Behind Bangladesh’s Struggle to Reclaim Its Democracy and Revive its Economy in the post-Sheikh Hasina Era (2024)

“Made our house with blood

Delhi tries to scare us with water”

Thus reads a couplet from a popular poet in Dhaka: Hasan Robayet. He has been a key figure in the recent student movement in Bangladesh that ousted Sheikh Hasina on August 5. Since then, Hasina has remained in India, which has only added to the anti-India sentiments brewing among the Bangladeshi people for decades. Now, many are blaming the flood, which has inundated eight districts in Bangladesh, on India for opening the gates of some upstream barrages and dams following torrential rains, which has at least partly contributed to the unprecedented scale of the disaster. (India, however, has issued denials.) Even before the flood and the student movement, Bangladeshis had organised an “India out”movement where they called for a complete boycott of Indian goods. As such, anti-India sentiments have been rife in Bangladesh for quite some time now.

But why? Perhaps the chief reason, apart from from communal sentiments held by a small section, is that the vast majority of the population believes that India has supported the dictatorial regime of Sheikh Hasina in Bangladesh for far too long. It is a widely believed hypothesis that Hasina was able to hold the 2014, 2019 and 2024 elections, which saw massive irregularities and were often boycotted by the opposition parties, due to the Indian government’s support. In return for this support, Hasina provided India with a wide array of benefits, such as transit through Bangladesh, use of its ports, building a controversial coal-fired power plant near the Sundarbans to serve Indian purposes, and more.

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But all this invincible-looking “house of cards” needed was a firm push to come crashing down. What began as a student revolt against an unfair job quota system—a fight that had seen success in 2018 only to be overturned by an apex court decision in 2024—quickly spiralled into a nationwide uprising, fueled by widespread grievances against Hasina’s increasingly authoritarian rule, marked by injustice, inflation, corruption, and a suffocating suppression of basic rights. The government’s choice to bypass dialogue in favour of a brutal crackdown by police and armed Chhatra League (a student wing of Awami League) goons resulted in over 300 deaths, serving only to fan the flames of dissent. As vast cadres of private university students followed the public university protesters to the streets, and eventually, the masses rallied behind them, the writing was on the wall for Hasina’s reign.

The military’s decision to halt the violence and ensure Hasina’s safe exit marked a turning point. However, the jubilation of the “second liberation” that followed was short-lived. The law-and-order situation broke down completely as police, BGB and RAB—the erstwhile forces used as tools of repression by the old regime—fled their stations for fear of mob justice, a vacuum criminals of all kinds took advantage of. In addition to widespread robberies, the main driver of violence was revenge against Awami League leaders, affiliates or supporters. Minorities, who generally support Awami League, and tend to be an easier target, were certainly not spared.

Attacks on non-political Hindu homes and businesses also took place. These were possibly perpetrated by vested interest groups or communal forces coveting Hindu properties. This unfortunate and shameful targeting of minorities in Bangladesh is not new. It began as early as the birth of Pakistan in 1947 and has persisted even during the height of Awami League rule, which traditionally claimed to protect minority rights. What was new, however, was that many Islamic leaders and Madrasah students stood alongside common people to protect minority establishments, a beautiful if rare symbol of communal harmony during this troubled time. This complex and nuanced nature of the truth was largely missed by international media, and worse, many Indian outlets exaggerated the numbers, aggressively weaponized misinformation and mischaracterised incidents to serve their own political purposes and discredit Bangladesh’s pro-democracy movement.

Hasina’s sudden flight, which caught even most Awami League leaders by surprise, not only shook the very foundations of Bangladesh’s political landscape—it also left behind a constitutional vacuum. The constitutional changes made by Hasina’s regime to entrench its power had left no clear path for another “caretaker” government. Into this vacuum stepped an “interim” government, led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, a choice unilaterally decided and pre-emptively announced by the victorious student leaders.

Although a reputed and experienced set of advisers has been appointed to lead the various ministries, the interim government faces a gargantuan task. While the law and order situation is slowly returning to normalcy, the Hasina regime has left behind a series of decrepit and deeply politicised institutions, having done irreparable damage to the executive, judiciary, bureaucracy, academia and financial sectors over 15 years. For example, Sheikh Hasina’s private industry and investment adviser Salman Fazlur Rahman alone holds over 1.5 Billion US dollars of default loans, crippling many banks and earning the nickname “The architect of default culture”. Hasina and her cronies siphoned off some $150 billion out of the country in the 15 years of her rule, which is more than double the current (and highest ever) national budget and much greater than our current outstanding foreign debt of $94 billion.

Saving the economy from collapse and returning some of the laundered assets seems to be a high priority, aside from all the constitutional, systemic and electoral reforms, and delivering justice for the “July massacre”, that this government has been given the popular mandate to do. But just as the government was gearing up to take on that task, it must now deal with the urgent flood crisis. Each of these tasks is made doubly difficult due to the numerous beneficiaries, co-conspirators, and loyalists of the old regime both abroad and at home, embedded deep within the bureaucratic machinery, army, police and other institutions. As a result, even the all-important question of when the next free, participatory, and fair democratic election will be held remains unanswered, even though Muhammad Yunus has repeatedly highlighted that as the ultimate objective of his government.

Notwithstanding India’s rebuttal of allegations that it intentionally opened the dams in an act of sabotage, the people in Bangladesh are angry. India must act urgently to earn back the trust of the Bangladeshi people. India needs to decide, in the shortest time window possible, if it will build a friendly relationship with the Bangladeshi people, and respect its sovereignty, or choose to side with a fallen, disgraced and murderous dictator at the expense of alienating its important neighbour further.

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It should be seen as taking steps to stop efforts at misinformation and should not be seen as extending continued support to Hasina. Delhi should not be perceived to be trying to sway the upcoming elections in its own favour, whether through overt or covert means. Last but not least, it needs to demonstrate goodwill by ensuring fair water-sharing agreements and coming clean about its role in the ongoing flood and refraining from using aggressive tactics on the borders. The people of Bangladesh will accept nothing less than a complete overhaul of the India-Bangladesh relations. The perception in Bangladesh is that it has historically always been treated as India’s vassal state.

As Hasan Robayet’s couplet reminds us, we have (re-)built our house with blood. The resurgent people of Bangladesh will not allow anyone, be it Delhi or any other power, to wash away their hard-earned freedom with floods of water or communal fear-mongering. It is Bangladesh’s time to assert its sovereignty, heal its own wounds, and step confidently into a future of its own making.

Rubayat Khan is a political analyst and co-founder of Jagoree, a citizen’s activism platform.

Anupam Debashish Roy is a PhD student at Oxford. Both serve as co-editors of Muktipotro, an online free media establishment.