Why India pushing Sheikh Hasina to sign defence pact can be self-defeating

After a gap of seven years, the Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina, is paying an official visit to India from April 7 to 10. She will stay at family friend President Pranab Mukherjee’s official residence, Rashtrapati Bhavan.

When Hasina was in New Delhi in January 2010, her meetings with Manmohan Singh had helped to take the bilateral relations between the two nations a giant leap forward.

Both Hasina and Singh had come into agreement to resolve long-standing bilateral disputes and expand areas of cooperation with a shared vision for regional peace and prosperity.

After that landmark visit, PM Singh went to Dhaka in September 2011, followed by PM Narendra Modi in June 2015. Modi’s visit also witnessed the signing of the historic land boundary agreement, which helped swap more than 200 tiny enclaves dotted around the border. 

In her visit to New Delhi this time, Hasina hopes to build on the progress that has taken place in the last seven years. She aims to finalise the accord on the Teesta River and also receive Indian support for her planned Ganga Barrage a few kilometres downstream from India’s controversial Farakka Barrage. Improving road and river connectivity with India is another key interest she has.

Hasina is going to face her next election in 2019 and that factor also influences her prioritising closer bilateral trade and increased investment from Indian companies in Bangladesh’s energy sector. She needs a growing economy and low energy prices to be able to reelect herself after ten years in power.

Though Hasina comes with her own laundry list, India has been putting pressure on Bangladesh for some time to sign a comprehensive "defence cooperation agreement". The Indian position is understandable considering that Bangladesh decided to join with China into a "Strategic Partnership of Cooperation", when Chinese president Xi Jinping visited Dhaka in October 2016. China’s increased hardware transfer to Bangladesh’s naval forces in this decade has also added to India’s uneasiness.

The Indian pressure on Hasina to sign the agreement on defence cooperation has been paramount since Indian defence minister’s two-day visit to Dhaka on November 30, 2016. The pressure has been kept up with subsequent visits by India’s foreign secretary and Army Chief to Dhaka.

Though India has been insistent on the signing of the pact, Hasina is understandably cautious. She might only concede to sign an MoU instead of a binding agreement for her political survival.

Opposition parties in Bangladesh have already come out saying that the proposed defence pact with India will be a sell-out. The leader of the main opposition party of Bangladesh, BNP, even alleged that the pact with India would lead to loss of the country’s independence and sovereignty.

Hasina reacted against BNP charges quite strongly and even accused the opposition party of having a close relationship with RAW in the past. She even alleged that RAW was working to overthrow her government in 2001.

The strong reactions clearly expose her fear of the opposition party getting a huge political bonanza if she has to sign the defence pact with India.

India's relations with Bangladesh have experienced several turnabouts. Beginning with high cordiality immediately after the country’s independence in 1971, relations began to dwindle within a few years.

There has been limited recovery at times, but on the whole relations suffer from mutual mistrust. In the last seven years, though, the bilateral relation has taken an upswing with "pro-India" Hasina returning back to power, but its foundation is still volatile.

A survey conducted on public attitudes in India in 2013 showed more Indians trusted Bangladesh as a reliable friend (48 per cent) than any other country. But that neighbourly trust is not the same way reciprocated by the Bangladeshi population, and with some valid reasons.

Bangladesh seriously believes that though their side has done its best to address India’s security concerns, it has not got much in return on the areas of water-sharing and trade.

In Bangladesh, the Hasina government is seen as making deep concessions to India, going against the national interest. Hasina’s relation with India is being viewed with increased suspicion in her country, more like India-Hasina relations.

For Bangladesh-India relations to be really strong and lasting, India has to work extra to win the hearts and minds of the Bangladeshi people. Unfortunately, India is far from achieving that.

British Bangladeshi writer and novelist Tahmima Anam has described well how her native country perceives India: “We cannot love India. The relationship is too unequal for romance, and our neighbour is too aggressively self-interested to be embraced as a generous parent.”

There is no doubt that there is an increasing anti-India sentiment in Bangladesh. This anyone can witness in the cricket field as well. For Hasina, it was not easy to get popular support to make a deal with Manmohan Singh, who was personally admired by the Bangladeshis.

With Modi as the PM of India, it has become extremely difficult, particularly with his and his party BJP’s increasingly confrontational politics with Muslims in India. In the Muslim-majority Bangladesh, the Hindu-nationalist Modi is, to say it mildly, being seen as a controversial and polarising figure.

Moreover, according to a recent survey by the Asia Foundation, the health of democracy in Bangladesh is in a delicate state. Adding to Hasina’s worries, this finding also suggests increasing political polarisation in the country.

So, if Hasina succumbs to Indian pressure and agrees for a comprehensive defence agreement, it will not only make her very unpopular at home but also provide a common agenda to opposition parties to rally against her.

Moreover, her threat is not limited to opposition from political parties. The Bangladeshi army is not exactly fond of her, and neither of India.

In this context, India needs to evaluate the risks associated with stubbornly pursuing a defence cooperation agreement with Bangladesh. The success in getting the pact will come at the price of weakening and even losing the major ally it has in its very critical neighbourhood.

Also read: What Sheikh Hasina's visit will mean for India-Bangladesh ties