When student-led, anti-government protests in Bangladesh snowballed into the ouster of Sheikh Hasina’s 15-year-long autocratic rule in August 2024, many within the South Asian nation hoped it signaled higher occasions forward.
4 months on, issues are usually not going to plan. The preliminary surge of public jubilation has given solution to pessimism. The interim authorities, led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, is grappling with governance issues, political instability, non secular extremism and a fragile economic system. Furthermore, a collection of latest occasions have highlighted and exacerbated Bangladesh’s fraught diplomatic relations with neighboring India.
The arrest of a Hindu monk in Muslim-majority Bangladesh on Nov. 24, 2024, encapsulates the issues dealing with Yunus. The detention of Chinmoy Krishna Das (also called Chandan Dhar) was adopted by sectarian violence during which a Muslim lawyer was killed, and anti-Bangladesh protests in India.
As an knowledgeable on Bangladesh’s political and social panorama and a former Indian Excessive Fee worker in Dhaka, I consider it’s clear that how Yunus addresses myriad challenges – upholding the rule of regulation, managing the economic system, guaranteeing security for minorities and rebuilding relations with India – can be vital for restoring democratic well being in Bangladesh.
A public security disaster
The interim authorities’s speedy problem is addressing deteriorating regulation and order.
Whereas Hasina’s authoritarian rule left little area for democracy or dissent, her abrupt removing in August has created an influence vacuum during which beforehand marginalized political factions compete for affect and public assist.
This has coincided with an increase in vigilante justice, extortion and the abuse of the authorized system for settling political disputes. The mob lynching of 49 folks, principally political opponents, since Hasina’s ouster is symptomatic of Bangladesh’s present lawlessness.
The police’s reluctance to handle this safety vacuum has solely worsened the scenario. Legislation enforcement’s heavy-handed response to anti-Hasina protests generated widespread anger amongst Bangladeshis.
Members of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Occasion protest the arrest of a Hindu monk in Bangladesh.
Dibyangshu Sarkar/AFP by way of Getty Pictures
An economic system in disaster
Making issues worse, years of financial mismanagement and corruption have left Bangladesh battling excessive youth unemployment, runaway inflation and a collapsing banking sector. Its exterior debt has jumped from US$62 billion to over $100 billion in simply 5 years, which critics have blamed, partially, on massive infrastructure initiatives rife with corruption.
Managing this debt will pose a big problem. Bangladesh’s dwindling overseas reserves make debt repayments and foreign money stabilization tough, whereas additionally exerting inflationary stress on the economic system. And inflation stays persistently excessive, with important items changing into more and more unaffordable for a lot of Bangladeshis.
Including to those issues is a wave of labor unrest. Staff throughout varied sectors have organized protests over unpaid wages and unsafe working situations. A few of this labor unrest has turned violent, forcing a whole bunch of factories to close down. Furthermore, factories owned by people near the Hasina authorities have additionally been focused, together with a suspected arson assault of a tire manufacturing unit.
The awful financial scenario and ongoing labor unrest has critically affected the garment sector, Bangladesh’s major overseas export, which threatens worldwide demand and will additional imperil the economic system.
The return of extremism
The challenges confronted by Bangladesh’s interim authorities have been exacerbated by the resurgence of Islamic extremism and sectarian violence which have lengthy plagued Bangladesh, significantly for the reason that return of Bangladeshi mujahadeen fighters after the Afghan-Soviet struggle.
Although quickly suppressed throughout Hasina’s authoritarian rule, Islamic extremists and vigilantes have gained confidence in latest months and have violently attacked non secular and ethnic minorities, in addition to intercourse employees. Vigilantes have destroyed 1000’s of Hindu properties, companies and locations of worship throughout the nation, inflicting deep insecurity throughout the minority Hindu group, which makes up 8% of the inhabitants. Extremists have additionally vandalized about 40 Sufi Muslim shrines.
In the meantime, Bengali Muslim settlers have attacked ethnic Indigenous teams within the Chittagong Hill Tracts within the nation’s southeast, ensuing within the deaths of at the least three folks and the burning of quite a few properties and companies.
Neighborly squabbles
Assaults on Hindus have additionally strained diplomatic relations with neighboring India.
Beneath Hasina, Bangladesh maintained an in depth alliance with India and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Along with joint safety collaboration to counter Chinese language affect in South Asia, Delhi has additionally made substantial infrastructure investments in Bangladesh, together with $8 billion in loans for varied improvement initiatives.
However Indian-Bangladeshi relations have been tense following Hasina’s ouster. The previous autocratic chief fled to Delhi, the place she at present resides, regardless of plans by the interim authorities to hunt her extradition. Yunus has accused Hasina of continuous her political operations and attempting to undermine Bangladesh’s new leaders whereas being harbored by India.
The arrest of Chinmoy Krishna Das on sedition fees has solely exacerbated Indian-Bangladeshi tensions. India’s authorities has expressed “deep concern” over the monk’s arrest and known as for the safety of Hindus in Bangladesh.
The chief minister of West Bengal, India, known as for deploying a United Nations-led peacekeeping pressure in Bangladesh to safeguard minorities, whereas some leaders from India’s ruling Hindu nationalist BJP get together have demanded commerce embargoes on Bangladesh.
India holds vital leverage over Bangladesh, each economically and geopolitically. With bilateral commerce volumes of $14 billion, India is Bangladesh’s largest buying and selling accomplice and a key supply of important imports. If India perceives the brand new authorities as hostile, it might impose punitive measures that may additional cripple Bangladesh’s fragile economic system, just like its unofficial blockade of Nepal in 2015 that led to a extreme humanitarian disaster.
The Indian Excessive Fee in Dhaka is very influential and deeply related to Bangladeshi politics. A key a part of its affect comes from issuing about 2.5 million visas every year to Bangladeshis touring to India for medical and different causes. Since Hasina’s fall, India has restricted the issuing of those visas.
A return of autocratic rule?
Given the 2 international locations’ deep financial ties and geographic proximity, I consider Yunus must delicately navigate bilateral relations with India. He must be significantly aware that Hasina’s present exile in India and the continued assaults on Hindu minorities in Bangladesh might present India with a pretext to extra strongly intervene in Bangladeshi politics.
Bangladesh’s present trajectory is, I consider, worrying. How the Yunus authorities offers with these heightened dangers will say quite a bit in regards to the future route of the nation. Certainly, any failure in these areas might result in but extra instability, complicating the nation’s long-term prospects and making it simpler to ascertain the return of an authoritarian regime.