and India is centered around Hasina, who is living in exile near Delhi.
Bangladesh has formally asked India to extradite deposed Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, the MEA spokesperson refused to make any statement on Dhaka’s request when Indian journalists asked for a comment.
Now it seems that Delhi will remain silent on the issue of extradition. Both countries signed a treaty in 2013 and amended it in 2016. The treaty was signed to deport northeast India’s separatist leaders harbored in Bangladesh.
Similarly, two fugitive military officers indicted for the assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the independence hero were hiding in India. Yunus told editor Kabir that if India does not officially respond to the extradition of Hasina, Dhaka will make a follow-up request after a month with Delhi.
Dhaka has repeatedly requested Delhi to ensure that Hasina remains quiet and refrain from making fiery political speeches over the phone to her loyalists, which often emerges in social media.
Most of the central leaders of Hasina’s Awami League have fled to India through clandestine routes. Many have taken refuge in Australia, Canada, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, the United States and other destinations.
Those who couldn’t escape have been arrested. They were accused of the deaths of students and protesters. The political prisoners are languishing in prison without bail for the last four months.
Last week, Foreign Adviser Touhid Hossain and Chief of Army Staff General Waker-Uz-Zaman in separate media engagements have extended an olive branch to restore the bilateral relations with India.
General Waker, who is described by senior officers as a professional soldier in an interview with editor Matiur Rahman of Prothom Alo, the largest Bangla newspaper said that India is an important neighbor.
“We are dependent on India in many ways. And India is getting facilities from us too. A large number of their people are working in Bangladesh, formally and informally…So India has a lot of interest in Bangladesh’s stability,” he observed.
“This is a give-and-take relationship….We have to maintain good relations based on equality. The people in no way should feel India is dominating over us, which goes against our interests,” the COAS.
Waker is incidentally the husband of Sheikh Hasina’s cousin and last June was made COAS. He was a hard nut in negotiating with Hasina to quit and flee to India on 5 August last year.
On the other hand, the Foreign Advisor on the eve of New Year suggested that Bangladesh maintain “balanced relations” with India, China, and the United States, as all three nations hold “strategic importance” for the country.
Relations between Bangladesh and India have to be built on the basis of sovereignty, mutual interest, and dignity as the dimension and equation of Bangladesh’s relation with India have changed after 5 August, noted Hossain.
On the other hand, Indian news media NDTV, CNN-IBN News18, Times Now, Republic TV and several other media outlets have been amplifying fake stories that General Waker has ceased power from Hasina. The Nobel laureate Prof Muhammad Yunus is a façade (stooge) and the Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami is dominating the Interim Government.
Prof Yunus in an interview with the New Age editor Nurul Kabir expressed his frustration over Indian media spreading concocted stories on Bangladesh and even described the Interim Government as an Islamist regime.
The Indian media along with the central leaders, as well as the state Chief Ministers of BJP have demonized Bangladesh for revenge attacks upon the 13 million Hindus and held Yunus responsible for the atrocities in the country.
“When Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi called me and alleged that the religious minority community was being persecuted here in Bangladesh, I told him that the narrative was an exaggerated one,” Yunus said in an interview with the anti-establishment newspaper.
Hossain said that the role played by Indian media was not at all conducive to establishing normal relations between the two countries.
Indian media, academicians, and political stalwarts are forgetting that the territory that is now Bangladesh was thrice partitioned. The British Raj partitioned in 1905 and 1947 to create Pakistan based on a Muslim-majority region in India. The third partition was in 1971, when it finally bifurcated from Pakistan after rejecting the Two-Nation theory, said political historian Mohiuddin Ahmad.
India must accept the political reality that Hasina has gone for now and must condemn the wanton deaths of more than a thousand students and protesters during the July-August so-called Monsoon Revolution, said Ahmad.
Historian Mohiuddin Ahmad concluded that unless Delhi recognizes the bloody student revolution that ousted the autocratic regime of Sheikh Hasina and gives hope on extradition, bilateral relations will continue to limp, which will severely affect regional cooperation (SAARC).
First published in the Stratheia Policy Journal, Islamabad, Pakistan on 5 January 2025
Saleem Samad is an award-winning independent journalist based in Bangladesh. A media rights defender with the Reporters Without Borders (@RSF_inter). Recipient of Ashoka Fellowship and Hellman-Hammett Award. He could be reached at saleemsamad@hotmail.com; Twitter (X): @saleemsamad
