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‘India Out’ campaigns simmer in Bangladesh amid election fallout
Calls to boycott Indian goods in Bangladesh follow allegations of Indian interference in national elections.
www.aljazeera.com
‘India Out’ campaigns simmer in Bangladesh amid election fallout
Calls to boycott Indian goods in Bangladesh follow allegations of Indian interference in national elections.
‘India Out’ campaigns simmer in Bangladesh amid election fallout
Calls to boycott Indian goods in Bangladesh follow allegations of Indian interference in national elections.
Grocery stores have been unable to sell Indian-made chips [Al Jazeera]
By Faisal Mahmud
Published On 7 Feb 20247 Feb 2024
Dhaka, Bangladesh – Amid allegations of Indian interference in national elections, there’s a call to boycott Indian goods in Bangladesh.
Last week, a supplier for the Indian consumer goods giant Marico faced a chilly reception in Dhaka’s Panthapath area. Grocery shops, usually eager to stock their shelves with its hair oil, cooking oil, body lotion and other products, refused to take new deliveries.
“Sales of Parachute oil, a Marico bestseller, have plummeted to almost zero in recent weeks,” local shopkeeper Aman Ullah said. “Indian products just aren’t moving. We’re stuck with unsold stock and won’t be restocking.”
Another shop owner who requested anonymity revealed a deeper reason: “I don’t want to sell Indian products any more.” He cited YouTube videos advocating a boycott of Indian goods, which he wholeheartedly supported.
Simmering anti-India sentiment in Bangladesh has boiled over in the past decade, culminating in public displays such as celebrations in Dhaka last year after India’s loss in the Cricket World Cup final.
But after last month’s elections in Bangladesh, in which Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina secured a fourth term while the opposition boycotted the polls, a massive “India Out” campaign was launched, alleging Indian interference in Bangladesh politics.
The Bangladeshi diaspora and opposition groups have fuelled this anti-India movement and advocated boycotts of Indian products. This movement mirrors similar campaigns in the Maldives, where Mohamed Muizzu capitalized on anti-India sentiment to win the presidential election.
In Dhaka, the campaign was launched against the backdrop of India’s traditionally strong ties with Hasina’s government and its strained relationship with the opposition, leading many to believe India favoured the status quo.
Exiled Bangladeshi physician Pinaki Bhattacharya, who fled alleged government harassment in 2018, has emerged as the key figure in this burgeoning social media movement accusing India of interfering in Bangladesh’s recent elections to keep Hasina in power.
Through his more than two million followers across social media platforms, Bhattacharya launched the #BoycottIndia campaign in mid-January, urging them to join “this monumental endeavour”. His call, emphasizing love of homeland and determination to break free from perceived shackles, resonated with thousands.
The anti-India movement has surged online, fuelled by user-generated content. Photos of crossed-out Indian products like Amul butter and Dabur honey are circulating alongside barcode identification tips to boycott these goods. A single post highlighting the 890 prefix used in barcodes for Indian products garnered more than 1,000 shares, showcasing the movement’s online reach.
Grocery stores have been unable to sell Indian-made chips [Al Jazeera]
By Faisal Mahmud
Published On 7 Feb 20247 Feb 2024
Dhaka, Bangladesh – Amid allegations of Indian interference in national elections, there’s a call to boycott Indian goods in Bangladesh.
Last week, a supplier for the Indian consumer goods giant Marico faced a chilly reception in Dhaka’s Panthapath area. Grocery shops, usually eager to stock their shelves with its hair oil, cooking oil, body lotion and other products, refused to take new deliveries.
“Sales of Parachute oil, a Marico bestseller, have plummeted to almost zero in recent weeks,” local shopkeeper Aman Ullah said. “Indian products just aren’t moving. We’re stuck with unsold stock and won’t be restocking.”
Another shop owner who requested anonymity revealed a deeper reason: “I don’t want to sell Indian products any more.” He cited YouTube videos advocating a boycott of Indian goods, which he wholeheartedly supported.
Simmering anti-India sentiment in Bangladesh has boiled over in the past decade, culminating in public displays such as celebrations in Dhaka last year after India’s loss in the Cricket World Cup final.
But after last month’s elections in Bangladesh, in which Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina secured a fourth term while the opposition boycotted the polls, a massive “India Out” campaign was launched, alleging Indian interference in Bangladesh politics.
The Bangladeshi diaspora and opposition groups have fuelled this anti-India movement and advocated boycotts of Indian products. This movement mirrors similar campaigns in the Maldives, where Mohamed Muizzu capitalized on anti-India sentiment to win the presidential election.
In Dhaka, the campaign was launched against the backdrop of India’s traditionally strong ties with Hasina’s government and its strained relationship with the opposition, leading many to believe India favoured the status quo.
Exiled Bangladeshi physician Pinaki Bhattacharya, who fled alleged government harassment in 2018, has emerged as the key figure in this burgeoning social media movement accusing India of interfering in Bangladesh’s recent elections to keep Hasina in power.
Through his more than two million followers across social media platforms, Bhattacharya launched the #BoycottIndia campaign in mid-January, urging them to join “this monumental endeavour”. His call, emphasizing love of homeland and determination to break free from perceived shackles, resonated with thousands.
The anti-India movement has surged online, fuelled by user-generated content. Photos of crossed-out Indian products like Amul butter and Dabur honey are circulating alongside barcode identification tips to boycott these goods. A single post highlighting the 890 prefix used in barcodes for Indian products garnered more than 1,000 shares, showcasing the movement’s online reach.
Why did the campaign gain traction?
The Indian High Commission in Dhaka declined Al Jazeera’s request for a comment on this anti-India campaign.
At a Mumbai forum on January 30 with Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, attendees raised concerns about India’s foreign policy amid perceived shifts in regional dynamics, particularly the growing pull of major rival China on neighbouring countries like Bangladesh and the Maldives.
Jaishankar downplayed concerns about foreign policy shortcomings but conceded the competitive reality. He pointed out that China’s geographical proximity naturally grants it influence over neighbouring countries like the Maldives, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.
Screengrab from Facebook of online movements advocating boycott of Indian products
State Minister of Information and Broadcasting and lawmaker from the ruling Awami League Mohammad A Arafat, too, dismissed the concerns saying Bangladesh had received global attention because of the unprecedented fact of a fourth term for the ruling government.
“If I have to talk about other country’s interest in our local politics, then the first name I would mention is the United States which even declared a Visa restriction policy based on Bangladesh election. On the other hand, India, from the very onset officially stated that Bangladesh’s election is its internal matter and it has no say in it,” Arafat said.
Obaidul Quader, general secretary of Awami League told Al Jazeera that the “India out” campaign is run by opposition parties who instead of taking part in the election blaming “India for their misfortune.”
“They [the opposition parties] have this trump card of bashing India if anything goes against them,” said Quader, “I don’t think common people of Bangladesh support this campaign. They know that Awami League will never work against the interest of people.”
The burgeoning anti-India campaign, meanwhile, is finding traction within Bangladesh’s domestic political landscape, raising concerns about potentially destabilising Bangladesh’s economy and impacting regional relations.
Gono Odhikar Parishad, a rising political force aligned with the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP)-led opposition, is promoting the boycott movement. Party leader Nurul Haque Nur declared at a recent rally in Dhaka that “We all have to start an ‘India Out’ campaign'” while alleging Indian interference in the recent elections.
Rumeen Farhana, international affairs secretary of the BNP, told Al Jazeera that the people of Bangladesh never liked India’s interference in Bangladesh politics. “It’s now crystal clear that India did everything possible to keep the regime in power since 2014,” she alleged.
Resentment against India reached a boiling point in Bangladesh after Hasina’s Awami League secured a resounding victory in the January 7 elections, capturing 223 seats out of 300 in parliament. Critics alleged the process lacked legitimacy due to the opposition’s boycott and the presence of numerous Awami League-backed independent candidates, raising questions about the fairness of the vote.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered swift congratulations to both Hasina and “the people of Bangladesh for the successful conduct of elections”, endorsing the outcome. In contrast, Western governments expressed reservations, highlighting the boycott and the lack of a strong opposition presence.
“If I have to talk about other country’s interest in our local politics, then the first name I would mention is the United States which even declared a Visa restriction policy based on Bangladesh election. On the other hand, India, from the very onset officially stated that Bangladesh’s election is its internal matter and it has no say in it,” Arafat said.
Obaidul Quader, general secretary of Awami League told Al Jazeera that the “India out” campaign is run by opposition parties who instead of taking part in the election blaming “India for their misfortune.”
“They [the opposition parties] have this trump card of bashing India if anything goes against them,” said Quader, “I don’t think common people of Bangladesh support this campaign. They know that Awami League will never work against the interest of people.”
The burgeoning anti-India campaign, meanwhile, is finding traction within Bangladesh’s domestic political landscape, raising concerns about potentially destabilising Bangladesh’s economy and impacting regional relations.
Gono Odhikar Parishad, a rising political force aligned with the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP)-led opposition, is promoting the boycott movement. Party leader Nurul Haque Nur declared at a recent rally in Dhaka that “We all have to start an ‘India Out’ campaign'” while alleging Indian interference in the recent elections.
Rumeen Farhana, international affairs secretary of the BNP, told Al Jazeera that the people of Bangladesh never liked India’s interference in Bangladesh politics. “It’s now crystal clear that India did everything possible to keep the regime in power since 2014,” she alleged.
Resentment against India reached a boiling point in Bangladesh after Hasina’s Awami League secured a resounding victory in the January 7 elections, capturing 223 seats out of 300 in parliament. Critics alleged the process lacked legitimacy due to the opposition’s boycott and the presence of numerous Awami League-backed independent candidates, raising questions about the fairness of the vote.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered swift congratulations to both Hasina and “the people of Bangladesh for the successful conduct of elections”, endorsing the outcome. In contrast, Western governments expressed reservations, highlighting the boycott and the lack of a strong opposition presence.
Facebook Screengrab of calls for a boycott of Indian products in favour of Bangladeshi products
Farhana said anti-India public sentiment in Bangladesh goes beyond politics. “The border killing, unresolved water sharing of 53 rivers including Teesta, trade deficit all play roles to that,” she said.
Around 1,276 Bangladeshis have been killed and 1,183 injured by India’s border forces since 2010, according to human rights organisation Odhikar. Then there are the decades-old unresolved water-sharing agreements for 53 transboundary rivers in addition to Bangladesh’s massive trade deficit with India, all of which have raised concerns about Bangladesh’s sovereignty and economic independence.
Ali Riaz, distinguished professor of politics and government at Illinois State University, told Al Jazeera that India’s unqualified support of the Awami League and Hasina during the 2024 elections has raised questions among many citizens about “whether it has compromised the country’s sovereignty”.
However, Sreeradha Datta, a professor at the Jindal School of International Affairs in Sonepat, India, refuted the claims of India’s “unqualified support” and said the Awami League was “creative in going past the polls even if India [had] not agree[d] to recognise the election”.
“China and so many others congratulated PM Hasina right after the election, so would that make any difference if India didn’t support it?” she asked.
Around 1,276 Bangladeshis have been killed and 1,183 injured by India’s border forces since 2010, according to human rights organisation Odhikar. Then there are the decades-old unresolved water-sharing agreements for 53 transboundary rivers in addition to Bangladesh’s massive trade deficit with India, all of which have raised concerns about Bangladesh’s sovereignty and economic independence.
Ali Riaz, distinguished professor of politics and government at Illinois State University, told Al Jazeera that India’s unqualified support of the Awami League and Hasina during the 2024 elections has raised questions among many citizens about “whether it has compromised the country’s sovereignty”.
However, Sreeradha Datta, a professor at the Jindal School of International Affairs in Sonepat, India, refuted the claims of India’s “unqualified support” and said the Awami League was “creative in going past the polls even if India [had] not agree[d] to recognise the election”.
“China and so many others congratulated PM Hasina right after the election, so would that make any difference if India didn’t support it?” she asked.
The economic fallout
Analysts, meanwhile, pointed out that boycotting Indian goods could have major repercussions for the economic relationship between the two countries.
India is a major exporter to Bangladesh with annual trade historically exceeding $12bn. Additionally, Bangladesh relies heavily on India for essential commodities, and the two governments are currently in talks on an annual quota of imports of Indian farm products.
Calling the anti-India campaign a “political stunt”, Munshi Faiz Ahmed, former chairman of the Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies, a state-funded think tank, told Al Jazeera that the economic fallout of boycotting Indian products will be more severe for Bangladesh.
“I don’t think any rational Bangladeshi would opt for taking part in this campaign. India is our neighbouring country, and we are heavily dependent on them for our everyday essentials like rice and onions. We are dependent because we get those products at the cheapest prices because of geographical proximity,” Ahmed said, adding that sourcing those products from somewhere else would cost much more.
Jyoti Rahman, an Australia-based economist told Al Jazeera that the “India Out” movement may be politically important to the extent that “it sends a strong message to the Indian policymakers” about growing discontent in Bangladesh but the “economic effects are less clear cut”.
Rahman pointed out that despite being India’s fourth largest export destination, Bangladesh still comprises about 3.5 percent of the Indian export market. “Even if all exports to Bangladesh stopped, it probably wouldn’t significantly affect the Indian economy as these products would find a market elsewhere,” Rahman said.
On the other hand, he said, a fifth of Bangladeshi imports are from India, including essentials such as cotton for the garment manufacturing sector, cereals and produce such as onions. “[Looking at] other sources of imports for these products could stoke inflation further,” Rahman said.
However, he highlighted the potential political effectiveness of boycotting non-essential items like tourism, cultural imports like Bollywood movies and consumer products, which he said could benefit domestic industries.
The overwhelming dependence of Bangladesh on India also means that “Indian businesses are vulnerable if such a movement gains traction and support”, Riaz said.
Even if the economic impacts are limited or not immediate, the boycotts will contribute to the public discourse on the role of India in Bangladeshi politics and highlight the unequal relationship, he said. “This is no less important.”
Additional reporting by Abu Jakir
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Fact-check: Did BNP really launch an ‘India Out’ campaign?
We ought to be wary of disinformation campaigns
Fact-check: Did BNP really launch an ‘India Out’ campaign?
We ought to be wary of disinformation campaigns
Screenshot of the video report by Firstpost on YouTube, published on January 18, where news presenter Palki Sharma, without mentioning any credible sources, claims that Bangladesh's main opposition BNP has launched an 'India Out' movement following Maldives' footsteps. No media outlet in Bangladesh has reported any such development. BNP spokesperson Ruhul Kabir Rizvi has also said that "the party high-ups have not yet discussed about [calling] for boycotting Indian products or promoting an 'India Out' campaign."
A video recently popped up on my YouTube feed, the headline of which struck me: "Bangladesh's Opposition Launches 'India Out' Campaign." Upon seeing the YouTube channel's name, I realised it was Firstpost, an online news website owned by Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries.
The description of the video, which was published on January 18 and has since received more than 850,000 views, clearly mentions: "Bangladesh's opposition party BNP has reportedly launched an 'India Out' campaign inspired by the movement in the Maldives. Social media accounts are urging Bangladeshis to boycott Indian products. Will this campaign impact India-Bangladesh ties?" On the screen appears Palki Sharma, a news presenter and the managing editor of Firstpost, quoting "reports" on how BNP orchestrated a social media campaign against India. In the four-and-a-half-minute video, which discusses the alleged role of BNP's de facto leader Tarique Rahman in initiating the "India Out" movement, Sharma does not refer to the source of the "report."
As a fact-checker and digital investigative journalist, it's part of my job to watch over the daily news cycle and discover potential mis- and disinformation around the web. So I was well aware of a "boycott India" campaign brewing among Bangladeshis on online social platforms like Facebook, X, and YouTube. To the best of my knowledge, the movement was initiated by social media influencers—some of whom are known as critics of the Awami League government. But I could not instantly recall any media reports about BNP or any other political parties talking about boycotting Indian products or expressing their support for the developing social media crusade. Hence, I checked on Google and YouTube to redress my ignorance and try to discover news related to the development. The search engines surprised me with a bunch of results including news articles in English and Hindi that claimed Bangladesh's opposition party BNP and its leaders had launched an "India Out" movement. All the reports are from different Indian outlets such as Zee News, India TV, ABP Live, Aaj Tak, News 18 India, Republic Bharat, TV9 Bharatvarsh, Oneindia Hindi, Times Now Navbharat, and many others. But no Bangladeshi media outlet reported on this. I wondered: would it not have been the norm for journalists in Bangladesh to have broken the story first?
Screenshot of the EurAsian Times story, based on which Indian media outlets reported on the unsubstantiated claim of BNP launching 'India Out' movement in Bangladesh.
Though the majority of Indian news channels and websites referred to "unidentified reports" as the origin of the news, News 18 India cited EurAsian Times as its source. In the matter of a few clicks, a report titled "Replicating Maldives, Bangladesh's Biggest Opposition Party, BNP Launches 'India Out' Movement" by EurAsian Times, a Canada-based website run by a few Indian-origin journalists. The report, which was published on January 15, was written by Jennifer Hicks (introduced on the website as "a columnist and political commentator writing on a large range of topics" who "has worked for over 15 years with the now-defunct Hong Kong Free Press").
But in my investigation, I found that at least two pieces of information provided in Hicks' two-sentence bio was false. First, Hong Kong Free Press is an operational English-language news website based in Hong Kong and was never shut down after its launch in 2015. Second, searching for the name of Jennifer Hicks on the Hong Kong Free Press website delivers no results, which could indicate that Hicks has never worked with the news outlet.
More interestingly, Hicks' write-up appeared to be a copy of another article published on January 11 by Weekly Blitz, a Dhaka-based website. In the past, the Blitz was exposed by fact-checkers and journalists' rights organisations as a source of political disinformation. At least 12 paragraphs of both articles match exactly, while the rest of Hicks' write-up is also a paraphrased (and a shorter) version of another Blitz article titled "Bangladesh Nationalist Party launches 'India Out' movement" (penned by the website's editor Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury). Turns out, Hicks is a regular writer for Blitz. However, besides the only headshot of her used on the Blitz and EurAsian Times websites (and a couple of other websites), her credentials or photographs could not be found elsewhere on the internet. It's quite curious that Choudhury is the editor of the news website where Hicks is a contributor, and she plagiarised his article from Blitz to publish it on a different website without giving any credit to the original writer, i.e. her supposed editor.
Screenshot of the article published on the Weekly Blitz, written by its editor Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury.
The original Blitz report was based on a source referred to as "it has been learnt"—meaning no source at all! The wording used when introducing the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) says a lot about what the article was trying to portray. In no way can BNP be identified as an "Islamist" party, let alone be called an "ultra-Islamist" one. The loaded language of the Blitz article, lack of any sources and evidence to support its main claim, and the website's record of spreading political disinformation against independent journalists and critics of the government are enough to debunk its new assertion that BNP has launched a so-called India Out movement in Bangladesh.
Obviously, there could be anger among the pro-BNP crowd surrounding the January 7 election, and some groups inside the party may feel the urge to act along the India boycott movement pioneered by social media influencers. But as long as BNP is not officially taking a position on the campaign, or evidence of its top leadership covertly or overtly backing the move does not come out of a reliable public source, it's disinformative to say that "BNP is leading the 'India Out' movement in Bangladesh."
BNP's anger towards India is real. Ruhul Kabir Rizvi, a spokesperson of the party, told Nikkei Asia this week that BNP "is vocal on Indian interference on Bangladesh internal issues, politics, and the role New Delhi played during the last general election." But he added, "However…the party high-ups have not yet discussed about [calling] for boycotting Indian products or promoting an 'India Out' campaign."
Disinformation from some Indian media outlets regarding Bangladeshi affairs is nothing new. In recent years, there have been several instances, documented by fact-checkers, wherein a section of Indian media participated in spreading outright false information about its neighbour. In November 2022, a report came out of several Bangladeshi media outlets that a flood-struck Pakistan had rejected relief aid from Bangladesh. Eventually, Dismislab tracked the origin of the news down to a website called Bangladesh Live News, which linked "to a Facebook page, which was opened on January 9, 2013. Page transparency shows that its only admin lives in India. The page produces news items and pushes them through advertisements, the payment for which is made in Indian rupees."
An instance of a misleading report published by an Indian media outlet, debunked by fact-checkers.
The patterns in such instances of disinformation echo the narratives of those trying to portray all Bangladeshis as being discriminatory against the country's Hindu minority. Given the fact that disinformation mechanisms have evidently been deployed to target opposition forces in Bangladesh, and given some Indian media outlets' record of amplifying such narratives, the days ahead may be more challenging in terms of fighting cross-border disinformation. To combat this, news outlets in both countries must work together.
Screenshot of the video report by Firstpost on YouTube, published on January 18, where news presenter Palki Sharma, without mentioning any credible sources, claims that Bangladesh's main opposition BNP has launched an 'India Out' movement following Maldives' footsteps. No media outlet in Bangladesh has reported any such development. BNP spokesperson Ruhul Kabir Rizvi has also said that "the party high-ups have not yet discussed about [calling] for boycotting Indian products or promoting an 'India Out' campaign."
A video recently popped up on my YouTube feed, the headline of which struck me: "Bangladesh's Opposition Launches 'India Out' Campaign." Upon seeing the YouTube channel's name, I realised it was Firstpost, an online news website owned by Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries.
The description of the video, which was published on January 18 and has since received more than 850,000 views, clearly mentions: "Bangladesh's opposition party BNP has reportedly launched an 'India Out' campaign inspired by the movement in the Maldives. Social media accounts are urging Bangladeshis to boycott Indian products. Will this campaign impact India-Bangladesh ties?" On the screen appears Palki Sharma, a news presenter and the managing editor of Firstpost, quoting "reports" on how BNP orchestrated a social media campaign against India. In the four-and-a-half-minute video, which discusses the alleged role of BNP's de facto leader Tarique Rahman in initiating the "India Out" movement, Sharma does not refer to the source of the "report."
As a fact-checker and digital investigative journalist, it's part of my job to watch over the daily news cycle and discover potential mis- and disinformation around the web. So I was well aware of a "boycott India" campaign brewing among Bangladeshis on online social platforms like Facebook, X, and YouTube. To the best of my knowledge, the movement was initiated by social media influencers—some of whom are known as critics of the Awami League government. But I could not instantly recall any media reports about BNP or any other political parties talking about boycotting Indian products or expressing their support for the developing social media crusade. Hence, I checked on Google and YouTube to redress my ignorance and try to discover news related to the development. The search engines surprised me with a bunch of results including news articles in English and Hindi that claimed Bangladesh's opposition party BNP and its leaders had launched an "India Out" movement. All the reports are from different Indian outlets such as Zee News, India TV, ABP Live, Aaj Tak, News 18 India, Republic Bharat, TV9 Bharatvarsh, Oneindia Hindi, Times Now Navbharat, and many others. But no Bangladeshi media outlet reported on this. I wondered: would it not have been the norm for journalists in Bangladesh to have broken the story first?
Screenshot of the EurAsian Times story, based on which Indian media outlets reported on the unsubstantiated claim of BNP launching 'India Out' movement in Bangladesh.
Though the majority of Indian news channels and websites referred to "unidentified reports" as the origin of the news, News 18 India cited EurAsian Times as its source. In the matter of a few clicks, a report titled "Replicating Maldives, Bangladesh's Biggest Opposition Party, BNP Launches 'India Out' Movement" by EurAsian Times, a Canada-based website run by a few Indian-origin journalists. The report, which was published on January 15, was written by Jennifer Hicks (introduced on the website as "a columnist and political commentator writing on a large range of topics" who "has worked for over 15 years with the now-defunct Hong Kong Free Press").
But in my investigation, I found that at least two pieces of information provided in Hicks' two-sentence bio was false. First, Hong Kong Free Press is an operational English-language news website based in Hong Kong and was never shut down after its launch in 2015. Second, searching for the name of Jennifer Hicks on the Hong Kong Free Press website delivers no results, which could indicate that Hicks has never worked with the news outlet.
More interestingly, Hicks' write-up appeared to be a copy of another article published on January 11 by Weekly Blitz, a Dhaka-based website. In the past, the Blitz was exposed by fact-checkers and journalists' rights organisations as a source of political disinformation. At least 12 paragraphs of both articles match exactly, while the rest of Hicks' write-up is also a paraphrased (and a shorter) version of another Blitz article titled "Bangladesh Nationalist Party launches 'India Out' movement" (penned by the website's editor Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury). Turns out, Hicks is a regular writer for Blitz. However, besides the only headshot of her used on the Blitz and EurAsian Times websites (and a couple of other websites), her credentials or photographs could not be found elsewhere on the internet. It's quite curious that Choudhury is the editor of the news website where Hicks is a contributor, and she plagiarised his article from Blitz to publish it on a different website without giving any credit to the original writer, i.e. her supposed editor.
Screenshot of the article published on the Weekly Blitz, written by its editor Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury.
The original Blitz report was based on a source referred to as "it has been learnt"—meaning no source at all! The wording used when introducing the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) says a lot about what the article was trying to portray. In no way can BNP be identified as an "Islamist" party, let alone be called an "ultra-Islamist" one. The loaded language of the Blitz article, lack of any sources and evidence to support its main claim, and the website's record of spreading political disinformation against independent journalists and critics of the government are enough to debunk its new assertion that BNP has launched a so-called India Out movement in Bangladesh.
Obviously, there could be anger among the pro-BNP crowd surrounding the January 7 election, and some groups inside the party may feel the urge to act along the India boycott movement pioneered by social media influencers. But as long as BNP is not officially taking a position on the campaign, or evidence of its top leadership covertly or overtly backing the move does not come out of a reliable public source, it's disinformative to say that "BNP is leading the 'India Out' movement in Bangladesh."
BNP's anger towards India is real. Ruhul Kabir Rizvi, a spokesperson of the party, told Nikkei Asia this week that BNP "is vocal on Indian interference on Bangladesh internal issues, politics, and the role New Delhi played during the last general election." But he added, "However…the party high-ups have not yet discussed about [calling] for boycotting Indian products or promoting an 'India Out' campaign."
Disinformation from some Indian media outlets regarding Bangladeshi affairs is nothing new. In recent years, there have been several instances, documented by fact-checkers, wherein a section of Indian media participated in spreading outright false information about its neighbour. In November 2022, a report came out of several Bangladeshi media outlets that a flood-struck Pakistan had rejected relief aid from Bangladesh. Eventually, Dismislab tracked the origin of the news down to a website called Bangladesh Live News, which linked "to a Facebook page, which was opened on January 9, 2013. Page transparency shows that its only admin lives in India. The page produces news items and pushes them through advertisements, the payment for which is made in Indian rupees."
An instance of a misleading report published by an Indian media outlet, debunked by fact-checkers.
The patterns in such instances of disinformation echo the narratives of those trying to portray all Bangladeshis as being discriminatory against the country's Hindu minority. Given the fact that disinformation mechanisms have evidently been deployed to target opposition forces in Bangladesh, and given some Indian media outlets' record of amplifying such narratives, the days ahead may be more challenging in terms of fighting cross-border disinformation. To combat this, news outlets in both countries must work together.
Qadaruddin Shishir is Bangladesh fact-check editor at AFP.
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Police foil ‘India Out’ rally in Dhaka
Police on Saturday foiled a pre-announced rally of the 12-party alliance in front of the National Press Club demanding a boycott of Indian goods in...
www.newagebd.net
Police foil ‘India Out’ rally in Dhaka
Staff Correspondent | Published: 20:32, Feb 24,2024 | Updated: 01:10, Feb 25,2024
Police obstruct a procession, brought out of by the 12-Party Alliance with a call to boycott Indian goods, in front of the National Press Club on Saturday. — Md Saurav
Police on Saturday foiled a pre-announced rally of the 12-party alliance in front of the National Press Club demanding a boycott of Indian goods in Bangladesh, protesting at aggression and alleged Indian interference in the politics of Bangladesh.
Witnesses said that police took away the banner of the alliance forcefully in front of the Press Club when the leaders and activists of the alliance gathered and tried to start their rally holding a banner with the slogan ‘India Out; Boycott India’ as part of its campaign against Indian products.
At that time, a team of police led by Shahbag police station petrol inspector Sarder Bulbul Ahmed obstructed the leaders of the alliance, asking them not to hold the rally with the slogan ‘India Out’ on the banner, which he said was against the country’s foreign policy.
Contacted, Sarder Bulbul Ahmed told New Age that at first, they requested the protesters not to hold the programme under such a banner where they wrote the words ‘India Out’ as it was contradictory to the country’s foreign policy.
‘As they did not obey our instructions, we were forced to take away the banner, and there was no other incident,’ he added.
Later, the 12-party alliance started a protest procession without a banner instead of holding the rally due to police obstacles, and the procession ended near the Purana Paltan crossing.
Shahadat Hossain Salim, the spokesperson for the 12-party alliance and the secretary general of the Liberal Democratic Party, strongly condemned the police obstacle to their rally and procession.
He also alleged that the police threatened them for not doing the programme.
Salim urged people to boycott Indian products, protesting at Indian aggression and its interference in the politics of Bangladesh. He also criticised India for border killings and harassing Bangladeshi people in India.
Syed Ehsanul Huda, chairman of the Bangladesh Jatiya Dal, and the coordinator of the 12-party alliance, said that the Boycott India movement was ongoing and would continue.
‘We have seen patriotic people across the world protesting against aggression, but in our country, the subservient government of Delhi has taken away the right of people to speak,’ he said.
He also urged the people of the country to boycott Indian products.
Rashed Pradhan, senior vice-president of the Jatiya Democratic Party, said that the police do not want anyone to hold any democratic movement in Bangladesh. ‘Bangladesh Police is under the control of Sheikh Hasina, while she is under the control of Delhi,’ he said.
Amid allegations of Indian interference in the national elections held on January 7, several opposition parties in Bangladesh joined the ‘India Out’ campaign and boycotted Indian goods in Bangladesh.
The campaign, labelled ‘India Out,’ is mainly being driven on social media, and the hashtags #IndiaOut, #BoycottIndia and #BoycottIndianProducts have been trending on Facebook for the past few weeks.
Soon after the campaign was launched, drops in sales of Indian products were seen at shops in Bangladesh, claimed the India Out campaigners.
Police obstruct a procession, brought out of by the 12-Party Alliance with a call to boycott Indian goods, in front of the National Press Club on Saturday. — Md Saurav
Police on Saturday foiled a pre-announced rally of the 12-party alliance in front of the National Press Club demanding a boycott of Indian goods in Bangladesh, protesting at aggression and alleged Indian interference in the politics of Bangladesh.
Witnesses said that police took away the banner of the alliance forcefully in front of the Press Club when the leaders and activists of the alliance gathered and tried to start their rally holding a banner with the slogan ‘India Out; Boycott India’ as part of its campaign against Indian products.
At that time, a team of police led by Shahbag police station petrol inspector Sarder Bulbul Ahmed obstructed the leaders of the alliance, asking them not to hold the rally with the slogan ‘India Out’ on the banner, which he said was against the country’s foreign policy.
Contacted, Sarder Bulbul Ahmed told New Age that at first, they requested the protesters not to hold the programme under such a banner where they wrote the words ‘India Out’ as it was contradictory to the country’s foreign policy.
‘As they did not obey our instructions, we were forced to take away the banner, and there was no other incident,’ he added.
Later, the 12-party alliance started a protest procession without a banner instead of holding the rally due to police obstacles, and the procession ended near the Purana Paltan crossing.
Shahadat Hossain Salim, the spokesperson for the 12-party alliance and the secretary general of the Liberal Democratic Party, strongly condemned the police obstacle to their rally and procession.
He also alleged that the police threatened them for not doing the programme.
Salim urged people to boycott Indian products, protesting at Indian aggression and its interference in the politics of Bangladesh. He also criticised India for border killings and harassing Bangladeshi people in India.
Syed Ehsanul Huda, chairman of the Bangladesh Jatiya Dal, and the coordinator of the 12-party alliance, said that the Boycott India movement was ongoing and would continue.
‘We have seen patriotic people across the world protesting against aggression, but in our country, the subservient government of Delhi has taken away the right of people to speak,’ he said.
He also urged the people of the country to boycott Indian products.
Rashed Pradhan, senior vice-president of the Jatiya Democratic Party, said that the police do not want anyone to hold any democratic movement in Bangladesh. ‘Bangladesh Police is under the control of Sheikh Hasina, while she is under the control of Delhi,’ he said.
Amid allegations of Indian interference in the national elections held on January 7, several opposition parties in Bangladesh joined the ‘India Out’ campaign and boycotted Indian goods in Bangladesh.
The campaign, labelled ‘India Out,’ is mainly being driven on social media, and the hashtags #IndiaOut, #BoycottIndia and #BoycottIndianProducts have been trending on Facebook for the past few weeks.
Soon after the campaign was launched, drops in sales of Indian products were seen at shops in Bangladesh, claimed the India Out campaigners.
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’India Out’ movement surfaces in Bangladesh: Echoes of Maldives - International | Daily Mirror
Despite the geographical distance between the Maldives and Bangladesh, a shared narrative emerges through the ’India Out’ campaign. This campaign, initiated by the main opposition party in Bangladesh following Sheikh Hasina’s election victory, ..
www.dailymirror.lk
’India Out’ movement surfaces in Bangladesh: Echoes of Maldives
18 February 2024 09:45 am
Despite the geographical distance between the Maldives and Bangladesh, a shared narrative emerges through the 'India Out' campaign. This campaign, initiated by the main opposition party in Bangladesh following Sheikh Hasina's election victory, draws inspiration from a similar movement led by former Maldivian President Yameen and his Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM). The underlying factor linking these campaigns is China's influence.
The timing of the Bangladesh campaign, coinciding with President Muizzu's visit to China, suggests Beijing's involvement in destabilizing Bangladesh. Muizzu's focus on repatriating Indian military personnel from the Maldives and his subsequent proposal to share strategies with Bangladesh's opposition underscores China's role in this agenda. Consequently, the boycott of Indian goods has evolved into a dangerous symbol of external interference aimed at destabilizing Bangladesh.
Muizzu's proposition to Chinese President Xi Jinping to share tactics with Bangladesh's opposition further highlights China's hand in this endeavor. The immediate acceptance of this offer underscores the depth of China's involvement. This collaboration amplifies the threat posed by mischievous elements seeking to undermine Bangladesh's stability.
In Dhaka, the campaign unfolded amidst India's historically strong rapport with Sheikh Hasina's government and its strained relationship with the opposition, prompting suspicions that India favored maintaining the status quo. Exiled Bangladeshi physician Pinaki Bhattacharya, residing in Paris since fleeing alleged government harassment in 2018, has emerged as a central figure in this social media movement. Bhattacharya's activism accuses India of meddling in Bangladesh's recent elections to perpetuate Sheikh Hasina's rule.
Dr. Bhattacharya's LinkedIn profile identifies him as an "Expert in Sales and Medico-Marketing of Oncology & Chronic care medicines," with specialized experience in aiding start-ups and ailing companies. His personal website reveals his involvement in Bangladesh's Leftist movement during his student years and showcases his extensive literary contributions, encompassing over 19 books on the nation's political, social, and economic history.
With a significant online presence, including a YouTube channel boasting 1.2 million followers, Bhattacharya mirrors his campaign strategy deployed in the Maldives, leveraging various social media platforms. His #BoycottIndia campaign, launched in mid-January, garnered over two million followers, urging Bangladeshis to participate in what he termed "a monumental endeavor." Bhattacharya's message, rooted in patriotism and a desire to liberate Bangladesh from perceived constraints, has struck a chord with thousands of supporters.
Furthermore, Dr. Bhattacharya's activism extends to his involvement in the Leftist movement during his student years in Bangladesh. His dedication to understanding and documenting his country's political, social, and economic landscape is evident in his authorship of over 19 books on these subjects. Leveraging his significant online presence, which includes a YouTube channel boasting 1.2 million followers, Dr. Bhattacharya has initiated a campaign across various social media platforms. His #BoycottIndia movement, launched in mid-January, has gained substantial traction, with over two million online followers rallying behind his call to action.
The momentum of the boycott campaign accelerated when influential accounts affiliated with the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), its media cell, and its magazine 'The Road to Democracy' joined forces. On January 18, following claims by the BNP's media cell asserting a rise in anti-India sentiment in Bangladesh, a coordinated effort was launched. The party's media wing referenced a YouTube video alleging India's interference in Bangladeshi elections over the past 15 years, further fueling the campaign against Indian products.
According to a report by Eurasian Times, the 'India Out' movement in Bangladesh is allegedly orchestrated by Tarique Rahman, acting chairman of the BNP, residing in London. Rahman purportedly directed party members to emulate the anti-India movement seen in the Maldives, aiming to escalate anti-Indian sentiments in Bangladesh. Prominent figures driving the boycott campaign include Dr. Pinaki Bhattacharya, BNP youth wing leader Ershad Nabil Khan, BNP’s student wing for private universities named 'Voices For Democracy,' London-based activist Rupom Razzaque, and an account called Revolt, previously dedicated to soccer updates.
The BNP's cyber wing has initiated the dissemination of anti-India sentiment through social media, particularly on platforms like Twitter. This campaign is gaining traction on the ground, with reports indicating a significant impact on sales. Shopkeepers in Dhaka have reported a sharp decline in sales of Indian products such as Parachute oil, attributing it to YouTube videos advocating a boycott of Indian goods, often created by Dr. Bhattacharya and circulated online by the BNP.
Following Bangladesh's recent elections, where Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina secured a fourth term, a widespread "India Out" campaign was launched, alleging Indian interference in Bangladeshi politics. The movement, fueled by the Bangladeshi diaspora and opposition groups, advocates for the boycott of Indian products. This echoes similar campaigns witnessed in the Maldives, where anti-India sentiment played a crucial role in Mohamed Muizzu's presidential victory.
In his latest statements, Dr. Bhattacharya emphasized Bangladesh's growing economic ties with India, positioning it as India's fourth-largest trade partner. He argued that boycotting Indian goods would inflict significant harm on India, as its exports to Bangladesh are poised to surpass the US$ 20 billion mark. Dr. Bhattacharya also urged Bangladeshis to refrain from visiting India for various purposes, citing the country as a significant source of tourism for India. He advocated for reciprocating India's actions towards the Maldives, aligning with the overarching goals of the 'India Out' movement.
The anti-India movement in Bangladesh has gained momentum online, fueled by user-generated content. According to India Today, social media surveys reveal images of crossed-out Indian products like Amul Butter and Dabur Honey circulating alongside tips on boycotting these goods through barcode identification. A post highlighting the 890 prefix used in Indian product barcodes has garnered over 1,000 shares. The Gono Odhikar Parishad, a rising political force aligned with the BNP, is actively promoting the boycott movement. Party leader Nurul Haque Nur declared at a recent rally in Dhaka the necessity of starting an 'India Out' campaign, alleging Indian interference in recent elections. Rumeen Farhana, international affairs secretary of the BNP, accused India of meddling in Bangladeshi politics since 2014, capitalizing on the opposition's boycott of elections and shifting blame for Hasina's return to power.
Boycotting Indian goods could impact the economic relationship between India and Bangladesh significantly. With India historically being a major exporter to Bangladesh, annual trade surpasses US$ 12 billion. In addition, Bangladesh heavily relies on India for essential commodities and discussions are ongoing regarding an annual quota of Indian farm product imports. Although the economic impact may be limited, the boycott will stimulate public discourse on India's role in Bangladeshi politics and underscore the unequal nature of the economic relationship. Despite China defending Sheikh Hasina's return to power, there is no call from the Bangladeshi Opposition to boycott Chinese goods.
As Bangladesh turns more to China amid economic challenges, primarily loan repayment pressures and higher global energy prices, the dangers of Chinese initiatives to sideline India in South Asia are evident. This is exemplified by the 'India Out' campaign, seen initially in the Maldives and now in Bangladesh. While India has managed to restore its geopolitical influence in Sri Lanka, other nations like Nepal and Bhutan remain vulnerable to Chinese influence. Successfully navigating this path will require India to establish a clear connection with the opposition in Bangladesh, emphasizing its friendship with Dhaka.
The timing of the Bangladesh campaign, coinciding with President Muizzu's visit to China, suggests Beijing's involvement in destabilizing Bangladesh. Muizzu's focus on repatriating Indian military personnel from the Maldives and his subsequent proposal to share strategies with Bangladesh's opposition underscores China's role in this agenda. Consequently, the boycott of Indian goods has evolved into a dangerous symbol of external interference aimed at destabilizing Bangladesh.
Muizzu's proposition to Chinese President Xi Jinping to share tactics with Bangladesh's opposition further highlights China's hand in this endeavor. The immediate acceptance of this offer underscores the depth of China's involvement. This collaboration amplifies the threat posed by mischievous elements seeking to undermine Bangladesh's stability.
In Dhaka, the campaign unfolded amidst India's historically strong rapport with Sheikh Hasina's government and its strained relationship with the opposition, prompting suspicions that India favored maintaining the status quo. Exiled Bangladeshi physician Pinaki Bhattacharya, residing in Paris since fleeing alleged government harassment in 2018, has emerged as a central figure in this social media movement. Bhattacharya's activism accuses India of meddling in Bangladesh's recent elections to perpetuate Sheikh Hasina's rule.
Dr. Bhattacharya's LinkedIn profile identifies him as an "Expert in Sales and Medico-Marketing of Oncology & Chronic care medicines," with specialized experience in aiding start-ups and ailing companies. His personal website reveals his involvement in Bangladesh's Leftist movement during his student years and showcases his extensive literary contributions, encompassing over 19 books on the nation's political, social, and economic history.
With a significant online presence, including a YouTube channel boasting 1.2 million followers, Bhattacharya mirrors his campaign strategy deployed in the Maldives, leveraging various social media platforms. His #BoycottIndia campaign, launched in mid-January, garnered over two million followers, urging Bangladeshis to participate in what he termed "a monumental endeavor." Bhattacharya's message, rooted in patriotism and a desire to liberate Bangladesh from perceived constraints, has struck a chord with thousands of supporters.
Furthermore, Dr. Bhattacharya's activism extends to his involvement in the Leftist movement during his student years in Bangladesh. His dedication to understanding and documenting his country's political, social, and economic landscape is evident in his authorship of over 19 books on these subjects. Leveraging his significant online presence, which includes a YouTube channel boasting 1.2 million followers, Dr. Bhattacharya has initiated a campaign across various social media platforms. His #BoycottIndia movement, launched in mid-January, has gained substantial traction, with over two million online followers rallying behind his call to action.
The momentum of the boycott campaign accelerated when influential accounts affiliated with the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), its media cell, and its magazine 'The Road to Democracy' joined forces. On January 18, following claims by the BNP's media cell asserting a rise in anti-India sentiment in Bangladesh, a coordinated effort was launched. The party's media wing referenced a YouTube video alleging India's interference in Bangladeshi elections over the past 15 years, further fueling the campaign against Indian products.
According to a report by Eurasian Times, the 'India Out' movement in Bangladesh is allegedly orchestrated by Tarique Rahman, acting chairman of the BNP, residing in London. Rahman purportedly directed party members to emulate the anti-India movement seen in the Maldives, aiming to escalate anti-Indian sentiments in Bangladesh. Prominent figures driving the boycott campaign include Dr. Pinaki Bhattacharya, BNP youth wing leader Ershad Nabil Khan, BNP’s student wing for private universities named 'Voices For Democracy,' London-based activist Rupom Razzaque, and an account called Revolt, previously dedicated to soccer updates.
The BNP's cyber wing has initiated the dissemination of anti-India sentiment through social media, particularly on platforms like Twitter. This campaign is gaining traction on the ground, with reports indicating a significant impact on sales. Shopkeepers in Dhaka have reported a sharp decline in sales of Indian products such as Parachute oil, attributing it to YouTube videos advocating a boycott of Indian goods, often created by Dr. Bhattacharya and circulated online by the BNP.
Following Bangladesh's recent elections, where Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina secured a fourth term, a widespread "India Out" campaign was launched, alleging Indian interference in Bangladeshi politics. The movement, fueled by the Bangladeshi diaspora and opposition groups, advocates for the boycott of Indian products. This echoes similar campaigns witnessed in the Maldives, where anti-India sentiment played a crucial role in Mohamed Muizzu's presidential victory.
In his latest statements, Dr. Bhattacharya emphasized Bangladesh's growing economic ties with India, positioning it as India's fourth-largest trade partner. He argued that boycotting Indian goods would inflict significant harm on India, as its exports to Bangladesh are poised to surpass the US$ 20 billion mark. Dr. Bhattacharya also urged Bangladeshis to refrain from visiting India for various purposes, citing the country as a significant source of tourism for India. He advocated for reciprocating India's actions towards the Maldives, aligning with the overarching goals of the 'India Out' movement.
The anti-India movement in Bangladesh has gained momentum online, fueled by user-generated content. According to India Today, social media surveys reveal images of crossed-out Indian products like Amul Butter and Dabur Honey circulating alongside tips on boycotting these goods through barcode identification. A post highlighting the 890 prefix used in Indian product barcodes has garnered over 1,000 shares. The Gono Odhikar Parishad, a rising political force aligned with the BNP, is actively promoting the boycott movement. Party leader Nurul Haque Nur declared at a recent rally in Dhaka the necessity of starting an 'India Out' campaign, alleging Indian interference in recent elections. Rumeen Farhana, international affairs secretary of the BNP, accused India of meddling in Bangladeshi politics since 2014, capitalizing on the opposition's boycott of elections and shifting blame for Hasina's return to power.
Boycotting Indian goods could impact the economic relationship between India and Bangladesh significantly. With India historically being a major exporter to Bangladesh, annual trade surpasses US$ 12 billion. In addition, Bangladesh heavily relies on India for essential commodities and discussions are ongoing regarding an annual quota of Indian farm product imports. Although the economic impact may be limited, the boycott will stimulate public discourse on India's role in Bangladeshi politics and underscore the unequal nature of the economic relationship. Despite China defending Sheikh Hasina's return to power, there is no call from the Bangladeshi Opposition to boycott Chinese goods.
As Bangladesh turns more to China amid economic challenges, primarily loan repayment pressures and higher global energy prices, the dangers of Chinese initiatives to sideline India in South Asia are evident. This is exemplified by the 'India Out' campaign, seen initially in the Maldives and now in Bangladesh. While India has managed to restore its geopolitical influence in Sri Lanka, other nations like Nepal and Bhutan remain vulnerable to Chinese influence. Successfully navigating this path will require India to establish a clear connection with the opposition in Bangladesh, emphasizing its friendship with Dhaka.
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- Jan 24, 2024
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Wow - this India Out Campaign is showing no signs of slowing down. 
But Indian Media is coming up with spinning this as Pakistani and Chinese plots (and attributing this to BNP), none of which are true.
But Indian Media is coming up with spinning this as Pakistani and Chinese plots (and attributing this to BNP), none of which are true.
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According to this video, the Indians bring products to Bangladesh without giving VAT, Tax and Import duties and sell them illegally. This has been going on for many years now. The Govt. is losing revenues due to smuggling by the Indians.
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Rizvi favours ‘India Out’ campaign
Throwing his Indian shawl away, the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party senior joint secretary general, Ruhul Kabir Rizvi...
www.newagebd.net
Rizvi favours ‘India Out’ campaign
BNP says Rizvi’s opinion personal, allies caught off-guard
Staff Correspondent | Published: 23:55, Mar 20,2024
BNP senior joint secretary general Ruhul Kabir Rizvi throws his Indian shawl away to express solidarity with the campaign for boycotting Indian products in front of the party’s Naya Paltan central office on Wednesday. — New Age photo
Throwing his Indian shawl away, the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party senior joint secretary general, Ruhul Kabir Rizvi, expressed solidarity with the social media campaign for boycotting Indian products on Wednesday.
Rizvi did this in front of the party’s Naya Paltan central office following a press conference where he said, ‘Social media is buzzing with the boycott India campaign. There is public opinion against the import of Indian products. The wave of boycotts of Indian products is visible. Therefore, as a party representing the people, BNP and 63 democratic parties and patriotic citizens of the nation are expressing solidarity with the boycott of Indian products.’
A BNP standing committee member and several leaders of the BNP allies confirmed to New Age that no such policy decision had been made yet in this regard.
‘We held a meeting of the party’s standing committee on Monday. We did not take any decision to boycott any nation or the products of any particular nation,’ BNP standing committee member Gayeshwar Chandra Roy told New Age.
He said that Rizvi’s announcement may be personal.
When asked about the matter, Rizvi told New Age, ‘This announcement is mine as well as my party’s. We are not making all statements through meetings. There are some political issues also.’
Ganatantra Mancha, a coalition of six political parties, and a major partner of BNP in the ongoing democratic movement against the ruling Awami League, also said that they were not aware of Rizvi’s announcement.
Ganatantra Mancha leader and Revolutionary Workers Party general secretary Saiful Huq told New Age that no such decision had yet been taken in any policymaking forum or liaison committee.
He, however, said that the Mancha considered the social media campaign to boycott Indian products symbolic, as the incumbent ruler of India backed the AL in the past three elections, ignoring the sentiments of the democracy-loving people of Bangladesh.
Social Democratic Party convener Abul Kalam Azad, a leader of the four-party combine Democratic Left Unity, told New Age that there was no such decision by the alliance or parties engaged in the ongoing simultaneous movement.
At the press conference, Rizvi claimed that AL did not seek the mandate of the Bangladeshi people but was ‘clinging to power through the backing of the Modi [Indian prime minister Narendra Modi] government and entering into bonds of subjugation.’
He further accused the AL of perceiving Bangladesh as a ‘dummy state,’ alleging that the real power behind the AL was not the people of Bangladesh but India.
By supporting the Awami League, India is exercising control over Bangladesh, infringing upon the rights of its citizens, he added.
‘It is believed that India dictates the appointment of crucial positions like the chief of Bangladesh Police and BGB, undermining our sovereignty,’ he said.
Rizvi also pointed to statements made by Indian foreign ministry officials expressing support for the Awami League ahead of the January 7 national election.
‘The notion of our sovereignty is being compromised under the guise of stability under Sheikh Hasina’s leadership,’ he stated.
Rizvi also said the ‘India out’ campaign is gaining momentum in Bangladesh, saying that it is people’s protest against the country’s influence.
BNP says Rizvi’s opinion personal, allies caught off-guard
Staff Correspondent | Published: 23:55, Mar 20,2024
BNP senior joint secretary general Ruhul Kabir Rizvi throws his Indian shawl away to express solidarity with the campaign for boycotting Indian products in front of the party’s Naya Paltan central office on Wednesday. — New Age photo
Throwing his Indian shawl away, the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party senior joint secretary general, Ruhul Kabir Rizvi, expressed solidarity with the social media campaign for boycotting Indian products on Wednesday.
Rizvi did this in front of the party’s Naya Paltan central office following a press conference where he said, ‘Social media is buzzing with the boycott India campaign. There is public opinion against the import of Indian products. The wave of boycotts of Indian products is visible. Therefore, as a party representing the people, BNP and 63 democratic parties and patriotic citizens of the nation are expressing solidarity with the boycott of Indian products.’
A BNP standing committee member and several leaders of the BNP allies confirmed to New Age that no such policy decision had been made yet in this regard.
‘We held a meeting of the party’s standing committee on Monday. We did not take any decision to boycott any nation or the products of any particular nation,’ BNP standing committee member Gayeshwar Chandra Roy told New Age.
He said that Rizvi’s announcement may be personal.
When asked about the matter, Rizvi told New Age, ‘This announcement is mine as well as my party’s. We are not making all statements through meetings. There are some political issues also.’
Ganatantra Mancha, a coalition of six political parties, and a major partner of BNP in the ongoing democratic movement against the ruling Awami League, also said that they were not aware of Rizvi’s announcement.
Ganatantra Mancha leader and Revolutionary Workers Party general secretary Saiful Huq told New Age that no such decision had yet been taken in any policymaking forum or liaison committee.
He, however, said that the Mancha considered the social media campaign to boycott Indian products symbolic, as the incumbent ruler of India backed the AL in the past three elections, ignoring the sentiments of the democracy-loving people of Bangladesh.
Social Democratic Party convener Abul Kalam Azad, a leader of the four-party combine Democratic Left Unity, told New Age that there was no such decision by the alliance or parties engaged in the ongoing simultaneous movement.
At the press conference, Rizvi claimed that AL did not seek the mandate of the Bangladeshi people but was ‘clinging to power through the backing of the Modi [Indian prime minister Narendra Modi] government and entering into bonds of subjugation.’
He further accused the AL of perceiving Bangladesh as a ‘dummy state,’ alleging that the real power behind the AL was not the people of Bangladesh but India.
By supporting the Awami League, India is exercising control over Bangladesh, infringing upon the rights of its citizens, he added.
‘It is believed that India dictates the appointment of crucial positions like the chief of Bangladesh Police and BGB, undermining our sovereignty,’ he said.
Rizvi also pointed to statements made by Indian foreign ministry officials expressing support for the Awami League ahead of the January 7 national election.
‘The notion of our sovereignty is being compromised under the guise of stability under Sheikh Hasina’s leadership,’ he stated.
Rizvi also said the ‘India out’ campaign is gaining momentum in Bangladesh, saying that it is people’s protest against the country’s influence.
Why
‘India Out’ campaigns simmer in Bangladesh amid election fallout
Calls to boycott Indian goods in Bangladesh follow allegations of Indian interference in national elections.
‘India Out’ campaigns simmer in Bangladesh amid election falloutCalls to boycott Indian goods in Bangladesh follow allegations of Indian interference in national elections.
View attachment 3243
Grocery stores have been unable to sell Indian-made chips [Al Jazeera]
By Faisal Mahmud
Published On 7 Feb 20247 Feb 2024
Dhaka, Bangladesh – Amid allegations of Indian interference in national elections, there’s a call to boycott Indian goods in Bangladesh.
Last week, a supplier for the Indian consumer goods giant Marico faced a chilly reception in Dhaka’s Panthapath area. Grocery shops, usually eager to stock their shelves with its hair oil, cooking oil, body lotion and other products, refused to take new deliveries.
“Sales of Parachute oil, a Marico bestseller, have plummeted to almost zero in recent weeks,” local shopkeeper Aman Ullah said. “Indian products just aren’t moving. We’re stuck with unsold stock and won’t be restocking.”
Another shop owner who requested anonymity revealed a deeper reason: “I don’t want to sell Indian products any more.” He cited YouTube videos advocating a boycott of Indian goods, which he wholeheartedly supported.
Simmering anti-India sentiment in Bangladesh has boiled over in the past decade, culminating in public displays such as celebrations in Dhaka last year after India’s loss in the Cricket World Cup final.
But after last month’s elections in Bangladesh, in which Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina secured a fourth term while the opposition boycotted the polls, a massive “India Out” campaign was launched, alleging Indian interference in Bangladesh politics.
The Bangladeshi diaspora and opposition groups have fuelled this anti-India movement and advocated boycotts of Indian products. This movement mirrors similar campaigns in the Maldives, where Mohamed Muizzu capitalized on anti-India sentiment to win the presidential election.
In Dhaka, the campaign was launched against the backdrop of India’s traditionally strong ties with Hasina’s government and its strained relationship with the opposition, leading many to believe India favoured the status quo.
Exiled Bangladeshi physician Pinaki Bhattacharya, who fled alleged government harassment in 2018, has emerged as the key figure in this burgeoning social media movement accusing India of interfering in Bangladesh’s recent elections to keep Hasina in power.
Through his more than two million followers across social media platforms, Bhattacharya launched the #BoycottIndia campaign in mid-January, urging them to join “this monumental endeavour”. His call, emphasizing love of homeland and determination to break free from perceived shackles, resonated with thousands.
The anti-India movement has surged online, fuelled by user-generated content. Photos of crossed-out Indian products like Amul butter and Dabur honey are circulating alongside barcode identification tips to boycott these goods. A single post highlighting the 890 prefix used in barcodes for Indian products garnered more than 1,000 shares, showcasing the movement’s online reach.
Why did the campaign gain traction?
The Indian High Commission in Dhaka declined Al Jazeera’s request for a comment on this anti-India campaign.
At a Mumbai forum on January 30 with Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, attendees raised concerns about India’s foreign policy amid perceived shifts in regional dynamics, particularly the growing pull of major rival China on neighbouring countries like Bangladesh and the Maldives.
Jaishankar downplayed concerns about foreign policy shortcomings but conceded the competitive reality. He pointed out that China’s geographical proximity naturally grants it influence over neighbouring countries like the Maldives, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.
Screengrab from Facebook of online movements advocating boycott of Indian products
State Minister of Information and Broadcasting and lawmaker from the ruling Awami League Mohammad A Arafat, too, dismissed the concerns saying Bangladesh had received global attention because of the unprecedented fact of a fourth term for the ruling government.
“If I have to talk about other country’s interest in our local politics, then the first name I would mention is the United States which even declared a Visa restriction policy based on Bangladesh election. On the other hand, India, from the very onset officially stated that Bangladesh’s election is its internal matter and it has no say in it,” Arafat said.
Obaidul Quader, general secretary of Awami League told Al Jazeera that the “India out” campaign is run by opposition parties who instead of taking part in the election blaming “India for their misfortune.”
“They [the opposition parties] have this trump card of bashing India if anything goes against them,” said Quader, “I don’t think common people of Bangladesh support this campaign. They know that Awami League will never work against the interest of people.”
The burgeoning anti-India campaign, meanwhile, is finding traction within Bangladesh’s domestic political landscape, raising concerns about potentially destabilising Bangladesh’s economy and impacting regional relations.
Gono Odhikar Parishad, a rising political force aligned with the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP)-led opposition, is promoting the boycott movement. Party leader Nurul Haque Nur declared at a recent rally in Dhaka that “We all have to start an ‘India Out’ campaign'” while alleging Indian interference in the recent elections.
Rumeen Farhana, international affairs secretary of the BNP, told Al Jazeera that the people of Bangladesh never liked India’s interference in Bangladesh politics. “It’s now crystal clear that India did everything possible to keep the regime in power since 2014,” she alleged.
Resentment against India reached a boiling point in Bangladesh after Hasina’s Awami League secured a resounding victory in the January 7 elections, capturing 223 seats out of 300 in parliament. Critics alleged the process lacked legitimacy due to the opposition’s boycott and the presence of numerous Awami League-backed independent candidates, raising questions about the fairness of the vote.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered swift congratulations to both Hasina and “the people of Bangladesh for the successful conduct of elections”, endorsing the outcome. In contrast, Western governments expressed reservations, highlighting the boycott and the lack of a strong opposition presence.
Facebook Screengrab of calls for a boycott of Indian products in favour of Bangladeshi products
Farhana said anti-India public sentiment in Bangladesh goes beyond politics. “The border killing, unresolved water sharing of 53 rivers including Teesta, trade deficit all play roles to that,” she said.
Around 1,276 Bangladeshis have been killed and 1,183 injured by India’s border forces since 2010, according to human rights organisation Odhikar. Then there are the decades-old unresolved water-sharing agreements for 53 transboundary rivers in addition to Bangladesh’s massive trade deficit with India, all of which have raised concerns about Bangladesh’s sovereignty and economic independence.
Ali Riaz, distinguished professor of politics and government at Illinois State University, told Al Jazeera that India’s unqualified support of the Awami League and Hasina during the 2024 elections has raised questions among many citizens about “whether it has compromised the country’s sovereignty”.
However, Sreeradha Datta, a professor at the Jindal School of International Affairs in Sonepat, India, refuted the claims of India’s “unqualified support” and said the Awami League was “creative in going past the polls even if India [had] not agree[d] to recognise the election”.
“China and so many others congratulated PM Hasina right after the election, so would that make any difference if India didn’t support it?” she asked.
The economic fallout
Analysts, meanwhile, pointed out that boycotting Indian goods could have major repercussions for the economic relationship between the two countries.
India is a major exporter to Bangladesh with annual trade historically exceeding $12bn. Additionally, Bangladesh relies heavily on India for essential commodities, and the two governments are currently in talks on an annual quota of imports of Indian farm products.
Calling the anti-India campaign a “political stunt”, Munshi Faiz Ahmed, former chairman of the Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies, a state-funded think tank, told Al Jazeera that the economic fallout of boycotting Indian products will be more severe for Bangladesh.
“I don’t think any rational Bangladeshi would opt for taking part in this campaign. India is our neighbouring country, and we are heavily dependent on them for our everyday essentials like rice and onions. We are dependent because we get those products at the cheapest prices because of geographical proximity,” Ahmed said, adding that sourcing those products from somewhere else would cost much more.
Jyoti Rahman, an Australia-based economist told Al Jazeera that the “India Out” movement may be politically important to the extent that “it sends a strong message to the Indian policymakers” about growing discontent in Bangladesh but the “economic effects are less clear cut”.
Rahman pointed out that despite being India’s fourth largest export destination, Bangladesh still comprises about 3.5 percent of the Indian export market. “Even if all exports to Bangladesh stopped, it probably wouldn’t significantly affect the Indian economy as these products would find a market elsewhere,” Rahman said.
On the other hand, he said, a fifth of Bangladeshi imports are from India, including essentials such as cotton for the garment manufacturing sector, cereals and produce such as onions. “[Looking at] other sources of imports for these products could stoke inflation further,” Rahman said.
However, he highlighted the potential political effectiveness of boycotting non-essential items like tourism, cultural imports like Bollywood movies and consumer products, which he said could benefit domestic industries.
The overwhelming dependence of Bangladesh on India also means that “Indian businesses are vulnerable if such a movement gains traction and support”, Riaz said.
Even if the economic impacts are limited or not immediate, the boycotts will contribute to the public discourse on the role of India in Bangladeshi politics and highlight the unequal relationship, he said. “This is no less important.”
Additional reporting by Abu Jakir
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Interference by India in our election process has irked us so much that we have called to boycott Indian products in the country. Also India creates non-tariff barriers to frustrate Bangladeshi products from its market to create trade imbalance which are having negative impact on our economy.
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AL, BNP debate over boycott of Indian products
Ruling Awami League general secretary Obaidul Quader on Friday said that the Bangladesh Nationalist Party is involved in a serious conspiracy to destabilise the market...
www.newagebd.net
AL, BNP debate over boycott of Indian products
Staff Correspondent | Published: 00:36, Mar 23,2024
Ruling Awami League general secretary Obaidul Quader on Friday said that the Bangladesh Nationalist Party is involved in a serious conspiracy to destabilise the market system in the name of boycotting Indian products.
However, the people of the country will not respond to their call, he said, according to a report of Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha.
Quader, also the road transport and bridges minister, came up with the remarks while addressing a press conference at the AL president’s Dhanmondi political office in Dhaka on Friday.
He said that BNP’s plot to destroy relations with India is the manifestation of the mental weakness of the leaders of that party.
Their call for boycotting Indian goods will not affect the relations prevailing between the two countries. The country’s people will boycott those who have called for the boycott of Indian products, he said.
The AL general secretary said that when a party becomes radicalised it also becomes bankrupt and only for them it is possible to talk about boycotting its neighbouring country by violating diplomatic norms.
‘The majority of our essential products come from India. The cost of imports from distant countries is high. So, the plot to destroy our relations with India is the manifestation of BNP’s mental disorder. They are paying a lot for not joining the last general elections,’ he said.
Quader also said that while a senior BNP leader is seeking the cooperation of a friendly neighbour to save Bangladesh’s democracy, a junior leader of BNP is calling on to boycott Indian products.
‘In fact, the BNP’s politics is chaotic and messy. Now they do not understand whom they want to please. Which way will BNP actually go? They are now pathless like the wanderers and their words are baffling,’ he said.
Quader said communal politics has been going on in the name of opposing India since the Pakistan era, while today’s call for boycotting Indian goods is an integral part of that.
Meanwhile, BNP chairperson’s advisory council member, Zainul Abdin Farroque, said on Friday that the January 7 general election of Bangladesh was undemocratic and unacceptable to the people who expected proper support from India.
‘We can see that there is a boycott of Indian products by the people of Bangladesh through various social media campaigns due to the anti-people stance of India in the election,’ he said.
He came up with the remarks while talking to journalists after paying tribute to BNP founder Ziaur Rahman’s grave at Sher-e-Bangla Nagar in the capital, marking the 37th founding anniversary of Zia Parishad, a pro-BNP organisation.
Farroque said, ‘Our party spokesperson, Ruhul Kabir Rizvi, said that we have expressed our solidarity with the programme of boycott of Indian products. Even today, on the 37th founding day of the Zia Parishad, we express our solidarity with this programme.’
‘AL general secretary talks a lot at times. We don’t want to answer his words because cases are filed when we reply him,’ he added.
Earlier on Wednesday at a press conference at the BNP central office in Naya Paltan, BNP senior joint secretary general Ruhul Kabir Rizvi threw away his Indian shawl to express the party’s support for the boycott of Indian products.
In an Iftar programme arranged by the Jatiotabadi Nobin Dol at a restaurant in the capital’s Segunbagicha, he also said that if the democratic government of India supports the undemocratic and unelected government of Bangladesh, then how will the people of Bangladesh accept Indian products? So the boycott is a must,’ he added.
Staff Correspondent | Published: 00:36, Mar 23,2024
Ruling Awami League general secretary Obaidul Quader on Friday said that the Bangladesh Nationalist Party is involved in a serious conspiracy to destabilise the market system in the name of boycotting Indian products.
However, the people of the country will not respond to their call, he said, according to a report of Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha.
Quader, also the road transport and bridges minister, came up with the remarks while addressing a press conference at the AL president’s Dhanmondi political office in Dhaka on Friday.
He said that BNP’s plot to destroy relations with India is the manifestation of the mental weakness of the leaders of that party.
Their call for boycotting Indian goods will not affect the relations prevailing between the two countries. The country’s people will boycott those who have called for the boycott of Indian products, he said.
The AL general secretary said that when a party becomes radicalised it also becomes bankrupt and only for them it is possible to talk about boycotting its neighbouring country by violating diplomatic norms.
‘The majority of our essential products come from India. The cost of imports from distant countries is high. So, the plot to destroy our relations with India is the manifestation of BNP’s mental disorder. They are paying a lot for not joining the last general elections,’ he said.
Quader also said that while a senior BNP leader is seeking the cooperation of a friendly neighbour to save Bangladesh’s democracy, a junior leader of BNP is calling on to boycott Indian products.
‘In fact, the BNP’s politics is chaotic and messy. Now they do not understand whom they want to please. Which way will BNP actually go? They are now pathless like the wanderers and their words are baffling,’ he said.
Quader said communal politics has been going on in the name of opposing India since the Pakistan era, while today’s call for boycotting Indian goods is an integral part of that.
Meanwhile, BNP chairperson’s advisory council member, Zainul Abdin Farroque, said on Friday that the January 7 general election of Bangladesh was undemocratic and unacceptable to the people who expected proper support from India.
‘We can see that there is a boycott of Indian products by the people of Bangladesh through various social media campaigns due to the anti-people stance of India in the election,’ he said.
He came up with the remarks while talking to journalists after paying tribute to BNP founder Ziaur Rahman’s grave at Sher-e-Bangla Nagar in the capital, marking the 37th founding anniversary of Zia Parishad, a pro-BNP organisation.
Farroque said, ‘Our party spokesperson, Ruhul Kabir Rizvi, said that we have expressed our solidarity with the programme of boycott of Indian products. Even today, on the 37th founding day of the Zia Parishad, we express our solidarity with this programme.’
‘AL general secretary talks a lot at times. We don’t want to answer his words because cases are filed when we reply him,’ he added.
Earlier on Wednesday at a press conference at the BNP central office in Naya Paltan, BNP senior joint secretary general Ruhul Kabir Rizvi threw away his Indian shawl to express the party’s support for the boycott of Indian products.
In an Iftar programme arranged by the Jatiotabadi Nobin Dol at a restaurant in the capital’s Segunbagicha, he also said that if the democratic government of India supports the undemocratic and unelected government of Bangladesh, then how will the people of Bangladesh accept Indian products? So the boycott is a must,’ he added.
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AL, BNP at loggerheads over Indian products boycott
The ruling Awami League and the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party are making counter statements over the recent social media campaign to boycott Indian products...
www.newagebd.net
AL, BNP at loggerheads over Indian products boycott
Ahammad Foyez | Published: 00:27, Mar 24,2024
The ruling Awami League and the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party are making counter statements over the recent social media campaign to boycott Indian products that was initiated through a group of social media influencers following the January 7 general election in Bangladesh.
Both political camps became active over the issue recently after a BNP leader formally extended solidarity with the camping as the opposition thinks people’s views were not reflected in the parliamentary polls due to Indian support to the ruling Awami League.
At the latest, on Saturday at least three AL leaders and ministers commented on the issue, while the opposition also made statements in separate programmes.
While inaugurating the iftar and Eid gifts distribution ceremony of the Dhaka district unit Awami League in Tejgaon, party general secretary and road transport and bridges minister Obaidul Quader said that India and other friendly countries stood by to prevent domestic and foreign conspiracies from foiling the 12th parliamentary polls held on January 7 amid boycotts by most oppositions, including the BNP.
‘Any foreign countries, including India, did not bring the Awami League to power. Rather, it stood to resist the conspiracies to foil the vote,’ Quader said.
‘I have been hearing the propaganda from the Pakistan era. When there are no political issues, only one issue is raised against the Awami League. Earlier it was brought against Bangabandhu and now it is brought against Sheikh Hasina, that is the issue of anti-India,’ he added.
‘What does India have here? The people of Bangladesh voted and elected Sheikh Hasina,’ he said, adding that more than 41 per cent of votes were in the elections, even in many developed countries these many votes are not cast.
‘Still they [opposition] are saying that India had us elected,’ Quader said.
He also commented that the statements of BNP senior leaders are not on the same footing regarding the call for boycotting India.
‘BNP is a strange party. Its one leader saying that India has helped us to win independence, while another leader is calling for boycotting Indian products,’ he added.
Quader said that the BNP is a party solely focused on power and the development of its own pockets, but not a party of ordinary people just contrary to the AL which is a people’s party.
On the day, while talking to journalists after joining a coordination meeting on the implementation of the government development activities in Chattogram district at the Circuit House, foreign minister and AL joint secretary Hasan Mahmud said that the main aim of the BNP is to destabilise the country’s essential commodity market and increase the prices of goods by the call of boycott.
He said that many consumer products in Bangladesh come from India and this type of call will only increase the sufferings of the people and hike the prices of goods.
‘We have thousands of kilometres of border with India and some border trade is also done legally. You will eat onion from India, your leader will wear sarees from India, your leader who shouts in the field will also wear Indian sarees, you will eat seheri, iftar with beef from India,’ he added.
Besides, while speaking as the chief guest at a discussion organised by the Chhatra League on the day, Awami League presidium member and textile and jute minister Jahangir Kabir Nanak said that the divided BNP is now opposing India to create hypes around cheap issues.
‘The BNP is talking about boycotting Indian products to create cheap issues when it is isolated from the people,’ he added.
On the other hand, BNP vice chairman Hafiz Uddin Ahmad on Saturday said that Bangladesh became independent not for becoming subservient to Delhi.
‘Did we fight this war [liberation war] to be subservient to Delhi? Never! The freedom-loving people of Bangladesh will never accept such slavery,’ he added.
He made these comments in his chief guest’s speech at a discussion meeting organised by the Jatiyatabadi Muktijoddha Dal at the Dhaka Reporters Unity in Dhaka.
Earlier on the day, the top leaders of the 12-party alliance, a political alliance waging anti-government simultaneous movement to restore democracy, paid a courtesy call on BNP senior joint secretary general Ruhul Kabir Rizvi for expressing solidarity with the anti-Indian aggression and Indian product boycott movement.
The leaders handed over T-shirts carrying slogans to boycott Indian products.to Rizvi.
Spokesperson of 12 party alliance Shahadat Hossain Selim, its coordinator Syed Ehsanul Huda, Jatiya Party faction secretary general Ahsan Habib Lincoln, Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Bangladesh secretary general Mohiuddin Ekram, Jatiya Ganotantrik Party senior vice president Rashed Pradhan, Labor Party chairman Faruk Rahman, and Bangladesh Kalyan Party faction acting chairman Samsuddin Parvez were present during the meeting.
After the January 7 general election, Obaidul Quader on January 28 made the first statement about India’s support in the election process.
After holding a meeting with Indian high commissioner Pranay Verma, Quader told reporters that India stood by Bangladesh’s election process when the opposition tried to foil the polling.
At the meeting, Quader assured that the country’s relationship with India will stay on course and new projects in connectivity are under way.
‘Some opposition in this country wanted to destabilise us here by colluding with some foreign countries, while India stood by us when they wanted to foil the election,’ Quader said at the media briefing on the day.
‘We have to admit that. Bangladesh prime minister Sheikh Hasina and Indian prime minister Narendra Modi have broken the wall of doubt and mistrust in the friendly relations between the two countries,’ he said.
Before the January 7 election, addressing a rally in Dhaka on October 3 last year, Quader claimed that India had facilitated an underhand negotiation between the United States and the Bangladesh government over visa restrictions on Bangladeshis and possible sanctions on the country.
‘Where are visa restrictions? Where are the sanctions? Everything has now been compromised through underhand negotiations….Delhi is there, and America needs Delhi. We [AL] are with Delhi and it is also with us. We have no enmity with anyone, and all are our friends,’ he added.
Ahammad Foyez | Published: 00:27, Mar 24,2024
The ruling Awami League and the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party are making counter statements over the recent social media campaign to boycott Indian products that was initiated through a group of social media influencers following the January 7 general election in Bangladesh.
Both political camps became active over the issue recently after a BNP leader formally extended solidarity with the camping as the opposition thinks people’s views were not reflected in the parliamentary polls due to Indian support to the ruling Awami League.
At the latest, on Saturday at least three AL leaders and ministers commented on the issue, while the opposition also made statements in separate programmes.
While inaugurating the iftar and Eid gifts distribution ceremony of the Dhaka district unit Awami League in Tejgaon, party general secretary and road transport and bridges minister Obaidul Quader said that India and other friendly countries stood by to prevent domestic and foreign conspiracies from foiling the 12th parliamentary polls held on January 7 amid boycotts by most oppositions, including the BNP.
‘Any foreign countries, including India, did not bring the Awami League to power. Rather, it stood to resist the conspiracies to foil the vote,’ Quader said.
‘I have been hearing the propaganda from the Pakistan era. When there are no political issues, only one issue is raised against the Awami League. Earlier it was brought against Bangabandhu and now it is brought against Sheikh Hasina, that is the issue of anti-India,’ he added.
‘What does India have here? The people of Bangladesh voted and elected Sheikh Hasina,’ he said, adding that more than 41 per cent of votes were in the elections, even in many developed countries these many votes are not cast.
‘Still they [opposition] are saying that India had us elected,’ Quader said.
He also commented that the statements of BNP senior leaders are not on the same footing regarding the call for boycotting India.
‘BNP is a strange party. Its one leader saying that India has helped us to win independence, while another leader is calling for boycotting Indian products,’ he added.
Quader said that the BNP is a party solely focused on power and the development of its own pockets, but not a party of ordinary people just contrary to the AL which is a people’s party.
On the day, while talking to journalists after joining a coordination meeting on the implementation of the government development activities in Chattogram district at the Circuit House, foreign minister and AL joint secretary Hasan Mahmud said that the main aim of the BNP is to destabilise the country’s essential commodity market and increase the prices of goods by the call of boycott.
He said that many consumer products in Bangladesh come from India and this type of call will only increase the sufferings of the people and hike the prices of goods.
‘We have thousands of kilometres of border with India and some border trade is also done legally. You will eat onion from India, your leader will wear sarees from India, your leader who shouts in the field will also wear Indian sarees, you will eat seheri, iftar with beef from India,’ he added.
Besides, while speaking as the chief guest at a discussion organised by the Chhatra League on the day, Awami League presidium member and textile and jute minister Jahangir Kabir Nanak said that the divided BNP is now opposing India to create hypes around cheap issues.
‘The BNP is talking about boycotting Indian products to create cheap issues when it is isolated from the people,’ he added.
On the other hand, BNP vice chairman Hafiz Uddin Ahmad on Saturday said that Bangladesh became independent not for becoming subservient to Delhi.
‘Did we fight this war [liberation war] to be subservient to Delhi? Never! The freedom-loving people of Bangladesh will never accept such slavery,’ he added.
He made these comments in his chief guest’s speech at a discussion meeting organised by the Jatiyatabadi Muktijoddha Dal at the Dhaka Reporters Unity in Dhaka.
Earlier on the day, the top leaders of the 12-party alliance, a political alliance waging anti-government simultaneous movement to restore democracy, paid a courtesy call on BNP senior joint secretary general Ruhul Kabir Rizvi for expressing solidarity with the anti-Indian aggression and Indian product boycott movement.
The leaders handed over T-shirts carrying slogans to boycott Indian products.to Rizvi.
Spokesperson of 12 party alliance Shahadat Hossain Selim, its coordinator Syed Ehsanul Huda, Jatiya Party faction secretary general Ahsan Habib Lincoln, Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Bangladesh secretary general Mohiuddin Ekram, Jatiya Ganotantrik Party senior vice president Rashed Pradhan, Labor Party chairman Faruk Rahman, and Bangladesh Kalyan Party faction acting chairman Samsuddin Parvez were present during the meeting.
After the January 7 general election, Obaidul Quader on January 28 made the first statement about India’s support in the election process.
After holding a meeting with Indian high commissioner Pranay Verma, Quader told reporters that India stood by Bangladesh’s election process when the opposition tried to foil the polling.
At the meeting, Quader assured that the country’s relationship with India will stay on course and new projects in connectivity are under way.
‘Some opposition in this country wanted to destabilise us here by colluding with some foreign countries, while India stood by us when they wanted to foil the election,’ Quader said at the media briefing on the day.
‘We have to admit that. Bangladesh prime minister Sheikh Hasina and Indian prime minister Narendra Modi have broken the wall of doubt and mistrust in the friendly relations between the two countries,’ he said.
Before the January 7 election, addressing a rally in Dhaka on October 3 last year, Quader claimed that India had facilitated an underhand negotiation between the United States and the Bangladesh government over visa restrictions on Bangladeshis and possible sanctions on the country.
‘Where are visa restrictions? Where are the sanctions? Everything has now been compromised through underhand negotiations….Delhi is there, and America needs Delhi. We [AL] are with Delhi and it is also with us. We have no enmity with anyone, and all are our friends,’ he added.
- Jan 26, 2024
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mean while our khoti pakistanis love to bring horrible indian products.
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Which products you buy from India?
- Jan 26, 2024
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i watched documentary they're always angle the documentary in such away to demoralize Pakistanis and big up india.
one product i remember from india was iodex balm the Pakistani shop owner was selling. pakistan is a nation that puts money over wisdom then suffer.
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I heard that Pakistan buys medicines from India. Is it true?
After Rivzi's action finally Sheikh Hasina reacted! Never thought she will react! So is the boycott actually working? @Old School bhai your opinion please!
- Jan 26, 2024
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i believe so. pakistanis are stupid ppl, we produce our own but its about making profit and indias dumping its goods on pak.
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Spoilt children sometimes boycott their parents to draw attention as you know. As a matter of fact, Bangladesh itself is historically an Indian brainchild and project. BNP /JI did not attend Pakistan Day Grand reception at the Pakistan High Com in Dhaka on 23 March 2024 while Awami League leaders did attend.
But @Old School bhai , some say that it's Yahiya and bhutto who forcefully out Bangladesh from Pakistan and put blame on India!
Or was it a mutual plan of India and Pakistan to out Bangladesh from Pakistan dominion because Bengalis are hard to control
!Also bad people ( anti BAL!?) say that Sheikh Mujib was actually pro Pakistan and didn't want to break Pakistan!
Whatever was the case , I think it happened for good for both nations!
And what's the issue if BAL make alliance with Pakistan? IMHO, BAL and Pakistan are destined to become friends ; only pro India position could be a show off!
Let's wait and see what's next!
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In Pakistan, it has been a norm for one's opposition to be pro-Indian since 1947. You do not like your opposition, and you call them pro-Indian. The reality is that economic reality rather than emotion dictates the policies. We have an extensive PAk government archive on BD leaders, so we know a lot about them that ordinary Bengali /Pakistani web surfers do not know.But @Old School bhai , some say that it's Yahiya and bhutto who forcefully out Bangladesh from Pakistan and put blame on India!
Or was it a mutual plan of India and Pakistan to out Bangladesh from Pakistan dominion because Bengalis are hard to control
Also bad people ( anti BAL!?) People say that Sheikh Mujib was actually pro Pakistan and didn't want to break Pakistan!
Whatever was the case , I think it happened for good for both of nation!
And what's the issue if BAL make alliance with Pakistan? IMHO, BAL and Pakistan are destined to become friends ; only pro India position could be a show off!
Let's wait and see what's next!
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On ‘boycott Indian products’ campaign
WHILE Bangladesh is set to celebrate the 53rd anniversary of national independence, India that helped Bangladeshis achieve the...
www.newagebd.net
BANGLADESH’S SOVEREIGNTY AND INDIA’S BANGLADESH POLICY
On ‘boycott Indian products’ campaign
Nurul Kabir | Published: 00:00, Mar 26,2024
WHILE Bangladesh is set to celebrate the 53rd anniversary of national independence, India that helped Bangladeshis achieve the independence through a bloodied war against the erstwhile occupation forces of Pakistan appears to have emerged as a political villain in the eyes of most Bangladeshis because of Delhi’s repeated interference with Bangladesh politics, resulting particularly in disfranchising the people of Bangladesh since the general elections held in 2008.
The recently launched ‘boycott Indian products’ movement, initiated and nurtured by a cross section of young Bangladeshi netizens at home and abroad, definitely in reaction to India’s hegemonic attitude towards Bangladesh, has visibly started to gain social momentum in the country, posing a significant threat to the Indian economy. India, after all, officially exports to Bangladesh its products worth as much as $13 billion every year while its unofficial exports through the long, porous border remain more than double the amount.
The emerging situation, however, might help the Indian establishments concerned to start some soul-searching about its hegemonic attitude, political and otherwise, towards Bangladesh.
It should have been all-out friendly
BANGLADESH’S war of independence began with the then West Pakistani rulers refusing to honour the electoral mandate to hand over power to the East-based Awami League that unambiguously won Pakistan’s first ever general elections held in late 1970 and launching a genocide against unarmed people of the East, that too, at the end of an apparently negotiated settlement reached between the feuding East and the West in several weeks of dialogue in February and March 1971. The genocidal attack of the West spontaneously transformed the Awami League’s political scheme of the East’s ‘full autonomy’ within the framework of a united Pakistan into, first, the people’s spontaneous war of resistance and, then, an organised war of national independence, albeit with the help of Indian political establishments of the day.
Given the League’s political scheme at the time, it had not organised military preparation to fight a war of independence on its own and, therefore, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, a globally known towering political personality those days, preferred to court arrest by the Pakistani authorities while the rest of the League leadership crossed over to neighbouring India, obviously, to save life and try to launch an organised war of national liberation from exile.
The people of Bangladesh, a section of politically conscious civilian youths and a section of Bengali military and paramilitary officers and soldiers, to be precise, who had already started fighting the genocidal Pakistan forces, that too, without waiting for any specific instructions from any political quarters, must have inspired a section of the self-exiled League leaders to seek Indian assistance to properly fight Bangladesh’s liberation war. They, therefore, made the request for help to Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi in the first week of April 1971.
The Indian political and military establishments of the time, which had long aspired to dismantle Pakistan, India’s worst perceived enemy in the region, found it ‘an opportunity of a century’ to realise its cherished political and strategic objectives and readily agreed to help the Bangladesh war. And, so they did.
The Indian authorities helped Awami League leadership to install a government-in-exile, provided shelter for some 10 million Bangladeshi refugees, arranged training in arms for the Bangladeshi freedom fighters, assisted in mobilising international public opinion for the Bangladesh war and, finally, particularly after Pakistan had officially declared a war on India on December 3, 1971, Indian troops fought, and even a few hundred died, side by side Bangladeshi freedom fighters, to liberate Bangladesh. Bangladesh emerged an independent state, with the Pakistan forces surrendering arms in Dhaka on December 16, 1971.
A potential good relation turning bitter
GIVEN the said history of Bangladesh’s liberation war, international relations between India and Bangladesh should have been genuinely friendly, for the political and strategic interests of the two countries converged on a common point in 1971, the result of which equally served the purposes of both the countries.
But it did not happen, primarily because of the hegemonic attitude of the mainstream Indian political and intellectual elites.
The Bangladeshi left-wing political forces, who fought the country’s liberation war, were unhappy about the Indian as well as Awami League establishments right in the midst of war, because they faced immense obstructions from both the establishments to receive military training in and procure arms from India, understandably to keep the liberation war process from the Left influence. The Left fought the war primarily on their own, of course, with limited assistances from the Indian Left. Some Bangladeshi sector commanders of the liberation war were unhappy about the Indian military establishments, for the Bangladeshi commanders had specific differences of opinion over the strategy and tactics of the war to liberate the country. Despite all these contentious issues and genuine grievances, the people of Bangladesh, in general, felt indebted to India, particularly to the Indian people, for their contribution to the liberation of Bangladesh.
Nevertheless, the relation started getting sour when, immediately after the Pakistani surrender, the Indian authorities started posting some Indian civil servants to Bangladesh to take over the administration of the newly independent country, made the Bangladesh forces’ commander-in-chief, Colonel Osmani, stay away from the Pakistani surrender ceremony in Dhaka on untenable excuses, kept the Kolkata-based Bangladesh’s government-in-exile from returning to Dhaka for more than a week since the Pakistani surrender, et cetera. Such Indian efforts, as it was understood later, were aimed at projecting Bangladesh’s victory as an Indian one despite the fact that more than a million Bangladeshis, that too, by the most conservative estimate, sacrificed their lives, many more millions became displaced and were harassed and assaulted by the Pakistan forces, and had their property destroyed while the rest suffered multi-dimensional trauma of the war. Moreover, as soon as the war had been over, a section of the mainstream Indian intellectuals started producing a narrative of the Bangladesh war to be an India-Pakistan affair, the same way a section of the Pakistani intellectuals portrays the historical episode of the region. The Pakistanis concerned produce this ahistorical narrative of the historical event to hide their shame of being defeated to, what they used to propagate in the past, the ‘non-marshal race of the timid Bengalis’ while the Indian politico-intellectual industry concerned indulge itself in distorting history to get an upper hand in dealing with Bangladesh. But these false narratives of the Bangladesh war hurt and insulted the nationalist pride of the millions of Bangladeshis who directly and indirectly fought their liberation war and suffered. Such falsification of the history of Bangladesh’s national war of independence on part of India and Pakistan cannot augur well for a friendly relation with India and the normalisation of relation with Pakistan.
There were, of course, some sane people in the Indian government in 1971, who realised pretty well that too much of Indian bragging about Bangladesh’s victory would not be helpful for India and rightly cautioned the over-enthusiastic Indians to refrain from taking ‘much of the credit’ for Bangladesh’s successful war of liberation. Shashanko S Banarjee, a retired Indian diplomat, revealed to a Dhaka-based Bangla daily newspaper in July 2019 that a few days after Bangladesh’s emergence as an independent state, the Indian government had issued a ‘secret circular to its diplomatic missions across the word’, instructing them not to take much credit for Bangladesh’s independence. The circular read: ‘India or Indian people should not take much of the credit for the successful completion of Bangladesh’s struggle for independence, for Bangladesh has sacrificed innumerable lives in her struggle for independence and the war of liberation. This independence therefore is the achievement of the people of Bangladesh.’ (Shashanko S Banarjee’s interview published in the (daily) Bangladesh Pratidin, Dhaka, August 1–5, 2019) The instruction, however, fell on deaf ears of the most members of the Indian elite — political and intellectual. They, rather, continue to assert that Bangladesh was a ‘creation of India’ and, subsequently, most of the present-day Indian youths, misled by the politically customised narratives of history, tend to believe so. The result is obvious: they expect Bangladesh to remain subservient to the Indian political, economic and cultural interests which is unpalatable for the history-conscious sections of the patriotic Bangladeshis!
However, of the ruling-class Indian political and intellectual elites, the attitude of those belonging to the Indian province of West Bengal, appear to have been the worst impediment to forging a mutually respectable as well as friendly relation between the two countries.
It was the people of West Bengal, particularly those of Kolkata, who bore the brunt of the Bangladesh war most, for it was they who had not only hosted Bangladesh’s government-in-exile but also provided shelters for most of some 10 million Bangladeshi refugees, braving multifarious discomforts caused by the refugee population. Bangladeshis, in general, and the Bangladeshi refugees who enjoyed safety from the killer army of Pakistan, in particular, therefore, used to feel, many of them still do, a sense of gratitude towards the people of Kolkata. But a large section of the Kolkata intellectual elite misperceived the political significance of the historic Bangladesh struggle, which, for the first time in South Asia, enabled a language-population, the Bengalis of the East in the present, to establish a ‘nation state’ through a people’s liberation war. That the rulers of an independent Bangladesh politically failed to democratically address the political and cultural concerns of the national minority communities of the country remains a different subject to analyse elsewhere.
Be that as it may, Kolkata’s failure to understand the politico-historical significance of the birth of Bangladesh prompted a section of its intellectual elite to display its arrogant ‘colonialist’/‘orientalist’ attitude towards Bangladesh. For instance, when Bangladesh was run by no less than a towering politician like Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, a Kolkata intellectual wrote in an English-language daily newspaper of India, Amritabazar, in April 1972 that ‘Bangladesh, in its own interest, should give up its obstinate sense of independence, sovereignty and nationalism, and join the Indian union’. The same year, Anandabazar, a Kolkata-based Bangla daily newspaper, referred to the president of Bangladesh as rajyapal, a constitutional position referred to the governor of the Indian provinces. Besides, the same newspaper once complained that Indian prime minister ‘Ms. Indira Gandhi has become more attentive to the [Indian] province called Bangladesh’. Then, again, another Kolkata intellectual mentioned Bangladesh in the weekly Desh magazine as India’s Upa-desh —a vassal state of India. (See Ahmad Safa, Collected Works, Vol III, Hawaladar Prakashoni, Dhaka, 2014, p 270) Mentionably, the day after the Mukti Bahini had liberated Bangladesh’s northern district of Jessore from Pakistani occupation on December 7, 1971, the Anandabazar published the news under a ‘banner heading’ of ‘Jessore Amader’ — ‘Jessore is Ours’ — obviously generating serious concern even among the ministers of Kolkata-based Bangladesh’s government-in-exile. (Abdul Gaffar Chowdhury, Amra Bangladeshi, Na Bangali, Jyotsna Oublishers, Dhaka, 2017[1993], p 17)
The patriotic sections of the Bangladeshi intellectuals have protested, over the years, at such ugly intellectual practices, but of no positive consequence. It is to be mentioned here that a reputed Indian intellectual of Kolkata origin, Ashoke Mitra, noticed that after the independence of Bangladesh, ‘the attitude of the West Bengalis, who came from the East as refugees [during and after the partition of India in 1947], changed as if they had regained their zamindaris in Bangladesh’. (Ashoke Mitra, Apila-Chapila, Ananda Publishers, Kokata, 2018[2003], p 195) Mitra found it dangerous and, therefore, advised the Indian authorities concerned in an article to adopt the ‘policy of sympathetic indifference’ towards Bangladesh, arguing that the ‘Bangladeshis would not kneel and bow their head to us only because we helped to get their independence; it would be good for both of us if we keep a little distance and do not poke our nose too much into their affairs’. (Ibid) Many years later, Mitra recalled that the Indian ‘authorities did not pay heed to the advice’. That the Indian authorities are still reluctant to pay heed to good advice found clear expression even when, in December 2020, Dilip Ghosh, an influential Bharatiya Janta Party politician from India’s West Bengal, publicly referred to Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina as ‘a chief minister’, which is the nomenclature of the head of provincial governments of India and, that too, in the presence of the Sheikh Hasina at the venue.
Evidently, if the rest of India has made a potentially sweet relation with Bangladesh sour, the Kolkata has made it bitter.
Indian collaboration in disfranchising Bangladeshis: an immediate public reaction
WHILE Bangladesh’s government of the Awami League, which has consistently been claiming that the country has developed the best of relations with India over the past decade and a half, the politically conscious sections of the Bangladeshis hardly fail to notice India’s unfriendly actions and inactions towards the interests of Bangladesh. In fact, it is for all to notice that the ‘friendly’ India continues to kill unarmed poor Bangladeshis in the borders in the name of tackling trespasses, deny the lower riparian Bangladesh the just share of the waters of 54 common international rivers, despite receiving many due and undue advantages such as using the river ports and transit facilities for its goods transport from one province to another, through Bangladesh. But the worst of all, Indian political authorities, with the help of their intelligence agencies, have been backing the Awami League, bilaterally and internationally, which has practically been denying the vast majority of the people of Bangladesh a fundamental political right — the right to vote — and, thus, choose their representatives through inclusive, free and fair elections since 2014.
When in 2014, the entire opposition political camp of Bangladesh announced a boycott of general elections in protest against the Awami League’s annulment of the constitutional provision for holding national elections under a non-party caretaker administration, a provision that the League forced the Bangladesh Nationalist Party to incorporate into the state’s constitution in 1996, it was India that visibly arm-twisted the opposition Jatiya Party to reluctantly join the elections. Eventually, for all practical purposes, an authoritarian, one-party government system was instituted in Bangladesh. Then, when the opposition camp agreed to contest the elections in 2018 under Sheikh Hasina’s government, which, along with its Indian friends, assured ‘fair elections’, the election process was manipulated the night before the voting for the League to retain power. Allegation has it that an Indian intelligence agency was directly involved in the night-time manipulation of the election process, conducted by the League’s partisan civil and non-civil administration. Then again, in the wake of a massive popular political movement for inclusive elections under a non-party, interim government, some Western powers, including the United States, came forward and mounted pressure on the incumbents to comply with the public demand for holding ‘inclusive, free and fair elections.’ The League, this time, was exposed to real pressure to comply with the people’s aspirations for exercising their right to franchise freely in an inclusive election in January 2024. But a reluctant Awami League sought Indian help to continue with the state power. While visiting Delhi in August 2023, Bangladesh’s then foreign affairs minister, Abdul Momen, admittedly urged the Indian government ‘to do whatever is needed to keep Hasina in power.’ And again, India stood by the authoritarian League government and, thus, disfranchised the people of Bangladesh.
The League’s general secretary, Obaidul Quader, did not even care to hide the Indian illegitimate support for the League. He said at a public rally in October 2023 that ‘India facilitated an underhand negotiation between the United States and the Bangladesh government’ and assured the party activists that there would be no ‘US visa restrictions and/or sanctions’ against, what the United States had declared earlier, ‘those responsible for obstructing the process of a participatory, free and fair election’. This is what exactly had happened.
This is under this circumstance that a section of the young patriotic Bangladeshi netizens has launched the ‘boycott Indian products’ movement, which has started gaining momentum in society. There is no denying that in this age of globalisation, most countries, if not all, are dependent on products of other countries. Bangladesh, or even India, cannot be an exception. Nevertheless, the ‘boycott Indian products’ campaign, which is still a growing ‘social movement’, is likely to be picked up by a section of the opposition political parties victimised by the India’s Bangladesh policy, has great potential to become a massive ‘nationalist’ movement against India. Like the campaigners of the movement, most democratically-oriented Bangladeshis have no reason not to understand that they should first resort to a decisive movement against the League incumbents to establish the democratic rights of the citizens, including their right to franchise. However, over the past one and a half decades, they have experienced the ferocity of the coercive forces of an autocratic state machinery controlled by the League operatives. While they would definitely prepare for an ultimate political struggle, for now, they have targeted India, apparently the immediate collaborator of an autocratic government in Bangladesh, because the coercive forces of the incumbents can neither control the democratically-oriented patriotic minds nor force the citizens to choose the products that they would buy.
Under the circumstance, the short-sighted Indian policy-makers who have made the whole India appear an enemy existence in the eyes of most Bangladeshis should take a pause, sit up and rethink their Bangladesh policy for the interests of both the countries. The policy-makers in Delhi would do better if they remembered what Ashoke Mitra said that ‘Bangladeshis would not [ultimately] kneel and bow their head to us only because we helped to get their independence.’ The people of Bangladesh, after all, did not fightout independence from Pakistan to be subservient to India.
Nurul Kabir is editor of New Age.
On ‘boycott Indian products’ campaign
Nurul Kabir | Published: 00:00, Mar 26,2024
WHILE Bangladesh is set to celebrate the 53rd anniversary of national independence, India that helped Bangladeshis achieve the independence through a bloodied war against the erstwhile occupation forces of Pakistan appears to have emerged as a political villain in the eyes of most Bangladeshis because of Delhi’s repeated interference with Bangladesh politics, resulting particularly in disfranchising the people of Bangladesh since the general elections held in 2008.
The recently launched ‘boycott Indian products’ movement, initiated and nurtured by a cross section of young Bangladeshi netizens at home and abroad, definitely in reaction to India’s hegemonic attitude towards Bangladesh, has visibly started to gain social momentum in the country, posing a significant threat to the Indian economy. India, after all, officially exports to Bangladesh its products worth as much as $13 billion every year while its unofficial exports through the long, porous border remain more than double the amount.
The emerging situation, however, might help the Indian establishments concerned to start some soul-searching about its hegemonic attitude, political and otherwise, towards Bangladesh.
It should have been all-out friendly
BANGLADESH’S war of independence began with the then West Pakistani rulers refusing to honour the electoral mandate to hand over power to the East-based Awami League that unambiguously won Pakistan’s first ever general elections held in late 1970 and launching a genocide against unarmed people of the East, that too, at the end of an apparently negotiated settlement reached between the feuding East and the West in several weeks of dialogue in February and March 1971. The genocidal attack of the West spontaneously transformed the Awami League’s political scheme of the East’s ‘full autonomy’ within the framework of a united Pakistan into, first, the people’s spontaneous war of resistance and, then, an organised war of national independence, albeit with the help of Indian political establishments of the day.
Given the League’s political scheme at the time, it had not organised military preparation to fight a war of independence on its own and, therefore, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, a globally known towering political personality those days, preferred to court arrest by the Pakistani authorities while the rest of the League leadership crossed over to neighbouring India, obviously, to save life and try to launch an organised war of national liberation from exile.
The people of Bangladesh, a section of politically conscious civilian youths and a section of Bengali military and paramilitary officers and soldiers, to be precise, who had already started fighting the genocidal Pakistan forces, that too, without waiting for any specific instructions from any political quarters, must have inspired a section of the self-exiled League leaders to seek Indian assistance to properly fight Bangladesh’s liberation war. They, therefore, made the request for help to Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi in the first week of April 1971.
The Indian political and military establishments of the time, which had long aspired to dismantle Pakistan, India’s worst perceived enemy in the region, found it ‘an opportunity of a century’ to realise its cherished political and strategic objectives and readily agreed to help the Bangladesh war. And, so they did.
The Indian authorities helped Awami League leadership to install a government-in-exile, provided shelter for some 10 million Bangladeshi refugees, arranged training in arms for the Bangladeshi freedom fighters, assisted in mobilising international public opinion for the Bangladesh war and, finally, particularly after Pakistan had officially declared a war on India on December 3, 1971, Indian troops fought, and even a few hundred died, side by side Bangladeshi freedom fighters, to liberate Bangladesh. Bangladesh emerged an independent state, with the Pakistan forces surrendering arms in Dhaka on December 16, 1971.
A potential good relation turning bitter
GIVEN the said history of Bangladesh’s liberation war, international relations between India and Bangladesh should have been genuinely friendly, for the political and strategic interests of the two countries converged on a common point in 1971, the result of which equally served the purposes of both the countries.
But it did not happen, primarily because of the hegemonic attitude of the mainstream Indian political and intellectual elites.
The Bangladeshi left-wing political forces, who fought the country’s liberation war, were unhappy about the Indian as well as Awami League establishments right in the midst of war, because they faced immense obstructions from both the establishments to receive military training in and procure arms from India, understandably to keep the liberation war process from the Left influence. The Left fought the war primarily on their own, of course, with limited assistances from the Indian Left. Some Bangladeshi sector commanders of the liberation war were unhappy about the Indian military establishments, for the Bangladeshi commanders had specific differences of opinion over the strategy and tactics of the war to liberate the country. Despite all these contentious issues and genuine grievances, the people of Bangladesh, in general, felt indebted to India, particularly to the Indian people, for their contribution to the liberation of Bangladesh.
Nevertheless, the relation started getting sour when, immediately after the Pakistani surrender, the Indian authorities started posting some Indian civil servants to Bangladesh to take over the administration of the newly independent country, made the Bangladesh forces’ commander-in-chief, Colonel Osmani, stay away from the Pakistani surrender ceremony in Dhaka on untenable excuses, kept the Kolkata-based Bangladesh’s government-in-exile from returning to Dhaka for more than a week since the Pakistani surrender, et cetera. Such Indian efforts, as it was understood later, were aimed at projecting Bangladesh’s victory as an Indian one despite the fact that more than a million Bangladeshis, that too, by the most conservative estimate, sacrificed their lives, many more millions became displaced and were harassed and assaulted by the Pakistan forces, and had their property destroyed while the rest suffered multi-dimensional trauma of the war. Moreover, as soon as the war had been over, a section of the mainstream Indian intellectuals started producing a narrative of the Bangladesh war to be an India-Pakistan affair, the same way a section of the Pakistani intellectuals portrays the historical episode of the region. The Pakistanis concerned produce this ahistorical narrative of the historical event to hide their shame of being defeated to, what they used to propagate in the past, the ‘non-marshal race of the timid Bengalis’ while the Indian politico-intellectual industry concerned indulge itself in distorting history to get an upper hand in dealing with Bangladesh. But these false narratives of the Bangladesh war hurt and insulted the nationalist pride of the millions of Bangladeshis who directly and indirectly fought their liberation war and suffered. Such falsification of the history of Bangladesh’s national war of independence on part of India and Pakistan cannot augur well for a friendly relation with India and the normalisation of relation with Pakistan.
There were, of course, some sane people in the Indian government in 1971, who realised pretty well that too much of Indian bragging about Bangladesh’s victory would not be helpful for India and rightly cautioned the over-enthusiastic Indians to refrain from taking ‘much of the credit’ for Bangladesh’s successful war of liberation. Shashanko S Banarjee, a retired Indian diplomat, revealed to a Dhaka-based Bangla daily newspaper in July 2019 that a few days after Bangladesh’s emergence as an independent state, the Indian government had issued a ‘secret circular to its diplomatic missions across the word’, instructing them not to take much credit for Bangladesh’s independence. The circular read: ‘India or Indian people should not take much of the credit for the successful completion of Bangladesh’s struggle for independence, for Bangladesh has sacrificed innumerable lives in her struggle for independence and the war of liberation. This independence therefore is the achievement of the people of Bangladesh.’ (Shashanko S Banarjee’s interview published in the (daily) Bangladesh Pratidin, Dhaka, August 1–5, 2019) The instruction, however, fell on deaf ears of the most members of the Indian elite — political and intellectual. They, rather, continue to assert that Bangladesh was a ‘creation of India’ and, subsequently, most of the present-day Indian youths, misled by the politically customised narratives of history, tend to believe so. The result is obvious: they expect Bangladesh to remain subservient to the Indian political, economic and cultural interests which is unpalatable for the history-conscious sections of the patriotic Bangladeshis!
However, of the ruling-class Indian political and intellectual elites, the attitude of those belonging to the Indian province of West Bengal, appear to have been the worst impediment to forging a mutually respectable as well as friendly relation between the two countries.
It was the people of West Bengal, particularly those of Kolkata, who bore the brunt of the Bangladesh war most, for it was they who had not only hosted Bangladesh’s government-in-exile but also provided shelters for most of some 10 million Bangladeshi refugees, braving multifarious discomforts caused by the refugee population. Bangladeshis, in general, and the Bangladeshi refugees who enjoyed safety from the killer army of Pakistan, in particular, therefore, used to feel, many of them still do, a sense of gratitude towards the people of Kolkata. But a large section of the Kolkata intellectual elite misperceived the political significance of the historic Bangladesh struggle, which, for the first time in South Asia, enabled a language-population, the Bengalis of the East in the present, to establish a ‘nation state’ through a people’s liberation war. That the rulers of an independent Bangladesh politically failed to democratically address the political and cultural concerns of the national minority communities of the country remains a different subject to analyse elsewhere.
Be that as it may, Kolkata’s failure to understand the politico-historical significance of the birth of Bangladesh prompted a section of its intellectual elite to display its arrogant ‘colonialist’/‘orientalist’ attitude towards Bangladesh. For instance, when Bangladesh was run by no less than a towering politician like Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, a Kolkata intellectual wrote in an English-language daily newspaper of India, Amritabazar, in April 1972 that ‘Bangladesh, in its own interest, should give up its obstinate sense of independence, sovereignty and nationalism, and join the Indian union’. The same year, Anandabazar, a Kolkata-based Bangla daily newspaper, referred to the president of Bangladesh as rajyapal, a constitutional position referred to the governor of the Indian provinces. Besides, the same newspaper once complained that Indian prime minister ‘Ms. Indira Gandhi has become more attentive to the [Indian] province called Bangladesh’. Then, again, another Kolkata intellectual mentioned Bangladesh in the weekly Desh magazine as India’s Upa-desh —a vassal state of India. (See Ahmad Safa, Collected Works, Vol III, Hawaladar Prakashoni, Dhaka, 2014, p 270) Mentionably, the day after the Mukti Bahini had liberated Bangladesh’s northern district of Jessore from Pakistani occupation on December 7, 1971, the Anandabazar published the news under a ‘banner heading’ of ‘Jessore Amader’ — ‘Jessore is Ours’ — obviously generating serious concern even among the ministers of Kolkata-based Bangladesh’s government-in-exile. (Abdul Gaffar Chowdhury, Amra Bangladeshi, Na Bangali, Jyotsna Oublishers, Dhaka, 2017[1993], p 17)
The patriotic sections of the Bangladeshi intellectuals have protested, over the years, at such ugly intellectual practices, but of no positive consequence. It is to be mentioned here that a reputed Indian intellectual of Kolkata origin, Ashoke Mitra, noticed that after the independence of Bangladesh, ‘the attitude of the West Bengalis, who came from the East as refugees [during and after the partition of India in 1947], changed as if they had regained their zamindaris in Bangladesh’. (Ashoke Mitra, Apila-Chapila, Ananda Publishers, Kokata, 2018[2003], p 195) Mitra found it dangerous and, therefore, advised the Indian authorities concerned in an article to adopt the ‘policy of sympathetic indifference’ towards Bangladesh, arguing that the ‘Bangladeshis would not kneel and bow their head to us only because we helped to get their independence; it would be good for both of us if we keep a little distance and do not poke our nose too much into their affairs’. (Ibid) Many years later, Mitra recalled that the Indian ‘authorities did not pay heed to the advice’. That the Indian authorities are still reluctant to pay heed to good advice found clear expression even when, in December 2020, Dilip Ghosh, an influential Bharatiya Janta Party politician from India’s West Bengal, publicly referred to Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina as ‘a chief minister’, which is the nomenclature of the head of provincial governments of India and, that too, in the presence of the Sheikh Hasina at the venue.
Evidently, if the rest of India has made a potentially sweet relation with Bangladesh sour, the Kolkata has made it bitter.
Indian collaboration in disfranchising Bangladeshis: an immediate public reaction
WHILE Bangladesh’s government of the Awami League, which has consistently been claiming that the country has developed the best of relations with India over the past decade and a half, the politically conscious sections of the Bangladeshis hardly fail to notice India’s unfriendly actions and inactions towards the interests of Bangladesh. In fact, it is for all to notice that the ‘friendly’ India continues to kill unarmed poor Bangladeshis in the borders in the name of tackling trespasses, deny the lower riparian Bangladesh the just share of the waters of 54 common international rivers, despite receiving many due and undue advantages such as using the river ports and transit facilities for its goods transport from one province to another, through Bangladesh. But the worst of all, Indian political authorities, with the help of their intelligence agencies, have been backing the Awami League, bilaterally and internationally, which has practically been denying the vast majority of the people of Bangladesh a fundamental political right — the right to vote — and, thus, choose their representatives through inclusive, free and fair elections since 2014.
When in 2014, the entire opposition political camp of Bangladesh announced a boycott of general elections in protest against the Awami League’s annulment of the constitutional provision for holding national elections under a non-party caretaker administration, a provision that the League forced the Bangladesh Nationalist Party to incorporate into the state’s constitution in 1996, it was India that visibly arm-twisted the opposition Jatiya Party to reluctantly join the elections. Eventually, for all practical purposes, an authoritarian, one-party government system was instituted in Bangladesh. Then, when the opposition camp agreed to contest the elections in 2018 under Sheikh Hasina’s government, which, along with its Indian friends, assured ‘fair elections’, the election process was manipulated the night before the voting for the League to retain power. Allegation has it that an Indian intelligence agency was directly involved in the night-time manipulation of the election process, conducted by the League’s partisan civil and non-civil administration. Then again, in the wake of a massive popular political movement for inclusive elections under a non-party, interim government, some Western powers, including the United States, came forward and mounted pressure on the incumbents to comply with the public demand for holding ‘inclusive, free and fair elections.’ The League, this time, was exposed to real pressure to comply with the people’s aspirations for exercising their right to franchise freely in an inclusive election in January 2024. But a reluctant Awami League sought Indian help to continue with the state power. While visiting Delhi in August 2023, Bangladesh’s then foreign affairs minister, Abdul Momen, admittedly urged the Indian government ‘to do whatever is needed to keep Hasina in power.’ And again, India stood by the authoritarian League government and, thus, disfranchised the people of Bangladesh.
The League’s general secretary, Obaidul Quader, did not even care to hide the Indian illegitimate support for the League. He said at a public rally in October 2023 that ‘India facilitated an underhand negotiation between the United States and the Bangladesh government’ and assured the party activists that there would be no ‘US visa restrictions and/or sanctions’ against, what the United States had declared earlier, ‘those responsible for obstructing the process of a participatory, free and fair election’. This is what exactly had happened.
This is under this circumstance that a section of the young patriotic Bangladeshi netizens has launched the ‘boycott Indian products’ movement, which has started gaining momentum in society. There is no denying that in this age of globalisation, most countries, if not all, are dependent on products of other countries. Bangladesh, or even India, cannot be an exception. Nevertheless, the ‘boycott Indian products’ campaign, which is still a growing ‘social movement’, is likely to be picked up by a section of the opposition political parties victimised by the India’s Bangladesh policy, has great potential to become a massive ‘nationalist’ movement against India. Like the campaigners of the movement, most democratically-oriented Bangladeshis have no reason not to understand that they should first resort to a decisive movement against the League incumbents to establish the democratic rights of the citizens, including their right to franchise. However, over the past one and a half decades, they have experienced the ferocity of the coercive forces of an autocratic state machinery controlled by the League operatives. While they would definitely prepare for an ultimate political struggle, for now, they have targeted India, apparently the immediate collaborator of an autocratic government in Bangladesh, because the coercive forces of the incumbents can neither control the democratically-oriented patriotic minds nor force the citizens to choose the products that they would buy.
Under the circumstance, the short-sighted Indian policy-makers who have made the whole India appear an enemy existence in the eyes of most Bangladeshis should take a pause, sit up and rethink their Bangladesh policy for the interests of both the countries. The policy-makers in Delhi would do better if they remembered what Ashoke Mitra said that ‘Bangladeshis would not [ultimately] kneel and bow their head to us only because we helped to get their independence.’ The people of Bangladesh, after all, did not fightout independence from Pakistan to be subservient to India.
Nurul Kabir is editor of New Age.
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