India’s hubris

October 14, 2024

DHAKA – “We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next-door neighbours” – Gilbert K Chesterton

Isn’t it time for India to come to terms with the reality about its neighbours, particularly about its most strategically located neighbour, Bangladesh? One wonders whether India realises that until the successful Monsoon Revolution in Bangladesh, the only government in the region that was close to it was that of Sheikh Hasina, whose regime, elected through questionable processes, India had consistently helped to sustain for 15 long years. And with every passing year, as the Hasina regime became more and more autocratic, India was seen as increasingly complicit in the travails and woes caused by the destruction of democracy and abridgement of the basic rights of Bangladeshis. Most saw the prolonged agony that Bangladesh went through as being the result of India’s unflinching support for the Awami League (AL) to further its own geostrategic interests.

The degree of commitment of the Indian administration to AL is evident from the fact that some of the top leaders of the ousted regime have been given sanctuary in that country. Skeletons hidden in their closet for so long have only just started to emerge.

Before Bangladesh, it was for the Maldives to show that it had had enough of India. The gumption shown by the then newly elected president, Mohamed Muizzu, to say openly that his country would not be bullied by its big neighbour might have irked India, but that view is fairly representative of the views of citizens in India’s many other South Asian neighbours. A new president in Sri Lanka from a party formed on nationalistic platforms must have added to India’s worries.

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