PROTECTING MINORITIES IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD

The Indian government has raised its voice against the atrocities being inflicted on Hindus in Bangladesh. Yet, those who champion minority rights in India have not been so vocal

AUGUST 5 marks the sudden overthrow of the elected Awami League government in Bangladesh. A swift resignation, followed by the unceremonious fleeing of former PM Sheikh Hasina to India. Since then, Bangladesh has been on the minds of many thinking and some unthinking-Indians.

Several analyses, replete with conspiracy theories, have been bandied about.

Is this a US-engineered regime change? Is the head of the caretaker government, Nobel laureate Mohammad Yunus, a US stooge? Is there a hidden Chinese hand in the coup? Or should the credit or blame go to Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, operating out of London and within Bangladesh? Or was it Bangladesh's Jammat-i-Islami, the radical Islamist organisation with dreaded student wing 'Chhatra Shibir', the ones who upturned Hasina's tottering government? Or, contrarily, if not in addition to the above, was this actually a student-led popular uprising against a 'dictatorial' regime? And what about the role of our own Research and Analysis Wing? How did they help safeguard our interests? That there have been regime changes in the region is undeniable. But who is behind them? First Pakistan, with the deposition, then imprisonment, of Imran Khan in April 2022. Then Sri Lanka a couple of months later in July 2022.

More recently, Maldives in November 2023. The way these governments were toppled, especially in Pakistan and Sri Lanka, bear an uncanny similarity with what happened in Bangladesh. In Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, the residences of the deposed leaders were ransacked in the most unseemly manner.

In Pakistan, it was the Corps Commander's official residence in Lahore.