The latest edition of India's Foreign Policy Research Center has been released. The topic is India-Bangladesh relations, the evolution of which I've been watching on the ground for years. The situation post Bangladesh's August 2024 coup has deteriorated markedly, certainly for Hindus who face new attacks and removal from national life; also, for the US and others, as Bangladesh has moved solidly into China's camp while still trying to pose as a US ally. Let's stop falling for their crap. My article is on pages 19-27. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vsZ9sex3BNZFlccCRUMLCKHy4MlCFQN9/view
[NOTE: For whatever reason, the endnotes did not copy, so I have re-created them and identified them in the body with a number inside parentheses. The notes follow the article.}
1. India seems to lack clarity on how to deal with post-Hasina Dhaka. How far do you agree that it was India’s flawed diplomacy to count on one individual politician instead of nurturing strong people-to-people relations?
Bangladeshi history is characterized by a succession of regimes that center around and tend to almost deify their leaders. It started with Sheikh Mujibar Rahman, hailed by most Bangladeshis until the recent coup as the “father of the nation.” Sheikh Mujib’s opponents then invested the same sort of deification in his successor and fellow freedom fighter, Ziaur Rahman, who also was credited by many as having “saved the nation.” From there, the country lurched from one strongman to another, including Dictator Mohammed Ershad who ruled with an iron fist from 1983-1990 and was army chief from 1978 through 1986. The country eventually settled on Bangladesh’s only elected heads of state, Khaleda Zia (Bangladesh Nationalist Party) and Sheikh Hasina Wazed (Bangladesh Awami League), the wife and daughter of Zia and Sheikh Mujib respectively. That cult of personality reached new heights during Hasina’s almost 16 year rule, during which time she carried out purges and seized virtually all power centers in the country. I recall being in Bangladesh and subsequently telling Washington lawmakers that almost everyone I met with something to protect, made sure to begin their statements with extreme praise for Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, often looking around when they did. People from major business leaders, top academics, journalists, politicians and elected leaders, to the military—seemed scared to death of running afoul of Sheikh Hasina and the Awami League. Both were known for their harsh attacks on opponents. Once in 2023, during a seminar at which I was the keynote speaker, Dhaka University faculty and students engaged me in conversation, only so they could tell me (in a way they hoped could not be read by others) that “there is no free speech in Bangladesh.” Many large newspapers at the time had to hire “consultants” close to the government in order to avoid excessive censorship. So, it was a natural move for India to develop a tight relationship with Sheikh Hasina. Moreover, if Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi wanted any sort of relationship with Bangladesh, he almost had no choice but to cozy up to that country’s virtual dictator, who turned her full wrath on all those who she saw as opponents.
Bangladesh’s entire 54-year history has been one of successive personality cults that held sway in the country, and we have no reason to believe that the pattern will change with its elected leader. Moreover, that history also includes those strong personalities violently repressing their opponents; so if India did seek to establish relationships outside leadership, it likely would be seen as an attack on that leadership, leaving it on the outside looking in until the next change of government; and the last one took over 15 years. To be sure, India’s friendship with the Hasina government, and its providing her with safe haven after the coup, has sparked a good deal of anti-India rhetoric and sentiment post-coup. Bangladesh, however, has seen regular spikes of that, regardless of the person with whom India became close. While “people-to-people” relations would help transactionally with specific matters, it would not be significant on a more universal level with Bangladesh’s strong man (or strong woman) politics.
So what options does India have with the current, interim government? Where does that leave India today? Nowhere, really. There is no strong leader right now. The military operates behind the scenes for the most part, and the current head of state, Mohammad Yunus, is proving himself to be weak and ineffective, perhaps a mere transition figure before Bangladesh marches into that darkest of nights: an Islamist dictatorship. For India to seek out the ascendant Islamist leaders, who are leading Bangladesh’s rapprochement with Pakistan and could end up controlling the levers of power, would be contrary to its own interests. There might be military-to-military and intelligence-to-intelligence cooperation, but the evidence that can be confirmed thus far is anecdotal. My own experience, however, is that it is more of a sure thing to rely on people pursuing their material interests than to rely on their friendship or their doing the right thing. And that takes us to one place: the economy. Whoever emerges from the current situation to head the country will have to fix Bangladesh’s economy, or it will find itself out on its butt. Sheikh Hasina presided over a long Bangladeshi economic miracle that pulled the country up and out of the least developed nation category. Their prosperity enabled Bangladesh’s citizens to ignore the attack on their freedoms; to “take the money and run,” so to speak. But then the prosperity hit a wall, bringing unemployment and reduced income. Only then did that the people decide that Hasina’s dictatorship was no longer working for them.
Starting under Hasina, but really taking off under the current government, Bangladesh has been moving closer to China, taking on more Chinese debt, and tying its economy closer to China’s. Those of us familiar with international economics know that’s a bad direction to go. China’s economy is in dire straits, and the current stalled tariff negotiations with the United
States (US) are allowing its bad dynamics to gain strength. Even if some Bangladeshis believe that the administration of US President Donald Trump will not notice if they becomes the false front for Chinese companies avoiding tariffs; the United States this time (as opposed to the tariffs in Trump’s first administration) has included safeguards to neutralize such efforts. Just ask Vietnam and Mexico. Unlike China’s economy, India’s is growing and strengthening day by day; the soon to be completed trade agreement with the United States will make it even stronger.
That suggests a two-pronged approach for India: at the formal, governmental level, the only option is to get close with whoever is in charge at the time. If there really are significant democratic forces in Bangladesh one day, it should seek them out while maintaining ties with the rulers. On a more granular level, India would do well to leverage it economic strength by using it to make Bangladeshi businesses profitable and its moguls happy.
2. The minority issue has further strained India-Bangladesh relations, already tense due to the interim government's rhetoric and foreign policy choices, led by Muhammad Yunus. Do you agree?
Yes, I do, and I believe India must seize the current opportunity it has to put Bangladesh’s decades-long ethnic cleansing of Hindus squarely on the table as something that must be considered in any negotiations or agreements. In 1951, after the movement of peoples that followed the partition of the Indian subcontinent, the first census of East Pakistan found Hindus to comprise a bit under a third of the population. When East Pakistan became Bangladesh in 1971, they dropped to about a fifth; thirty years later, less than a tenth; and today, Hindus are about one in 15 Bangladeshis. It does not take a math genius to predict that the next number will be lower. Throughout that entire period, we have verified evidence of ongoing anti-Hindu human rights atrocities that every Bangladeshi government enabled by letting the criminals know that they could attack Hindus and Hinduism with no consequences or any sort of prosecution. At the same time, international media, human rights groups, governments, and the United Nations (UN) did nothing about it. And I always believed that if I, with my own meager resources could see these things that the entities above knew about it, too. Do CNN and Amnesty International have fewer resources than I do? Not only did they do nothing, but few of those entities even said anything about it. The one exception is the nation of India. The 2019 National Registry of Citizens/Citizenship Amendment Act (NRC/CAA) represented the first time an Indian government recognized that Hindus were being persecuted in Bangladesh. By singling out Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh as the three Islamic countries which are the sources of illegal migration into India and where non-Muslim minorities are persecuted.
I have been fighting for Bangladesh’s Hindus for about 20 years, and the attitude of India’s government changed when it transitioned from the Congress-led UPA government to the current one led by the Bharatiya Janata Party. Prior to that change, people I worked or even spoke with were later harassed by members of the government or intelligence. But that stopped when Modi took office, and it also coincided with Bangladesh no longer blocking my entry into the country. I talked with India Prime Minister Narendra Modi about it multiple time before he became Prime Minister. At one point, he asked me what he could do about it. My response was: “When you become Prime Minister, please make it part of your foreign policy. To be clear, I strongly support the NRC/CAA but am not suggesting that I am the reason for what it said. While I believe I have a lot of very good sources on the ground in many places, only the Prime Minister really knows what India has said or done about persecuted Hindus. So, it’s possible that India has been trying to get Bangladesh to do something about it. But the sad fact is that, regardless of anything it did or did not do, Hindus still face ethnic cleansing in Bangladesh simply for being Hindu. And it is getting worse. It is up to India to take responsibility for ending this decades-long atrocity.
Prior to the August 2024 coup that ousted Sheikh Hasina and the Awami League government, which had dominated Bangladesh since 2009, Bangladeshi governments were complicit in the ethnic cleansing of Hindus by not prosecuting crimes against Hindus. I saw this myself in Bangladesh, explored Hindu villages that had been destroyed by anti-Hindu pogroms, and participated in efforts to retrieve property stolen from Hindus under Bangladesh’s Vested Property Act. After one successful session that ordered the ejection of Muslims who violently seized a Hindu home and threw out the rightful owners; everyone from the opposing attorney to the police and the Hindus said that the outcome would have been different if I (i.e., an American) had not been there to witness it. In another case, when a police official near Chittagong told me that the Hindu victims could seek justice through the court system, he admitted that the process would take about 30 years. After that, I proposed to several government officials that the nation redress this injustice by resolving “all property disputes, regardless of faith or community, through compulsory mediation.” We had everything ready to go once the government authorized it. They never did.
But things changed for the worse with the current government of Mohammad Yunus. At least the Awami League government occasionally admitted that the attacks were taking place, though strenuously denying its culpability in them or its ability to do anything about it. Yunus has been consistent in denying they even take place or that they are done out of religious hatred. The extensive evidence of these anti-Hindu attacks (and I get verified intelligence of them multiple times weekly) has not moved him to change his position or to call out Bangladeshi police or military to stop them. He even has the notorious Rapid Action Battalion at his disposal. Whether or not Yunus even cares—and there is nothing to suggest that he does—he might be limited in what he can do because of the growing power of Islamists in Bangladesh, whose core ideology demands a Bangladesh for Muslims only. Nor would it be hyperbole to suggest that Islamists could end up winning Bangladesh’s next elections in 2026 or at least be part of the ruling coalition. No other parties in Bangladesh today are as well organized as Jamaat e-Islami and its fellow Islamist groups.
The government has been more aggressive in persecuting Hindus. Police and other officials have been seen taking part in anti-Hindu events, without any sort of reprimand of job action, despite the fact that their participation was reported to the government.(1) Hindu professors and school teachers have been sacked for the sole reason of their being Hindu (and since many are from government schools, the onus for this bigotry falls directly on the government)(2). Attorneys have told me about incidents when their Hindu clients were denied due process, beaten in custody, and when the attorneys were beaten or threatened for attempting to secure due process for their Hindu clients. And, to be clear, miscreants still are not arrested or in any way punished for their extensive crimes against Hindus and Hinduism. The fact is that if things go as expected, Bangladesh will become more and more of an Islamist government, which everywhere else has spelled doom for other religious communities or even other Muslims who do not practice their faith the way that Islamists demand. Hindus are doomed under that scenario. There is nothing to lose from India taking a strong stand, and it has several options at its disposal:
• Publicize the atrocities and demand a meeting of the UN Security Council, the European Union, and other bodies. India has a lot of allies in Washington, and I can help get support for a Congressional resolution or other action if Bangladesh does not act and act thoroughly now.
• Get that information to international media and call them out if they ignore it; or give restrict access to government employees if they do.
• There are a number of economic levers India can pull, and they can tell the Bangladeshi government that they will refrain from doing so once they take action to protect their Hindu citizens. One example is refraining from prevailing on their American allies to impose heavy tariffs on Bangladeshi imports. Another would be to object to Bangladesh’s participation in international peace keeping until they can keep the peace at home. They can do the same in Europe. A third economic action would be to crater the market for Bangladeshi goods by consistently underbidding them and subsidizing manufacturers for their losses.
• If Bangladeshi leadership remained intransigent or acted in a duplicitous manner (e.g. agreeing to do things then backing out or just stop taking action once they get what they want).
It also seems that decision-makers do not realize the power this issue has to impact geopolitical actions and ideologies. It is ironic that the nations forming the axis of authoritarianism, and that stand committed to wiping out individual freedom and diversity, hold a near monopoly among media and international organizations in defining what genocides and mass persecution are defined as such, and which are ignored. Leading nations among them—for instance, Iran, China, and Qatar, and there are more—have demonstrated nothing but contempt and hostility toward minorities and have embedded wiping out religious, ethnic, and political minorities in their national policies and actions. Putting its moral bankruptcy on full view, the hopelessly biased and anti-democracy UN Human Rights Council selected Bangladesh as a member this year, despite an extensive and verified avalanche of human rights abuses government. Algeria and Cuba, among others, are perennial members despite decades-long of abysmal human rights abuses. China also is a longstanding member. It is re-elected to that body every year, most recently in October 2024, ignoring its decades of anti-minority atrocities against Tibetans, Christians, Uighurs, and others. So much for their credibility with anyone who cares to examine this issue objectively.
With Bangladesh moving closer and closer to China and the axis of authoritarianism, India can turn that upside-down ideology on its head and force action against those who are trying to make Bangladesh free of Hindus, especially ascendant Islamists and craven cyphers like Mohammad Yunus. But this will work only if: India (perhaps with support from the United States and Israel) is unrelenting in this effort and uses all its global political and economic power to keep the issue burning; even if that means severe economic consequences for those nations (friend and foe alike) that enable these atrocities with their silence or rationalizations.
3. What should India do as Pakistan and Bangladesh get close and seek help?
In World War I, Imperial Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire were allies. It did not take long, however, before the Germans grew frustrated by their ally’s inability to achieve victory on the battlefield; and German leaders began referring to the relationship as being “shackled to a corpse.” That’s pretty much what Bangladesh is doing the more it aligns with Pakistan. And it’s really not Pakistan. Rather, it is joining an alliance that rests on China’s hegemony. Yet, the “shackled to a corpse” comparison still holds, as the Bangladeshi economy merely needs as its best option, an infusion of foreign investment and its historical customers again seeing Bangladeshi goods. The Pakistani and Chinese economies dying. Their economic models for prosperity are irreparably broken. Whatever happens with US-China bi-lateral trade talks, US actions this spring have re-set global trading and turned the 80-year-old assumptions on which it is based and on which the Chinese economy rested, completely on its head. We should first ask what would motivate Bangladeshi leaders to choose this particular course, what the potential consequences are and what India should do to counter this alliance.
One reason is simple and reasonable. For years, I worked with Bangladeshi businesses that had good proposals but needed investments.(3) (I say they were “good” based on my analysis of them as presented. But try as they and I might, we could not get any meaningful response from the US Embassy in Dhaka or other American organizations and companies that could be sources of funding. Almost close to universally, these Bangladeshis would tell me that they really prefer to be allied with the United States, which besides (as they told me) offering them much more opportunity for success than alternate countries, has a growing Bangladeshi population that grew five times between 2000 and 2020, and another 20 percent in the following three years.(4) Unfortunately, they told me, the Americans were not forthcoming while the Chinese (especially through the China Exim Bank) were rather free with their funds. Like it or not, ultimately, they became allies of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). This has been happening for years, and it is evident in Chinese presence throughout the country at different levels. Beyond that, the motives are fraught with geopolitical danger.
Another motive for Bangladesh’s growing closeness with the CCP is its hope of leveraging its strategic position to play major powers against one another. Former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was quite skilled at that, and she would maintain strong cooperative ties with India (always seeking some advantage for doing so), and never backed off its status as a US ally7. At the same time, Bangladesh started taking greater amounts of Chinese loans (a lot through the Belt & Road Initiative), and enabled the growth of significant pro-Chinese power centers within her government. Yet, that never caused Bangladesh’s erstwhile allies to look closely at it. I was involved in several negotiations in Bangladesh and often got the response that if I wanted to,” respond along the lines of ‘Fine with me. We’re your best customer. China is a competitor. And I know of several countries just dying to take a large piece out of the US textile and garment market. If you want your markets to dry up, go ahead.’(5) Given Bangladesh’s strategic position between India and China, and China’s eyes on a warm water port in the Bay of Bengal, it is smart for them to play off the US and China against one another, especially considering how well that worked for so many countries during the Cold War. Long-term, they will be “shackled to a corpse”; short-term, it makes sense. Since the Chinese Belt & Road Initiative is not really interested in economically viable projects—something that it has demonstrated time and again all over the world—but rather in geopolitical advantage through predatory loans; applicants are not held to the same standards as borrowers are in countries like the United States. And, as noted above, Bangladeshis complained to me continually that the United States raises social and human rights issues in these transactions (environmental, treatment of labor, and the persecution of Hindus and others), China does not.
The biggest reason, however, is the rise of a powerful Islamist faction in Bangladesh. Given the Chinese government’s treatment of Uighur Muslims and its desire to eliminate their strong religious and collective identity, it seemed counterintuitive that bodies claiming Islam as their raison d’etre would ally themselves with the Chinese government. So, during several discussions in Bangladesh about increasing Chinese influence and its “debt trap diplomacy,” I would ask how a country whose constitution begins with the word, bismillah, “In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful, could possibly place their children’s future in the hands of a country whose official policy and action is to place (Uighur) Muslims in high-tech concentration camps, force feed them pork, commit other atrocities on them, and destroy their communities. Their responses were entirely dismissive of that contradiction. More than one told me that it did not matter to them, but getting the money did. While the seemingly “uncontrollable” rise of radical Islam in Bangladesh, as one authority put it, is documented extensively by governments, international organizations, local human rights groups, and individual informants; one incident is particularly illustrative of where the current Bangladeshi government stands.
Recently, the interim government decided to forgive al-Qaeda linked terrorist, Syed Ziaul Haque, for involvement in the murder of a US citizen, blogger, Avijit Roy. The US had Haque on State Department’s terror watch list, but the Yunus government caved into Islamist demands anyway.(6) Moreover, the move is popular, as Haque is interviewed by major media often as a hero throughout Bangladesh. This shows clearly where the Yunus government is taking the country. The threat of Islamists in Bangladesh is thus not merely a national issue for Bangladesh. Rather, it directly challenges the regional security of south Asia which in turn affects the security of the world. If the interim government continues to fail in containing the aggressive rise of the fundamentalists, it will be challenging for the next government in Bangladesh to maintain the basic security for the people of Bangladesh. And If India continues to face challenges on all fronts, the stability of the region will continue to be disturbed which in no way serves any purpose for any stakeholder in the region.
India can offer counter power centers in opposition to the rise of Islamists in Bangladesh—which is the real issue, not cooperation with the near failed state, Pakistan. An immediate obstacle to that is the high level of anti-India sentiment at popular and official levels in Bangladesh. I have heard a number of authorities caution India that official statements are contributing to that sentiment and should be stopped. They often refer to Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri’s recent comments about Bangladeshi persecution of its Hindu minorities and the government’s refusal to take any action to stop it. The suggestion is almost too absurd to take seriously. First of all, despite India’s pivotal role in helping Bangladesh gain independence, anti-India sentiment there periodically spikes and is always simmering just below the surface. To suggest that India’s actions are at its root, or that by giving into it India will be okay, is ridiculous. Bangladeshis have shown more willingness to give up democracy than their anti-Indian sentiment; but India has been able to gain some advantage at times despite that. First there is the carrot.
4. Growing Chinese influence adds a geopolitical dimension to India-Bangladesh bilateral tensions. Do you agree?
Yes, and I think India has to be very careful about how to handle it. As someone who cut his teeth during the Cold War (approximately 1945-1991), I watched my country make foreign policy decisions through the prism of the Cold War, sometimes with good results, sometimes not. It was also clear how many countries saw an opportunity in playing off the two sides against each other; and it is very important that the United States and its most powerful allies such as India, do not fall into that same trap. Bangladesh is a great test case for this. For both India and the United States fell in to Sheikh Hasina’s trap, posturing as a freedom loving leader while trampling on any semblance of democratic rights and enabling China to embed itself in her country.(7) So, the geopolitical dimension has been there for quite some time. It is just that now we realize we have to seize the geopolitical moment.
Though I studied Marx in college and found his analysis to be simplistic, he was right about at least one thing: it does all come down to economics. And that is the key to untying the geopolitical Gordian knot on India’s eastern flank. Bangladesh and Pakistan seem to be counting on Chinese economic power to keep their economies afloat. Earlier this year, however, we saw just how dependent Chinese economic viability is on the United States; that is, it is an export-based economy that depends on the individual buying decisions of millions of Americans, more and more of whom have come to see China as either a competitor of an enemy. US actions can turn off the funds China needs and send its economy into a tailspin. The Chinese economy is so structured that when US buyers started turning elsewhere—and there are plenty countries virtually salivating to grab a chunk of the enormous US consumer market—it had no internal economic engine to purchase its factories’ backlog of goods. That event should have signaled to countries like Pakistan that the Chinese largesse that is its lifeblood might no longer be available. Chinese President Xi Jinping tried to convince other countries from Europe to its own backyard to form an economic coalition to provide the buying power of the United States. He failed miserably, demonstrating that at least for the foreseeable future, America’s economic dominance is an immutable reality. Bangladesh is equally vulnerable. Its economy cannot survive without massive amounts of consumer goods exports to the west, and the United States is perennially its best customer.
As long as Bangladesh remains anti-India and keeps moving closer to China, the Modi Administration should convince the Americans to drag out trade negotiations with Bangladesh, leaving the tariffs in place. At the same time, its trade negotiators can make sure that India’s final agreement with the United States is structured to make it easy for India to be successful in the textile market formerly occupied by Bangladesh. If Bangladeshis cannot get back its market share—whether snatched up by domestic US producers, India, or Latin American countries like Guatemala and Honduras—millions more Bangladeshis will be unemployed and the economic impact will cascade throughout the economy. India can make some strong arguments for that position. Those Latin American nations have been working closely with the United States to stop the flow of illegal aliens, which deserves an economic. As Bangladesh moves closer and closer to an Islamist or Islamist-dominated government, it looks more like another Iran rather than a friend to most Americans. The Israel-Iran War (still raging at the time of this writing) tells Americans every day that Islamists and Sharia Law are antithetical to their own freedom and democracy. With Bangladesh growing cozier with China, buying goods labeled “Made in Bangladesh” seems even deadlier.
OR India can become Bangladesh’s “big brother” again by using its leverage to prevent that economic tsunami, thereby strengthening the forces friendly to good India-Bangladesh relations. Of course, things like that are done only as part of an exchange: stop the march of Islamists in Bangladesh; strengthen the rule of law and democratic institutions; stop getting into bed with China; and stop the ethnic cleansing of Bangladesh’s Hindus. But none of this can happen unless India first takes the preliminary steps outlined above. Control over the economy gives India both the carrot and the stick, as well as the strategic decision over which to use when.
Bangladesh is in trouble, and everyone seems to know it except its leaders. The promise of democracy that animated it August 2024 coup has failed to materialize. The new government rescinded the ban on Jammat e-Islami, then imposed one on the Awami League. The economy still teeters on the precipice, overly dependent on what happens in its trade negotiations with one side of the geopolitical divide, while it makes no secret of its alignment with the other. Ultimately, geopolitical winners are stronger than their adversaries and have the good judgement to press their advantage. Can India seize that momentum on its way to becoming the dominant power in Asia?
5. A return to the status quo in Delhi–Dhaka ties is unlikely, and arguably unviable given the changed external and internal realities. How far is it true?
In most respects, that is right on the money, if for no other reason because Bangladesh is about to change. Within a year or two, it will elect a new Prime Minister, and for the first time since the 1980s, they will not elect either Sheikh Hasina Wazed or Khaleda Zia; nor will they elect the two parties they represent and which have dominated Bangladesh since its birth. The anti-India sentiment that is increasingly open in Bangladesh, supported in the rantings of both government and press, is at such a fever pitch that no politician can afford to seem friendly with India and expect to stay in office.
And it is difficult to see how India can become close again with a country that has thrown its lot in with the authoritarian alliance to which India is a leading nation in the conflict with it.
If Indian leaders opt for the direction I suggested in my answer to the last question, the chill in relations could gradually thaw as individuals on both sides of the border share material interests that are not shared with China. Certainly, the road ahead looks blocked if Bangladeshis choose an Islamist government when they go to the polls. Islamists might call the United States “the great Satan” and Israel “the little Satan,” but their designs on India are no less rooted in a desire to dominate the entire subcontinent again, Kashmir being only their first step in an incremental process. Thus, India should work via media or aid to convince Bangladeshis to go for a democratic option. Additionally, there are any number of discrete matters on which the two countries can cooperate and build common interests: water, illegal border crossings, counterterrorism, climate change and conservation, and more. It also appears that the coup ended Bangladeshis’ love affair with cults of personality (perhaps there was none as powerful there as the one around Sheikh Hasina), which means that however these other matters turn out, it is unlikely that India will ever again have to cuddle up with an individual Bangladeshi leader to the exclusion of others.(8)
Endnotes:
(1) Many Bangladeshi Hindus fear going to the police because there is a documented history of violent reprisals. Either police threaten them with false charges, force them to pay a bribe, or inform the attackers then do nothing to stop the latter from attacking the poor victims. At best, the police do not act.
(2) I am not saying that we will see a Bangladeshi Auschwitz, but as a Jew, I find this chilling since it was one of the first things Nazi Germany did to my people on the way to the Holocaust.
(3) I say they were “good” based on my analysis of them as presented and as I seen garner investors over the years. This included a realistic assessment of economic viability and their geopolitical impact. With respect to those factors, I used much the same criteria I have used to analyze domestic business proposals in the US, as well as business proposals elsewhere.
(4) I work extensively with immigration courts in the United States and can say, anecdotally, that the number of Bangladeshi asylum seekers continues to grow by leaps and bounds.
(5) Now, that was my response, and it usually brought things back to reality. I do not believe it was the response they got or would have gotten from the US government—certainly not from previous State Departments, USAID, etc.
(6) If their reasoning was anything like that which I’ve heard for years, it is that they believe the United
States will be willing to overlook it rather than see the strategic region move further into China’s orbit, but that the Islamists will not be forgiving and will take the violent action they threaten.
(7) I made a point of documenting China’s growing presence in Bangladesh, for instance, at Chittagong’s coal fired power plant, the Padma Bridge, and other infrastructure projects; as well as growing Chinese Communist Party influence over more and more lawmakers.
(8) Mature relations look more like those between Donald Trump and Narendra Modi, and Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Both leaders long have been seen as close with Trump, yet after Trump lost the 2020 US election, both congratulated the winner, former President Joe Biden. Since Trump has taken office, the US, India, and Israel all have acknowledged how much they value their good country-to-country relations but that each of them will pursue what is best for their people, and they will not always agree. But none of that changes the nature of the close and cooperative relations India and Israel have with the United States.