Bangladesh: Yet another case of a regime-change operation gone wrong

When mass protests erupted against the Sheikh Hasina government in Bangladesh, they at first seemed to be organic against her 15-year stint as the prime minister. They had all the ingredients of a public protest of scale—involvement of student groups, political opposition leaders fuelling the dissent, discontent against government policies on reservation quotas, as well as big money pouring in to sustain the protestors.

The combination of these ingredients is historically a sure shot way to corner any government to ignite a response—generally in the form of police or the military trying to control the angry mobs to maintain security.

When an angry mob meets military or police response, the result is usually violence. Violence then leads to more anger and more protests, and this turns into a vicious cycle capable of bringing down a government. This is exactly what went down in Bangladesh—except when people began to question where the big money pouring into the protestors’ pockets came from.

More from Opinion

Sergio Gor’s senate hearing signals the future of Indo-American ties How Trump’s ‘War on Drugs’ buildup against Venezuela has a hidden agenda

The answer lies in the trail of monetary transactions between the Western deep state and the political leadership of the protestors. The other big indication came from Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina herself, a few weeks after she fled to India, that the organic protests were hijacked by the United States’ deep state, which wanted to have a naval base in Bay of Bengal. This certainly explains the appointment of Muhammad Yunus as the chief advisor to the Bangladesh government—a man who seemed to have been groomed for years for the job.

An important detail to note here is that Sheikh Hasina has not yet resigned as prime minister of Bangladesh, and Yunus is not democratically elected. Technically, Hasina is still very much the democratically elected prime minister of Bangladesh. Yunus is a deep-state-appointed leader—thrust upon the people.

Impact Shorts

More Shorts

How army remains Pakistan’s biggest business house

60 years on, why 1965 India–Pakistan war still matters

After his appointment, everything that could go wrong in a functional democracy has gone wrong. Ethnic cleansing operations have begun to be carried out. A state-sponsored pogrom of violence against Hindus has been allowed to run unhinged. Bangladesh, as part of undivided India pre-1947, still holds remnants of a population mix of Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, and others. The pogrom under Yunus is ensuring that no other religion other than Islam is allowed to survive and thrive in the country. Every effort is being made to convert Bangladesh into a Muslim state, stripping off its secular ethos in its entirety. Houses of those belonging to Hindus and other minorities are being raided, people are being thrashed and killed, properties are being stolen, and places of worship are being desecrated.

Is Bangladesh a functioning democracy anymore? No, it isn’t. Is the West overlooking the heinous crime, which an illegitimate government is funding and encouraging? Yes, it is. This is as simple as it gets. For most of the West, South Asia is a far-off land, with little relevance or impact on their existing lives. Hence, they are disinterested in mass human-ethnic cleansing and even, in a way, participating in killing a democracy.

This has not been the first attempt to destabilise a South Asian country on the path of development, there have been many misadventures of deep state in South Asia. For decades, Pakistan was the United States’ nation of choice to control affairs in South Asia by using Pakistan’s government and military as proxies. When they realised that they had funded a giant that became a hub to breed terrorism—which worked against the deep state’s own interests—they began to disengage bit-by-bit from Pakistan. During these decades of US control over Pakistan, the world continuously witnessed Hindus and other religious minorities completely cleansed from the Pakistani soil—case in point: the Hindu population in Pakistan declined from 13 per cent in 1950 to less than 2 per cent currently. Not to be missed is also the fact that West’s indulgence in Pakistan has brought the country to the brink of bankruptcy.

Bangladesh’s future looks equally bleak. Does it want to be torn by war, extremist terror, and bankruptcy by adhering to Yunus’ regime, or does it want to return to the path of growth and development that it was on before the regime-change operation took place?

As for India’s role in this geopolitical development, it waited out Pakistan’s near-death and will wait for Bangladesh’s too. As mass secessionist sentiments in Balochistan and Gilgit have developed over recent years and somehow have become appreciative of India’s economic growth story, public sentiment in Bangladesh too will change again. India, by means of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, will already provide fast-track citizenship to Hindus and other persecuted religious minorities from neighbouring nations and continue to establish itself as a safe nation and robust democracy with the freedom to follow one’s chosen religion.

However, it certainly is a matter of great concern if forces from the West try to bring instability to India’s neighbourhood, looking for an opportunity to strike within India to slow down its growth story. However, India, being the mother of democracy, has an intelligent electorate that continues to reject power corridors seen cosying up to the deep state. While similar regime change operations may have worked in Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Bangladesh, they cannot work in India, for India has the might to fight these forces with equal strength. The Western world must wake up to its hypocrisy, take note of inhuman atrocities conducted as part of a pogrom sanctioned by Yunus, a leader whom they have implanted, and respond against these illegitimate state-sponsored acts of terror decisively and immediately.

Priyam Gandhi-Mody is a noted author and political communications expert. She has written four best-selling books and is working on her fifth one. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.