New Delhi, India – Wearing black for the event, India’s International Minister S Jaishankar met Tarique Rahman, son of the deceased former Bangladeshi Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, with sombre expressions on their faces.
Khaleda had handed away the day past, on December 30, and Jaishankar was amongst a big group of regional leaders who had gathered in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, for her funeral.
Jaishankar handed Rahman, who has taken over the management of Khaleda’s Bangladesh Nationalist Social gathering (BNP), a letter from Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Then, in a publish on X alongside photographs of their assembly, Jaishankar wrote phrases that exhibit a dramatic break with New Delhi’s previous relationship with the BNP: “Conveyed deepest condolences on behalf of the Authorities and other people of India. Expressed confidence that Begum Khaleda Zia’s imaginative and prescient and values will information the event of our partnership.”
For many years, India had been – at instances, publicly, on different events, privately – against Khaleda’s “imaginative and prescient and values”.
The place for hundreds of thousands of her supporters in Bangladesh, she represented a heroic battle towards navy rule within the Nineteen Eighties that first introduced her to energy in 1991, India considered her with suspicion and mistrust. For many years, the BNP had an alliance with Jamaat-e-Islami, Bangladesh’s largest Islamist group that advocates for stronger ties with Pakistan, India’s arch-enemy. In the meantime, India handled Khaleda’s rival, Sheikh Hasina, and her avowedly secular Awami League celebration as its pure companions.
However as Bangladesh prepares for nationwide elections in February, Jaishankar’s feedback underscore how India and the BNP look like pivoting from their animus in the direction of a more in-depth working relationship.
Jaishankar’s “very cordial” assembly with Rahman and his staff of confidantes in Dhaka offered the “potential of a brand new section within the bilateral relationship”, Humayun Kabir, international affairs adviser to Rahman, advised Al Jazeera.
It’s a shift that circumstances have compelled on each India and the Rahman-led BNP, say analysts.
A brand new begin?
For the reason that student-led July 2024 rebellion toppled Sheikh Hasina’s 15-year rule, New Delhi’s decades-long assist for the ousted chief has prompted robust anti-India sentiments on Bangladeshi streets.
Hasina now lives in exile in New Delhi, and India has up to now refused to return her to Bangladesh to face the demise penalty, after being convicted in absentia by a tribunal on costs associated to the brutal crackdown by her safety forces on protesters final 12 months. The United Nations estimates that about 1,400 folks died within the crackdown.
Bilateral relations have continued to slip additional: After a 2024 protest chief who was vocally anti-India was murdered, protests towards India picked up once more in Bangladesh. A Hindu Bangladeshi man was lynched. Each nations needed to briefly droop visa companies at their respective excessive commissions.
However Hasina’s Awami League is banned from collaborating within the February elections. And a few analysts consider that the BNP is making an attempt to occupy the liberal and centrist political house vacated by the Awami League. It has additionally damaged up with the Jamaat – the Islamist group has since partnered with a celebration fashioned by leaders of the 2024 pupil protest motion, in a formidable alliance.
The BNP and the Jamaat-led coalition are seen because the frontrunners competing to kind the subsequent authorities after the February elections. And whereas India can’t reconcile with the Jamaat’s politics – and its pro-Pakistan tilt – Rahman has in latest days made statements which can be much more palatable to New Delhi.
Since returning to Dhaka in late December after 17 years in exile, Rahman advised supporters that he needed an inclusive Bangladesh, the place minorities are secure.
His phrases counsel that Rahman has “matured throughout his years in exile”, Harsh Vardhan Shringla, a former Indian international secretary who has additionally served as excessive commissioner in Dhaka, advised Al Jazeera.
‘Mutual distrust and animosity’
Like Rahman, the BNP itself has largely been in political exile because it was final in energy in 2006 – the celebration and its leaders have been first focused by an interim military-backed authorities after which by Hasina’s Awami League authorities with a number of instances and arrests.
Its final stint in workplace coincided largely with the final time that Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Social gathering was in energy, between 1998 and 2004. On the time, India’s prime minister was Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
Areas of rivalry between the BJP-ruled India and BNP-ruled Bangladesh ranged from commerce disputes, border disputes, river water sharing, migration, armed insurrection, and violence towards minorities. New Delhi accused Bangladesh of permitting a number of anti-India armed fighters shelter on its terrain, and the problem turned a main irritant in bilateral relations.
India additionally accused the BNP of pandering to Pakistani intelligence companies. Dhaka denied these accusations.
“Basically, the background has been one in all mutual distrust and animosity that’s historic,” stated Shringla, who’s now a member of the Indian parliament’s higher home, nominated by Modi’s BJP.
“Underneath the BNP years [2001-2006], Bangladesh supported an anti-India line and have become very near Pakistan,” Shringla advised Al Jazeera. “And [Tarique] Rahman was a major mover in that authorities and had disproportionate affect.”
‘Rahman is most secure guess’
But calculations have modified.
When Khaleda was moved to a hospital in vital situation in late November, Modi was fast to want her a speedy restoration. The BNP responded, thanking him for the needs.
“Rahman appears to grasp that for him to be a profitable prime minister, he wants India’s assist – or, as a minimum, he doesn’t need India’s antagonism,” stated Shringla. “Now, now we have to see whether or not his actions match rhetoric.”
From India’s perspective, Rahman is now “saying all the proper issues”, stated Sreeradha Datta, a professor specialising in South Asian research at India’s OP Jindal World College.
Rahman’s obvious reputation – lots of of 1000’s gathered on the streets of Dhaka to greet him when he arrived from London – means that he might convey a way of stability within the neighbourhood, Datta advised Al Jazeera.
Analysts say Rahman additionally represents the “most secure guess” for New Delhi going ahead, in contrast with the Jamaat-led alliance and different political actors in Bangladesh.
“India sees the coed revolutionaries and the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami as the largest threats to Indian pursuits,” stated Jon Danilowicz, a former US diplomat who spent eight years working in Bangladesh.
Rahman’s public statements on returning to Dhaka “have proven nice maturity”, Danilowicz stated.
The pre-poll break between the Jamaat and the BNP additionally offers New Delhi extra confidence in coping with Rahman, stated Michael Kugelman, a South Asia political analyst.
“There’s numerous baggage from the previous, along with the BNP’s longstanding alliance with Jamaat,” Kugelman advised Al Jazeera. “For India, recollections of that alliance die arduous.
“[Reaching out to Rahman is] not one thing that India will do fortunately, however one thing that it feels that it might want to do just by necessity,” he stated.
‘Rekindling people-to-people ties’
However photo-ops, handshakes, letters and sentiments of heat alone is probably not sufficient to restore bilateral ties.
Rahman’s adviser Kabir cautioned that for a brand new begin, “there have to be a clear break from the previous.”
Whereas India has insisted that its relationship is with Bangladesh and never with any celebration or chief in Dhaka, it was closest with Hasina and her Awami League celebration.
In contrast to Hasina’s time in workplace, Dhaka was lowered to a “pet canine” of New Delhi, Kabir stated. Rahman, if he involves energy, would hold Bangladesh equidistant from regional powers, like India and China, and hold “Bangladesh first”, Kabir added.
“Hasina used India in a foul approach to legitimise her personal crimes in Bangladesh, so folks have a really bitter distaste for India,” Kabir stated. He added that the “new Bangladesh” after the July 2024 revolution sees Hasina as a “terrorist”.
Kabir stated Dhaka would proceed to press India for Hasina’s extradition if Rahman is elected to energy in February. “The onus to keep up this [bilateral] relationship lies on New Delhi, for maintaining Hasina there,” he stated.
Hasina has publicly criticised Bangladesh’s path underneath the Yunus authorities, angering Dhaka. “India wants to maneuver on from Hasina’s period and shouldn’t be seen complicit together with her rogue actions to destabilise Bangladesh, whereas she sits in India,” Kabir stated. In any other case, he cautioned, “widespread anti-India distaste amongst folks makes it tough for the subsequent elected authorities to have interaction [with New Delhi] towards the favored sentiment.”
Persistent tensions have additionally performed out past the worlds of politics and diplomacy in latest days.
On Saturday, India’s cricketing physique, which governs the favored Indian Premier League, requested the Kolkata Knight Riders franchise to drop Bangladeshi pacer Mustafizur Rahman after BJP leaders protested the participant’s participation.
So what’s subsequent?
Anil Trigunayat, a former Indian diplomat who served in Bangladesh for 5 years, advised Al Jazeera that if Rahman returns to energy in Dhaka, “India’s greatest problem can be to maintain a examine on Pakistan and different anti-India militant teams being embedded in Bangladesh.”
Danilowicz stated he agreed that India would harbour these considerations – given the BNP’s previous leanings in the direction of Pakistan, when the Jamaat was its ally.
However Kabir, Rahman’s adviser, stated the BNP chief was targeted on “bettering and pushing cooperation” with India and different neighbours.
“The connection by no means existed between India and Bangladesh underneath Sheikh Hasina; it was simply restricted to Hasina,” stated Kabir. “Now, we want confidence that India means a change of path and is setting its coverage to really rekindle the connection between the folks of Bangladesh and India.”
