Mumbai: It is unlikely that New Delhi will go overboard to give an asylum to Sheikh Hasina, who has made an untidy exit from Bangladesh, having comprehensively miscalculated her political fortunes. While it is not clear how much credit goes to New Delhi to have encouraged such an optimistic assessment on the part of Sheikh Hasina, it is presumable that at 76, she is somewhat past her shelf life politically, and the nascent developments have foreclosed her options in Dhaka. In other words, New Delhi would be remarkably naive to entertain thoughts of ever seeing her back in the saddle again.
For now, New Delhi would be well advised to live down what is seen as brazen mollycoddling of a politician who had clearly lost touch with her electorate. Neither Prime Minister Modi, who has been extraordinarily warm and welcoming where Hasina is concerned, nor his national security adviser, Ajit Doval, who is a shade older than Hasina, are poster boys in Bangladesh at the moment. Selfie points with Modi are noticeably absent in that country. With her exit, New Delhi's strategic footprint in its own neighbourhood will fit a shoe several sizes smaller. Our options in Bangladesh now stand substantially diminished.
Reports suggest that Hasina could be on her way to London. That may well be true, as reports say she was accompanied by her younger sister, Sheikh Rehana Siddique, who has her own family in the UK and whose daughter has ties to the Labour Party. Sheikh Rehana’s daughter Tulip Siddique is a member of the British Parliament; she happens to be the Labour Party MP for Hampstead and Highgate and is the Economic Secretary to the Treasury and City Minister. It wouldn't be out of place for Hasina to stay with her only daughter, Saima Wazed, in New Delhi, as well for a while.
Saima is the Regional Director for the WHO South East Asia region, the UN health body. She was pictured most recently with her mother when they both attended Prime Minister Modi's swearing-in.
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Hasina could also choose to go to the US, which has called out the elections in Bangladesh, which brought Hasina back into power, as neither free nor fair. For Hasina's son, a self-declared adviser to Sheikh Hasina, Sajeeb Ahmed Wazed Joy, is a businessman of sorts in there. Curiously, sources say that the newly appointed army chief, who now holds the reins in Bangladesh, is in some way related to Hasina as well -- a son of a cousin-in-law or something like that.
The interim situation in Bangladesh is uncertain, at best. We could see the jostling of a non-military dispensation, with elements from the opposition as well as the Jamaat, and a sprinkling of representation from the Dhaka University political laboratory. The President, an Awami League man, isn't likely to throw a spanner in the works. The focus will be on whether the arson and the looting abates in India’s strategic neighbourhood.
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