Bangladesh: The Wind in Jamaat-e-Islami's Sails is Worrying For India

The anti-India party held its first public rally after ten long years earlier this month in the capital, Dhaka.

A Jamaat-e-Islami procession. Image used for representation only. 

(Photo: Twitter)

Jamaat-e-Islami, the most rabidly anti-India and stridently pro-Pakistan political party in Bangladesh, is back in business. Both the timing and circumstances of Jamaat’s rebound are critical for New Delhi.

It held its first public rally after ten long years earlier this month in the capital, Dhaka. A massive turnout of dedicated cadres, especially Islami Chhatra Shibir (students’ wing) members, marked its return from the political wilderness ahead of parliamentary elections scheduled to be held between mid-December and mid-January in the predominantly Muslim nation where India has a huge stake.

The Jamaat is Bangladesh’s largest Islamist party, and its comeback is hugely significant from New Delhi’s strategic perspective as it opposes India’s political and economic influence in Bangladesh, whereas India’s foreign policy prioritises clout in the neighbourhood over everything else to protect national interests.

The Jamaat’s Return is a Setback for Delhi

Successive Indian governments have characterised the Jamaat as nothing but a proxy of Pakistan -- and more specifically an ISI puppet. It still decries the liberation war, stands defiantly with Pakistan, and accuses India of colonising Bangladesh. Naturally, there is no love lost between India and the re-emergent Jamaat.

Of course, the Jamaat can’t be just wished away. It is, after all, the third-largest party after the Awami League which is in power since 2009 with India’s no-questions-asked backing, and the anti-India Bangladesh Nationalist Party which was in power from 2001 to 2006 in alliance with the even more anti-India Jamaat.

Those five years were such a nightmare for India that New Delhi took an oath not to let the BNP-Jamaat combine capture power again. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, not unexpectedly, is on its toes after the Jamaat’s resurgence out of the blue.

Importantly, the Jamaat’s return to centre stage is the second setback for New Delhi in Bangladesh since end-May when the United States clamped down on the Awami League and threatened to sanction anyone obstructing free and fair elections, undermining democracy, or violating human rights.

The US threat to deny visas and even revoke existing ones is a rap on the Awami League’s knuckles -- an ultimatum to stop harassing and intimidating the political opposition like the BNP and the Jamaat and government’s critics, including the free press -- or face the consequences. Many Bangladeshis find the visa threat very humiliating and demeaning. But that’s exactly what it is intended to be so that the Hasina regime falls in line and plays by the rulebook.

America’s stand is diametrically opposed to what India wants: an Awami League victory by any means in the upcoming elections so that its tried and tested ally Sheikh Hasina somehow becomes the PM for a fourth straight term. In India’s scheme of things, there is no alternative to a Hasina-led Awami League.

India is ready to shut its eyes but the US isn’t. Washington’s steps to stop the Awami League from using undemocratic, illegal, and extra-constitutional methods to steamroller the opposition this time like the previous rigged elections in 2014 and 2018 have therefore pitted New Delhi against Washington in Bangladesh.

The Geopolitics Over Bangladesh

The Jamaat rally -- much as it is against India’s interests -- is the direct outcome of US diktat not to mess with the opposition. The police permission for the rally is at odds with the systemic hounding of the Jamaat since 2009 which pulverised the once vibrant party. The go-ahead was frankly like a miracle! Abdur Razzaque, minister and member of the Awami League presidium, eventually blurted out that the police permission to the Jamaat to hold a rally after a decade was actually a “political” decision -- and although he didn’t admit it -- taken by Hasina, no less.

No other political party in South Asia has been targeted and subjected to state repression for years on end like the Jamaat, which makes the regrouping and rally even more noteworthy.

There is no doubt that Hasina made the Jamaat’s decimation her personal mission. She threw its entire leadership into prison, five top leaders were hanged between 2013 and 2016 for war crimes dating back to 1971, assets and investments were seized and cadres underground, wrecking the party. In 2013, even its registration as a political party was revoked but Hasina stopped just short of banning the Jamaat.

Even today, all its top leaders are in jail. The Jamaat’s ameer, Shafiqur Rahman, was arrested in December and so was his son Rafat Sadiq Saifullah under anti-terrorism laws. At the comeback rally, acting chief, Mohammad Taher, listed Rahman’s release among its main demands which include holding elections under a caretaker government.

Interestingly, while there is no official response from India to the US visa threat, Beijing has officially expressed solidarity with Dhaka and slammed Washington for arm-twisting Bangladesh. In that sense, China has publicly stood by Bangladesh, while India hasn’t openly voiced its support, although New Delhi’s conflict with the US over Bangladesh is no secret. But India’s silence is fuelling speculation that Hasina intentionally gave Jamaat permission for the rally to jolt New Delhi into playing a more proactive role in Bangladesh to protect its interests along with the Awami League’s!

There are already reports of the Jamaat re-inventing itself as the Bangladesh Democratic Party to bypass de-registration. On the whole, there is a lull in the Islamic country next door but political parties will gear up for the poll season after Eid-uz-Zoha.

(SNM Abdi is a distinguished journalist and ex-Deputy Editor of Outlook. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)