Despite the violence and the mounting death toll, for weeks, New Delhi had refused to condemn the Sheikh Hasina government for cracking down on student protests.

Following her ouster on August 5, India went straight into damage control.

Here’s India’s Foreign Minister S Jaishankar addressing parliament a day later:

“…We repeatedly counseled restraint and urged that the situation be defused through dialogue.”

Likewise, following her resignation, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reiterated “India’s support for a democratic and progressive Bangladesh”, echoing New Delhi’s concerns against Jamaat-e-Islami’s return to mainstream politics.

The Islamist party had been banned under Hasina rule.

On cue, the Indian mainstream media repeated the concerns of the foreign policy establishment and the Indian right-wing.

Share

It wasn’t long before mainstream media attributed Hasina’s downfall to “an Islamist takeover” of Bangladesh.

On August 6, The Times of India, India’s largest-selling newspaper, immediately pinned Hasina’s resignation on the Jamaat-e-Islami party – Bangladesh’s largest Islamist party.

Its headline: “What is Jamaat-e-Islami? ‘Pakistan-backed’ political party that brought down Sheikh Hasina government in Bangladesh”.

It didn’t stop there.

India’s electronic media, in particular, pushed conspiracy theories and Islamophobic tropes downplaying the significance of the students’ revolution.

On a show on the pro-government India Today channel, presenter Rahul Kanwal described Pakistan’s spy agency, the ISI, as having inspired regime change in Bangladesh.

“Was the uprising against Sheikh Hasina organic or was there a bigger conspiracy behind it? Kanwal asked.

“Top intelligence sources tell India Today that Pakistan-based ISI and China plotted to overthrow the Sheikh Hasina regime… sources say it was the Jamaat’s student wing that brainwashed and provoked protesters,” he said.

On India’s state broadcaster, DD India Live, Veena Sikri, former High Commissioner of India to Bangladesh, pointed to the role of “outside forces”.

“The rise of Islamist forces is threatening the values of democracy and secularism…,” Sikri said.

Days later, The Indian Express newspaper chose to juxtapose Hasina’s secular credentials with the rise of “Islamic fundamentalism”.

Not to be undone, a few weeks later, The Times of India asked: Bangladesh after Sheikh Hasina: Will it become the next Afghanistan or Pakistan?

Many Indian observers saw the developments as nothing more than a security threat for India.

“For India, the developments in Bangladesh are not explorations on democracy but tangible threats to security. There is no distance, only dangerous proximity. Chief ministers in bordering states are already having nightmares about the future and who else may come with the refugees,” Seema Sirohi, a US-based Indian journalist, wrote in The Economic Times.

Sirohi echoed long-held positions by Indian foreign policy experts who see Hasina’s Awami League as an ally.

For them, opposition parties such as BNP and common Bangladeshis are tomorrow’s jihadis and infiltrators.

“A word of caution: democracy promoters should watch what happens under a BNP-Jamaat combine as and when elections are held. Even the [Muhammad] Yunus-led interim government has an Islamist. And Sharia and women working in garment factories don’t go together,” she added.

This approach comes from a history of India-Bangladesh collaboration during the US-led War on Terror.

Hasina had branded the main opposition BNP party as “terrorists”; had forced a hostile takeover of Islami Bank – the country’s largest private commercial bank – and banned the Jamaat.

In 2010, she had managed to ban the books of Abu Abu al-A’la Mawdudi, founder of Jamaat-e-Islami. Her government justified the removal of books from libraries, arguing it promoted “militancy and terrorism”.

It was Hasina’s attack on Islamists and religious groups that had spurred the Indian government to target Muslims amid a rising tide of Islamophobia at home.

No wonder the Indian media platformed people like Indrani Bagchi, from the Ananta Aspen centre, who told readers “the last time Khaleda Zia [ex-Bangladesh PM from BNP party] was in power, terror madrassas bloomed”

Neither was it surprising that the Indian media would publish conspiracy theories from Sajeeb Wazed, Hasina’s US-based son, who blamed a foreign intelligence agency for the anti-government protests.

He provided no proof, nor was he asked to do so.

Instead, he was given a chance to peddle misleading information about the protests because it matched with the Indian right-wing agenda.

Misleading information

As the days went on, right-wing media and portals carried misleading and often factually incorrect reports about attacks on the Hindu minority in Bangladesh following the events of August 5.

Organiser, a right-wing publication, described the attacks on Hindus as “genocide” while news channels ran wall-to-wall coverage amplifying the myth.

Social media in India was awash with fake news.

One social media post purportedly showing Bangladeshi Hindu cricketer Liton Das’s house on fire went viral.

This turned out to be false, too.

The house belonged to cricketer-turned politician Mashrafe Morteza.

Misinformation on social media and media resulted in revenge attacks against Muslims across India. 

Now, to be clear, there were attacks against Hindus in the aftermath of Hasina’s removal from power.

Those attacks were however grossly exaggerated by the Indian media.

Thomas Kean, a senior consultant on Bangladesh and Myanmar at the Crisis Group, said that Hindus might have been targeted because of their association with the Awami League party, not just over their faith.

According to the Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council, among the more than 200 people killed in the wake of Hasina’s ousting from power, five were Hindu Bangladeshis.

There were other more sensible and critical reporting from other Indian journalists and editors.

Suhasini Haidar, the foreign affairs editor of The Hindu newspaper, argued that “reducing ties in the neighbourhood to communal binaries is a mistake”.

She also pointed out that Modi government’s anti-minority policies had “backfired in the neighbourhood”.

“India’s concerns regarding the safety of minorities in Bangladesh may be taken more seriously if the government also shows, by its actions not words, that it is committed to securing minorities within its borders as well,” she said referring to attacks on Muslims in India.

By late August and September, the conspiracy theories and concerns about what the rise of Islamist parties might mean for India continued to unfurl.

Take this piece by Firstpost, headlined: “India surrounded by chaotic neighbours”.

It exemplified what Professor Irfan Ahmed describes as “Hindu Orientalism”.

According to Ahmed, “Hindu Orientalism” is when Muslims can only be seen as “unruly or noisy and a danger to peace; they can never be an agent of social transformation pursuing justice, fairness and beauty”.

“The imagery of Muslims in Bangladesh as ‘violent,’ ‘intolerant’ and the accompanying hollow concerns about Hindus is a piece essentially borrowed from Western Orientalism, which Hindu Indians and their power elites readily embraced,” Irfan, also the author of Islamism and Democracy in India: The Transformation of Jamaat-E-Islami, wrote in a post on X. 

Not only did the coverage from the Indian media belittle the momentous movement in Bangladesh, which the interim leader Yunus dubbed ‘a second independence’, it bolstered disinformation and fanned the flames of anti-Muslim sentiment across India itself.

https://azadessa.substack.com/p/the-ousting-of-sheikh-hasina-according