How Hasina joined the ranks of dictators

This could not — cannot — be the work of a student protester, we thought, however angry he was with Bangabandhu’s daughter. Even if she, Sheikh Hasina, kept quiet when more than 300 people were killed by her armed forces in recent weeks via the shoot-at-sight orders given by none other than her Awami League party general secretary Obaidul Quader, should Bangabandhu have become the target of an ideological pervert who understood little or nothing about the incredible 1971 Liberation War?

Hasina, democracy’s child, the daughter of the Father of Bangladesh who could do no wrong; who escaped the midnight massacre on that awful night of August 15, 1975 — when the rest of her family was cruelly obliterated — only because she and her sister, Rehana, were simply not present in the family house in Dhanmondi; today, Hasina has joined the ranks of dictators who think little of shedding the blood of others because they have to, first, protect themselves.

How could this come to pass? How could Hasina allow Obaidul Quader to issue orders to kill those who dared to protest? Clearly, the 1971 revolution was turning upon itself. It was eating its own children.

It is said, in Dhaka, that Quader said at that fateful press conference two weeks ago that if the students didn’t shut down their protests and go home, he would order the Awami League cadres to “sort them out”. Did that mean that Hasina’s own party cadres shot innocent students on the streets of Dhaka and Chittagong? The jury is out on that assessment. But UNICEF has since said that at least 32 children were killed in the July protests.

How could Hasina — who lived in Delhi’s Pandara Road area with her sister in the wake of the massacre of her entire family, including her teenage brother Russel and watched pro-Pakistani forces come to power in her beloved Bangladesh — allow herself to turn into a brittle, copycat version of her hated opponents?

As she sleeps in an Indian safe house at or close to the Hindon airbase near Delhi — not even allowed to drive to the Capital less than an hour away at the house of her daughter Saima Wazed, who works with the WHO — Hasina should, perhaps, spend a few minutes looking within, of how and why she allowed this dire situation to unfold.

In January, when the Opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) boycotted the polls for the second time, Hasina haughtily threw the decision back into its face, ordering the arrest of the party’s key leaders and metaphorically spitting in their face. Even if the two women, Hasina and BNP leader Khaleda Zia, ailing for many years, are believed to hate each other’s guts, the first rule of democracy is to allow the person whose guts you hate the space to say what she wants to say.

But Hasina put out — and Delhi, increasingly without choice bought the argument — that if she wasn’t supported in her democratic return to power via authoritarian means, then the Bay of Bengal would turn into a nest of crocodiles that had been trained and fed by the Pakistani military establishment. The irony is that that assessment was also definitely true.

PM Modi, just like several prime ministers before him, including Indira Gandhi and Atal Bihari Vajpayee, realised that New Delhi had no option but to support Hasina. When the BNP had been in power between 2001 and 2006, not just had India’s North-East been pushed into deeper turmoil, but pro-Pakistani elements had sought to push a vast consignment of sophisticated weaponry into Bangladesh via the Chittagong port.

It is perfectly true that Sheikh Hasina’s return to Dhaka was a big boon for India. It’s not just about the 1971 connection — although that stirring beginning is where the special relationship was forged, not just between the Mukti Bahini and India’s armed forces, but also between the peoples of both countries — but about the last 15 years since Hasina returned as the PM.

A brand new partnership across the political and economic spectrum between India and Hasina’s Bangladesh has become a role model for the rest of South Asia. Roads, railways, transit rights, civilian travel, defence assistance, you name it, and India-Bangladesh pop up like two blushing peas in a pod.

So what happens now? It is clear that the Bangladeshi protester hammering at Mujib’s concrete skull in Dhaka on Monday, as well as the attacks against Hindu families across the country, is being orchestrated by a dark force. The pro-Pakistani Jamaat-e-Islami is the likely contender for that ticket. They are back. The past is never fully past in Bangladesh. For the Pakistani military establishment to play once again in the Bay of Bengal is a heaven-sent opportunity.

It is equally true that there is no one — except Hasina — who has had the raw courage to take on the Jamaat as well as its political face, the BNP. But now, Hasina has fled. At the Hindon airbase, she is likely waiting for the UK Foreign Office to accept her request for asylum. It probably wasn’t safe for her to stay on in Dhaka while she waited for London to say yes. She would have requested India for temporary shelter. It was the right thing for the Modi government to let her come. It’s what friends are for — even when they are in the wrong.