‘What’s happening in Canada?’: clashes between Hindus and Sikhs spark fears of growing divisions


Misinformation drives tensions in Ontario’s south Asian community amid rise of Hindu nationalism


Olivia Bowden in Brampton

THE GUARDIAN

Sun 17 Nov 2024 

The Hindu Sabha Mandir temple in the Canadian city of Brampton lies beside a busy road in a suburb where many homes are still strung with lights left over from Diwali. Standing over the parking lot, a 17-meter-tall statue of the monkey god Lord Hanuman gazes out over the traffic as worshippers come and go.

A couple of minutes down the road, the Gurdwara Dasmesh Darbar Sikh temple sits near a strip mall with sari shops, Indian restaurants and other businesses indicative of the city’s large south Asian population.


Save for a few security guards at the Hindu temple, it would be hard to tell that this quiet residential neighbourhood was recently the site of violent clashes between Sikh activists and nationalist counterprotesters.

The confrontation drew condemnation from the city’s mayor, the premier of Ontario and Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau – and also from India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, who described the incident as an attack on the Hindu temple.

View image in fullscreenThe Hindu Sabha Mandir temple in Brampton, Ontario. Photograph: Nick Lachance/Toronto Star/Getty Images

So far, local police have made five arrests and say more may come.

But as the dust settles, members of the local community say they fear further violence between Sikh separatist activists and Modi supporters, some of whom espouse Hindu nationalist ideologies.

Videos of the overnight clashes on 3 November show men throwing bricks, kicking cars and striking each other with sticks or flagpoles – including some flying the Indian tricolour and others the bright yellow emblem adopted by advocates of an independent Sikh homeland known as Khalistan.

The protests were prompted by a visit to the temple by Indian government officials who have been holding consular sessions at places of worship across Ontario, including Sikh temples.

The 4 November visit came at a moment of high tension, soon after Canadian police and Trudeau’s government alleged that Modi’s government had orchestrated a campaign of violence and intimidation against Sikh activists in exile.

Inderjeet Singh Gosal, a leader of Sikhs for Justice (SFJ) who helped organize the demonstration, said the protest was specifically against the Indian government, not the Hindu religion, and that he had liaised with police to ensure it would not disrupt worship.


Gosal was a close associate of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, another SFJ leader and Khalistan advocate whose 2023 assassination Canadian officials have linked to Indian diplomats and consular staff.

The Khalistan movement is banned in India, where officials describe Sikh separatists as “terrorists” and a threat to national security.

View image in fullscreenSikh demonstrators outside the Indian consulate in Toronto on 25 September 2023, after the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar.

 Photograph: Cole Burston/AFP/Getty Images

Gosal claimed that it was pro-Modi counterprotesters who instigated the violence, alleging that one of them had looked him in the face and told him in Hindi: “We’re going to kill you.”

“I went forward to him and said, ‘Look, I’m sorry you feel that way.’ But before I could say anything they moved up and punched [me],” he said.

Peel regional police have since charged Gosal with assault with a weapon; he accepts he has been charged and has not yet entered a plea.

The clashes escalated and later that night crowds waving Indian flags blocked traffic outside the temple. Video posted online shows a man with a megaphone drawing cheers from the group as he called for the Indian army to “storm” Sikh temples in Canada, which he says are “promoting terrorism”.

Peel police confirmed the man had been charged with public incitement of hatred.

Jaskaran Sandhu, a board member of the World Sikh Organization advocacy group, said such scenes were unprecedented in Canada, home to the largest Sikh population outside India.
This type of Hindu nationalist rhetoric is very normal in India, but not in Canada. That’s very disturbingJaskaran Sandhu of the World Sikh Organization


“This type of Hindu nationalist rhetoric is very normal in India, where minorities are targeted in this manner, but not in Canada. That’s very disturbing,” he said.

Sandhu said that the unrest did not reflect tensions between Sikhs and Hindus, who have historically lived alongside each other in Brampton.

“What’s different here is you have violent, pro-India, Hindu nationalist actors in this country,” he said.

Paritosh Kumar, an adjunct assistant professor of political science at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, said Hindu nationalists around the world have been emboldened by Modi’s government – and that this has become an increasing concern in Canada.

But he also said the ideology was attractive to some members of the diaspora who encountered racism in western countries.

Kumar said academics in Canada have previously been harassed after denouncing Hindu nationalism, but the recent violence marked a serious escalation.

“That seems like a very dangerous transition that is taking place,” he said.

Modi’s framing of the protest as an attack on a Hindu temple by Sikhs may also further inflame the situation, he said.

“It’s a trend that will probably manifest in more street violence,” Kumar said.
View image in fullscreenA Sikh protester holds up an effigy of the Indian prime minister outside the Indian consulate in Vancouver, British Columbia, on 18 October. Photograph: Jennifer Gauthier/Reuters

That worries Chinnaiah Jangam, an associate professor of history at Ottawa’s Carleton University who focuses on Dalit peoples, considered the lowest rung of India’s caste system.


Jangam is a practicing Hindu and identifies as Dalit. After the protests in Brampton, relatives in India called him to see if he was safe – an indication of how successful Modi’s supporters had been in casting the protests as an attack on Hindus.

“They are playing into this idea of victimhood. It’s a false narrative … and this is a part of a larger narrative to discredit [the Canadian government],” Jangam said.

Brampton city councillor Gurpartap Singh Toor said misinformation published in the Indian media or shared on WhatsApp had framed the unrest as a violent attack on the Hindu temple, fanning fear and hatred in both Canada and India.

“It’s sad to see it happening here in our city. And then to pitch it as the Sikh community versus the Hindu community – it’s just a gross injustice,” he said.

Roopnauth Sharma, the pandit at the Ram Mandir Hindu temple in the nearby city of Mississauga, said the unrest in Brampton did not reflect any broader sectarian tensions.

“This is not a Hindu-Sikh issue … It is a group of people who have a certain opinion, and they’re allowed to [express it],” he said.

Sharma, who is also the president of the Hindu Federation, said he had been working with local officials to create restrictions on demonstrations near places of worship.

“We want to make sure people still have the right to protest … but we want to make sure there’s a safe distance,” he said.

View image in fullscreenPandit Vasudev Joshi at the Hindu Sabha Mandir temple in Brampton, Ontario. 

Photograph: Nick Lachance/Toronto Star/Getty Images

Leaders of the Hindu Sabha Mandir temple did not respond to a request for comment, but Vasudev Joshi, a pandit at the temple, told the Toronto Star that the protest should have been held outside the Indian consulate.

Such sentiments were echoed by political leaders: Brampton’s mayor, Patrick Brown, pushed for a bylaw that would ban protests at places of worship, while Trudeau said last week that acts of violence at the temple were “unacceptable”.

But Sandhu said such statements miss the point. “Our leaders are so quick to speak about mob violence … but have chosen to be absolutely silent on this India violence directed at the Canadian Sikh community,” he said.

“Are the visuals not enough for you to realize what’s happening in Canada?”

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Hinduism Is Fascism

For these Hindu Americans, a pivot from the Democratic Party was long overdue

(RNS) — In the Trump coalition, they see a burgeoning multiracial religious right that has ample space for Hindu Americans.

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump listens as Vivek Ramaswamy speaks during a campaign rally at Thomas & Mack Center, Thursday, Oct. 24, 2024, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher)

Richa Karmarkar
November 12, 2024

(RNS) — Days after Donald Trump’s sweeping presidential win, reactions around the country ranged from surprise and sadness to, in Texan Burt Thakur’s case, relief.

“What a moment,” he told RNS. “The biggest comeback in political history, I would say, for any world leader in modern times.”

A Republican congressional hopeful who ran in Frisco, Texas, under the slogan “one nation under God, not one nation under government,” Thakur — a former Navy sailor, nuclear power plant worker and immigrant from India — has much in common with the average faith-based Trump voter. Though Thakur lost his March primary in northeast Texas, “arguably the most evangelical part” of the state, Thakur said he had “never felt more welcomed” than when he campaigned as a conservative in his district

For so long, says Thakur, Hindu Americans had to wait their turn to enter the political space as anything other than a Democrat. But now, with openly Hindu Republican figures like Vivek Ramaswamy, Tulsi Gabbard and even Usha Chilukuri Vance, the wife of Vice President-elect JD Vance, Thakur sees a burgeoning multiracial religious right that has ample space for Hindu Americans.

“If we want to build a bridge, if we want the Vivek Ramaswamys of the world to get into office, if we want our voice heard, these groups are waiting for us,” said Thakur, who added he has often been “one of the only brown faces in the room” at Republican-led events. “We just have to show up.”

Political observers have noted the uptick in Trump-supporting Americans from various ethnic and immigrant backgrounds, especially Latinos and Asians, as the marker of a changing America. The Democratic Party has too often relied on the support of Indian Americans, says author Avatans Kumar, who, like many in his immigrant cohort, initially leaned to the left.

“Indians, Hindus specifically, are very deeply religious people,” said Kumar, who moved to Chicago for a Ph.D. in linguistics in 1994. “And progressivism is not alien to us. It comes to us because we are Hindus — very progressive, liberal minded. But there’s a limit to it. So I think we may have, you know, broke that limit for many of us.”

Notions of DEI, Critical Race Theory and affirmative action led Kumar to question the state of the meritocracy he once valued in his chosen country. For him, the breaking point came, as it did for many Hindus, in 2023 with a senate bill in California. Bill 403, supported by many Democrats, would have codified caste as a protected category under existing anti-discrimination laws. Governor Gavin Newsom ultimately vetoed the bill after fierce opposition from prominent Hindu advocates who argued it misrepresented the Hindu faith as intrinsically caste-based.

RELATED: As caste bill meets defeat, Hindu Americans on both sides make their voices heard

Trump’s “America First” views, where ideology is more important than identity, greatly appealed to Kumar.

“I don’t think identity should be a big factor,” he said. “You are who you are, and our dharma tells us to be loyal to our nation, the country where we live. You know, we made this country home, and we will be very loyal. But also, India is our spiritual homeland, that’s the connection we have.”

In a pre-election 2020 survey, 72% of registered Indian American voters said they planned to support Biden, a share that fell to 61% percent for Kamala Harris in the month before the 2024 election — while Trump support went from 22% to 32%, according to the Indian American Attitudes Survey conducted before both elections.

President Joe Biden’s administration of “mostly activist ideologues,” said Kumar, did little to support a diplomatic relationship with India. In contrast with liberals’ criticism of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rule, and the occasionally violent Hindu nationalism of his Bharatiya Janata Party, Trump has instead publicly shown his great appreciation and admiration for the leader of the world’s largest democracy.

“We will also protect Hindu Americans against the anti-religion agenda of the radical left,” posted Trump on Diwali. “Under my administration, we will also strengthen our great partnership with India and my good friend, Prime Minister Modi.”

The majority of Indian Americans either approve of or have no opinion on Modi’s performance as prime minister, and most value a strong partnership between India and the U.S., according to a 2023 survey by Pew Research Center.

But Trump’s foreign policy is only a small piece of the puzzle, according to D.C. native Akshar Patel. Increased inflation and pathways to legal immigration, the latter of which is especially relevant to the majority-immigrant population with a decadeslong backlog for citizenship, were the issues strong enough to sway otherwise progressive-minded Hindus like himself into a Trump vote.

“Diversity, tolerance, pluralism, things like that: those are Hindu ideals,” said Patel, who in 2018 founded the independent news outlet The Emissary, which discusses Indian and American history and politics. “On the flip side, though, ideas around God, family and natural patriotism, you could say those are also Hindu values.”

But Patel warns against characterizing the multi-religious coalition as a “pan-Republican phenomenon,” instead calling it a distinctly “Trumpian” one. He noted the backlash over Harmeet Dhillon, a practicing Sikh, reciting a prayer to Waheguru (the Sikh name for God) at the Republican National Convention, with some calling it “blasphemous” and “anti-Christian.”

“I think that is a real part of the Republican Party, which I guess Hindus need to be cognizant of, and keep one eyebrow up,” Patel said.

Srilekha Reddy Palle, a board member of the nonpartisan American Hindu Coalition, has been a vocal supporter of Trump throughout the 2024 campaign season. Some of her colleagues were “instrumental,” she said, in getting Trump to mention the violence against Hindus in Bangladesh in his October X post. “Kamala and Joe have ignored Hindus across the world and in America,” added the post.

But her support for Trump goes beyond “superficial” identity-based lines, says Palle, who ran for county supervisor in her home state of Virginia in 2019. “I just want us to be at a point where anyone can stand on the stage,” she said, noting how in local elections in her state candidates still feel a need to emphasize their Christian faith.

“That kind of thing should go away from America,” she added. “That’s what I call religious freedom. Religious tolerance alone is not religious freedom. It just means that you practice whatever you want, but you should be agnostic when it comes to running, when you come into the public eye.”

On either side of the American political spectrum, many Hindus like Reddy feel pride in the influx of Indians in lawmaking positions, like the six Congress members elected just this cycle, or Hindus like Ramaswamy, Gabbard and Kash Patel — who are all expected to have a role in Trump’s government.

The goal for AHC, she says, is to move the community away from opening wallets and photo ops, and towards getting more like-minded people into leadership positions.

For Indu Viswanathan, director of education for the Hindu University of America, “there’s nothing more Hindu than viewpoint diversity,” or the ability to empathize and understand other perspectives, including those of her more right-leaning colleagues. The former public school teacher says too many in the Indian American community, among the wealthiest and most educated ethnic group in the nation, live in their enclaves and are not exposed to the reality of mainstream America.

“This is where the culture wars, and a lot of social justice has done us a disservice, because in the name of being inclusive, it’s actually created a lot of more isolating categorization of people,” she said. “It’s really easy to get fired up, and it’s really easy to feel like you’re drowning.”

But Viswanathan sees Trump, with his felony convictions, as “not at all aligned with dharmic values,” and is especially cautious of the alignments some Hindus are making with an increasingly nationalist form of Christianity in a nation that has historically misrepresented or even denigrated ritualistic forms of the religion.

“Your everyday American is actually really open minded,” she said. “So we don’t need to make ourselves fit in that way. We can actually be really authentic in our representations and expressions and understandings of the world. Don’t try to dilute or make your sort of experience of Hinduism digestible to others,” she said.

“The more diversity of expression that we see, not just in politicians, but in media and entertainment, in all of these different spaces, the richer our country is, the richer the representation of Hinduism is. And I think we’re all better off for it.”

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Hinduism Is Fascism

Diwali brings light to Unitarian Universalist congregation

BETHESDA, Md. (RNS) — Diwali's transcendent message of good over evil comes at the perfect time, say Unitarian Universalist congregants, who celebrated the festival of lights in the DC area just days before a critical presidential election.

Alexandra Dass performs a Bharatnatyam dance to help start the evening’s festivities on Sunday, Nov. 3, 2024, at Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church in Bethesda, Maryland. 

RNS photo by Richa Karmarkar

Richa Karmarkar
November 4, 2024

BETHESDA, Md. (RNS) — As he stood at the pulpit on Sunday, the final day of Diwali (Nov. 3), the Rev. Abhi Janamanchi addressed his congregation in the words of one of the oldest Sanskrit mantras, the Gayatri Mantra, said to illuminate and guide the mind toward truth and righteousness.

“Om Shanti, Shanti, Shanti (peace, peace, peace),” chanted the group of more than 100 worshippers in response, their heads bowed. “May we carry forward the light, the strength and the resolve of this sacred celebration,” added Janamanchi, an immigrant from India who describes himself as a “Hindu UU.”

Diwali marks the new year in some traditions, an “opportunity to begin anew, similar to Rosh Hashanah,” said Janamanchi, who pulls tenets from all faith traditions in his sermons. “We say Unitarian Universalism is many windows, one light. While Diwali does have Hindu origins, it transcends a religious perspective. There is a universality in it and a unity, not conformity. It is a unity that is centered in diversity, in our differences.”

Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church, established in 1951 in this suburb on the northern edge of the nation’s capital, was celebrating the Hindu festival of lights in partnership with Hindus for Human Rights, a progressive advocacy organization, adding a call to action to go with the holiday’s traditional dance, food, song and fireworks.

“We are living in critical, troubling and troubled times, and there is a need for us to be coming together in finding ways in which we can recommit ourselves to the work that we are charged with,” said the minister, “to rise up against injustice, to rise up against oppression and to rise up against authoritarianism.”

Rev. Abhi Janamanchi speaks to the gathered congregation on Sunday, Nov. 3, 2024, at Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church in Bethesda, Maryland. RNS photo by Richa Karmarkar
A large crowd filled in Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church for their annual Diwali celebrations on Sunday, Nov. 3, 2024, in Bethesda, Maryland. RNS photo by Richa Karmarkar
Lakshmi Swaminathan is a dance teacher and joined in for the annual Diwali celebrations on Sunday, Nov. 3, 2024, at Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church in Bethesda, Maryland. RNS photo by Richa Karmarkar

The line of oil lamps that many Hindus, Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists use to light their homes and temples, said Janamanchi, represent the divine light of truth meant to “guide us through the darkest of times,” he said, including the looming American presidential election. “My faith enjoins me to speak to the moral issues we are confronted with.”

Pranay Somayajula, organizing and advocacy director for Hindus for Human Rights, told the congregation in his address that rather than treat Diwali as an “abstract or detached celebration,” it is important to remember that the ancient holiday’s lessons apply while “we are still grounded here in the real world,” and against the backdrop of injustice across the globe.

“If we are talking about this being a festival of good triumphing over evil, and knowledge over ignorance, and truth over falsehood, that actually has to mean something in terms of how we carry that spirit forward after today, in the way we engage with the world, whatever that looks like for each of us,” said Somayajula.
RELATED: The mashup holiday ‘Diwaloween’ celebrates light as the year turns dark

Celebrated across the worldwide Indian diaspora over a span of five days, Diwali’s significance varies from region to region. Somayajula said Sunday’s event demonstrated the vast diversity of stories told on Diwali, of Lord Rama’s return to Ayodhya after 14 years of exile and victory over Ravana; Lord Krishna’s defeat of the demon Narakasura; and the Sikh observance of Bandi Chhor Diwas, commemorating the release of Guru Hargobind from Mughal imprisonment, along with 52 kings he freed along with him.

At the evening service at Cedar Lane, young children reenacted the battle between Krishna and Naraka, a duo sang Indian and American folk hymns and three Sikh men sang a kirtan, a traditional devotion.

“True Diwali is if we see the lamp as the name of the God, if we see the wick as the name of the God, and the oil as a name of the God, so that the life of the Creator should come to our values,” said Mandeep Singh, one of the kirtan performers.

Mmamohau Tswaedi and Balaji Narasimhan, a couple in their mid-30s from Germantown, Maryland, have been attending Cedar Lane services together since the pandemic and celebrated Christmas and Ramadan there. Tswaedi is the daughter of a Lutheran pastor from South Africa, and Narasimhan is from a religious Hindu family in Chennai, India.


The Narasimhans family brought their baby for his first year of Diwali celebrations on Sunday, Nov. 3, 2024, at Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church in Bethesda, Maryland. RNS photo by Richa Karmarkar

Bringing their 2-month-old son to his first Diwali celebration, the couple feels strongly that this congregation, where they have been “educated on what is out there,” is where their family belongs and where their son will eventually be able to “figure out what he wants to keep and what he wants to give up.”

“The culture where I grew up is very communal, and I find the U.S. is more individualistic, just generally,” said Tswaedi. “So I think spaces where you feel community — not necessarily that look like the community I grew up in, but where you can feel the togetherness — are places that you want to be in. And I think that’s what this space and events like this create. It’s that level of togetherness that transcends, like, one belief or another.”

Diwali is not new to Cedar Lane. Students at Lakshmi Swaminathan’s Natanjali School of Dance have been dancing Bharatanatyam, a traditional Indian form, at Cedar Lane’s celebrations for almost a decade. In 2010, they performed at the Washington National Cathedral, dancing to music of Hindu gods and goddesses in front of Jesus on the cross. For their teacher, the performance yielded a profound realization. “God is one. When you’re connecting with God, where you are doesn’t matter,” she said. “Whether you’re in a church or in the basement of your home, God is within you.”

It was the first Diwali for Beth Brofman, a member of the UU fellowship for the past month. A long-time member of a Dutch Reformed Church in New York, Brofman sought a more diverse and socially active spiritual community on moving to Bethesda, happily trading “How Great Thou Art” for “Get Up, Stand Up” by Bob Marley, she said, the latter of which played after Sunday’s sermon.

Congregants huddled outside to paint rangoli, or colorful mandala patterns, with chalk after the Diwali service on Sunday, Nov. 3, 2024, at Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church in Bethesda, Maryland. RNS photo by Richa Karmarkar

After researching the correct greeting for Diwali, and the most auspicious colors to don, Brofman said her first Diwali came at the perfect time.

“I’m actually needing to distract myself and to be around other people who will reflect my values,” said Brofman, a retired social services worker whose level of anxiety has reached that of the 2016 elections, when she was a canvasser. “Regardless of what happens on Tuesday, we will have that community of like-minded individuals who will continue to advocate for the things I consider important. You know you’re not alone, and the people we know are way more important.”

Janamanchi agreed and said Sunday’s celebration was well timed. “The ‘Narakas’ of the world are pretty active,” he said, citing the evil figure battled by Lord Krishna and his queen, Satyabhama, in Hindu lore. “Like Krishna and Satyabhama, we can recognize that we’re not in this alone, that together, we can overcome, overcome evil, overcome oppression and overcome injustice.”

“In all of this, there is joy,” he added. “Joy is not the opposite of sorrow. Joy is present even through sorrow and challenge and despair and hopelessness. And to me, those are also messages that Diwali presents us with. So if there is one thing I want people to take away, it is joy.”
RELATED: In suburban Washington, a new ISKCON temple marks a new beginning for devotees

 

Beyond The Revolution: Building A New Bangladesh – Analysis

Protestors with the Bangladesh flag. Photo Credit: Tasnim News Agency

 November 5, 2024 

By Published by the Foreign Policy Research Institute

By Rimon Tanvir Hossain

(FPRI) — Once touted as the “Iron Lady” of Asia, Bangladesh’s former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was both the longest-serving Bangladeshi head of state and the world’s longest-serving female. However, on August 5, 2024, her reign came to an unceremonious end as a student-led revolution, which started after the High Court Division of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh reinstated a quota system for government jobs on June 5, 2024, forced her to flee to India and resign from office.

Today, “July 36” refers to the date of Hasina’s resignation and subsequent collapse of her Awami League government, which has also been heralded in pop culture as Bangladesh’s “Second Independence.” According to a report by the Human Rights Support Society, more than 30,000 people were injured and more than 875 were killed in the collective unrest, 77 percent of whom died from gunshot wounds.

While Nobel laureate and social entrepreneur, Dr. Muhammad Yunus’s appointment to lead the fifty-three-year-old nation—born after a revolution celebrated and strongly supported by Western capitals to provide Bangladesh a fresh start—was positively received at home and abroad, his task of assuring that the country’s institutions regain public trust, once captured by Hasina’s fifteen-year electoral autocracy, is daunting. The growing challenges ranging from Islamist parties, communal tensions, surging inflation, and inability to hold perpetrators of the revolution’s victims accountable seem distant from reaching the solutions the Yunus-led interim government promised: establishing reforms in the election commission, civil administration, and implementing judiciary and security forces in time for the upcoming elections.

The Roots of Unrest: The Quota Reform Movement

The student-led protests, initially known as the Quota Reform Movement, sought to change the Bangladesh Civil Service (BCS) quota which was done away with in 2018 but brought back with the June 5, 2024, High Court decision. The BCS Quotas have a deeper connection to the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War, due to the fact that 30 percent of the 56 percent of reserved civil service positions were reserved for descendants of Bangladeshi Freedom Fighters (“Muktijuddhos”). The Muktijuddhos fought against the Pakistan Army and helped win independence in the nine-month war with Indian and Soviet support. Over the years, the fact that the biggest quota—relative to the 10 percent of positions reserved for women, 10 percent reserved for people from underdeveloped districts, 5 percent for indigenous people, and 1 percent for people with disabilities—went to families strongly associated with the Awami League for their role in winning the 1970 Pakistan General Elections (which led to full-scale war) became increasingly perceived as a base forconsolidating the Awami League through entrenchment in the state bureaucracy.

The BCS positions offered stable, lifelong employment with government-provided cars, housing, and other benefits, which the students leading the protests argued was designed to favor Awami League supporters. Rising youth unemployment, which has gone from 8 percent when Hasina came to power in 2008 to 16 percent, coupled with bias in the state bureaucracy to provide loans and other benefits to private-sector leaders associated with the Awami League, further added to the intensity of this Quota Reform Movement.

Behind the quota was the even larger electoral autocracy operated by Hasina and her Awami League party, who after winning her electoral mandate in 2008, continually crushed the opposition and repeated this every five years through ballot stuffing, strong-arming the media, and voter intimidation. The US State Department issued stern warnings ahead of both the 2018 election and prior to the most recent January 2024 election. Deputy Assistant Secretary of South and Central Asian Affairs Afreen Akhter offered Hasina an ultimatum to allow for a caretaker-run election in October 2023, which the Awami League abolished in 2011.

In the lead-up to the most recent January 2024 election, the Awami League also faced US and E.U. scrutiny and even sanctions with regard to their domestic security forces—namely, their elite paramilitary force, the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB). On December 10, 2021, the US Treasury Department placed sanctions on RAB as well as its former and current leaders for human rights abuses. Sweden-based investigative and public interest journalism platform founded in 2019 by exiled Bangladeshi journalist Tasneem Khalil, Netra News, also reported how RAB ran a secret prison for dissidents and other opponents to the Hasina regime called “Aynaghor” (House of Mirrors). This was followed by US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s May 24, 2023, announcement of visa restrictions on former and current pro-Awami League and opposition officials for undermining democracy ahead of the January 2024 elections.

A statement issued by the US State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller mentioned “these individuals include members of law enforcement, the ruling party, and the political opposition” and that “their immediate family may be found ineligible for entry into the United States.”

Ultimately, Hasina evaded all these carrots and sticks to allow a free and fair election on January 2024, while the main opposition, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), boycotted the election. This timeline of sanctions and other disciplinary measures made by the United States was put into perspective within the Biden administration’s wider democracy promotion campaign, of which Bangladesh was a clear target for its strong people-to-people ties, business and trade interests, and diaspora-lobbying with respect to human rights. The Quota Reform Movement in the perspective of this wider US democracy promotion agenda proves that the Hasina regime was unwise not to heed warnings and shot itself in the foot by relentlessly capturing institutions and leveraging their resources to crush any sign of opposition.

A Slow Start to a Quick Fix: Yunus’s Interim Government

Yunus received much fanfare after being sworn in as Chief Advisor to the Bangladesh interim government on August 8, 2024, only three days after Hasina’s resignation and flight for refuge in India. The eighty-four-year-old Nobel Laureate was invited to lead the new transitional government after the student advisory board picked him as their leader, but received the more requisite support of Bangladesh’s only surviving institution—the Bangladesh Army.

Immediately upon Yunus’s swearing-in, lawlessness, communal tensions, difficulty for the country’s rapidly growing economy, and accountability for revolution victims were all on the agenda. Hasina and the Awami League were notorious for summoning all arms of the state’s security apparatus on protestors and civilians alike. These forces included not only the RAB but also the Bangladesh Border Guard forces as well as the student wing of the Awami League, the Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL). The Chhatra League in particular has earned much notoriety, as their coordination with government security forces since their 2019 murder of Abrar Fahad—a dissenter whose Facebook post expressing concern over a water deal with India led to him being killed in a Bangladesh University of Engineering & Technology (BUET) dorm—was on full display during the Quota Reform Movement. While the country underwent internet shutdowns during the Quota Reform Movement and protestors were subject to “shoot-on-sight” orders by Hasina, the Chhatra League was provided arms, ammunition, and access to the internet to better coordinate their efforts in stopping the protests. Following Hasina’s ousting, the estimated 100,000 members of the Chhatra League have been abandoned as targets for retribution after the Yunus-led interim government declared BCL a “terrorist organization” under the 2009 Anti-Terrorism Act and banned it on Wednesday, October 23, 2024, for their serious misconduct during the July unrest.

Even though the Yunus-led interim government has overseen Dhaka University banning the activities of political party student wings on September 19, 2024, which also includes the BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami student branches, Bangladesh Jatiotabadi Chhatra Dol and Bangladeshi Chhatra Shibir, clashes between these groups continue. Additionally, Washington has expressed much concern over the need to contain the Islamist elements operating within Bangladesh, which Hasina’s Awami League and successive Indian governments were keen on clamping down on. On August 28, 2024, still within the month of Hasina’s ousting, the Jamaat-e-Islami party, the country’s main Islamist party which has never earned more than eighteen out of the Bangladeshi Parliament’s three hundred seats, had their 2008-imposed ban lifted on them. Additionally, the day before on August 27, 2024, the leader of the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT) leader, Jashimuddin Rahmaani, was freed by the Yunus-led interim government. Rahmaani was originally jailed on August 2, 2013, for his role in murdering an atheist blogger and since his release has requested Mamata Banerjee, the Chief Minister of the neighboring West Bengal state of India, to “declare independence from India,” further suggesting to hoist “Islamist flags in their capital of Kolkata.” These recent developments have led to a perception in New Delhi and Western capitals that Yunus is allowing free reign to the most dangerous elements of Bangladesh’s Islamist cadres, who are actively preparing for the upcoming elections which have yet to be given a date.

Of immense concern to both India and its transnational diaspora has been the extent of communal violencethat has rocked Bangladesh after Hasina’s ousting. According to the Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist ChristianUnity Council, there have been over 2,010 attacks on Hindus or their properties in fifty-two districts out of the country’s sixty-four districts, and five Hindus have been killed in these attacks, two of which were confirmed as Awami League members. Due to the Awami League’s close ties to India, performative commitment to secularism, and an iron-fist policy towards Islamists, the Hindu minority in Bangladesh votes in majority for the Awami League and is also perceived by Islamists as a key constituency that lobbies for pro-India policies. Many Bangladeshi, Indian, and Western analysts, journalists, and commentators alike have argued that the Yunus government has done a generally decent job in addressing the communal tensions, with visits to temples and urging students and the common citizen to protect minorities themselves. On August 6, 2024, Congressmen Raja Krishnamoorthi and Shri Thanedar wrote separate letters to Blinken, advocating on behalf of the plight of Hindus in Bangladesh. On the same day, the Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, US Senator Ben Cardin, released a statement urging Bangladesh to form a responsible caretaker government “that will promptly organize inclusive democratic elections. The people of Bangladesh deserve a government that honors their voices, respects their will, and upholds the dignity of their nation.”

On September 20, 2024, US Senators Cardin, Murphy, Van Hollen, and Merkley issued a letter to Yunus directly, urging reforms and accountability in Bangladesh. The letter stated: “While many celebrate this new chapter in Bangladesh, a concerning volume of those celebrations have turned violent, with documented reports of reprisals targeting police as well as minority Hindu communities and those perceived to be supporters of Hasina’s government. As a result, the country has witnessed gaps in law enforcement and a lack of protections for those facing violent attacks, including members of the Hindu community and Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazaar.” Four days later, Yunus met with US President Joe Biden at the 79th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), where Biden congratulated Yunus and affirmed a close partnership between the United States and Bangladesh rooted in democratic values and strong people-to-people ties. Yunus gifted Blinken, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and Italian Prime Minister GiorgiaMeloni with a book of paintings known as the “Art of Triumph,” capturing scenes from the July 36 student-led revolution. The gesture of gifting these Western heads of state photo books was in line with trade and education diplomacy interests as roughly 10,000 Bangladeshi students study in Canadian universities, making Canada a “study destination of choice” among Bangladeshi students, and the European Union’s role as Bangladesh’s largest trading partner, accounting for 20.7% of Bangladesh’s trade.

At the General Assembly, Yunus also met with Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Shehbaz Sharif on the sidelines, where they reaffirmed their commitment to expanding the two countries’ bilateral cooperation. The long-held demand by the Awami League government for the Pakistani government to apologize for its genocideduring the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War and Pakistan’s unwillingness to do so has held back bilateral ties according to Foreign Policy columnist and South Asia Brief writer Michael Kugelman. However, while steps were made in regard to this longstanding issue in 2021 with an exchange of letters between former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan and Hasina, Yunus’s willingness to engage Pakistan without mention of the 1971 chapter suggests this grievance in bilateral relations may not be as much of a constraint in Bangladesh-Pakistan relations post-Hasina.

While some of the Awami League ministers were detained—some on their way out of the country—many fled during the month of the student-led revolution. Bangladeshi news sources like the Daily Star and Prothom Alo have documented how a total of thirty current and former Awami League ministers weredetained and are currently being subject to proceedings.

Meanwhile, Hasina’s son, Sajeeb Wazed, who served as an advisor on Information and Communications Technology affairs to Hasina, has hired a former Trump lobbyist and actively operates as the de facto leaderof the Awami League in an attempt to make a comeback for the upcoming election.

On the day of Diwali, Thursday, October 31, 2024, US presidential candidate Donald Trump tweeted that he “strongly condemned the barbaric violence against Hindus, Christians, and other minorities who are getting attacked and looted by mobs in Bangladesh,” further stating that it would have “never happened on my watch,” before tying these developments to Ukraine and the Southern border. In the same tweet, he promised to “also protect Hindu Americans against the anti-religion agenda of the radical left” and “also strengthen our great partnership with India and my good friend, Narendra Modi.” This timely statement by Donald Trump signals both a nod to the Indian American vote as well as Hindu Nationalist and Awami League lobbies, attempting to undercut Kamala Harris’s appeal to Indian Americans by explicitly claiming that she “ignored Hindus,” while also signaling a preference for the Awami League. Viewed within the backdrop of US electoral politics, Bangladesh is a partisan issue, and given Yunus’s former criticism of Trump back in 2016, the interim government can expect a less supportive White House if Trump returns to the White House after the 2024 US general elections.

In Between Rising Powers: Bangladesh in the Eyes of New Delhi and Beijing

The collapse of Hasina’s regime was a strategic failure for the Awami League’s long-time and premier supporter—India. Since the independence of Bangladesh in 1971, where India played a leading role through covert support to the guerilla war, India has sustained a favorable trade imbalance, security cooperation, political alignment, and common cause over the containment of Islamist elements within Bangladesh. However, recent developments and the trajectory set for the next Bangladeshi election seem to swayagainst New Delhi’s favor, as anti-Indian sentiments have reached all-time highs and the Awami League has very little legroom to launch a comeback, given their reputation from their bloody crackdown on the Quota Reform Movement.

Another key supporter of Hasina’s regime was the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Bangladesh is the second-biggest destination of Chinese military imports according to the Stockholm Peace International Research Institute (SIPRI). Between 2016 and 2020, Bangladesh bought 17 percent of all Chinese military exports and two-thirds of the Bangladesh Air Force weapon arsenal is currently made up of Chinese weapons. In line with the 2002 Defense Cooperation Agreement signed between China and Bangladesh, making China the only country with a broad defense agreement with Bangladesh, Dhaka has also inaugurated a Chinese-built naval base for the Bangladesh Navy at Pekua in Cox’s Bazar in 2023, BNS Sheikh Hasina, where two Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) officers were in attendance. According to a CSIS report entitled “Submarine Diplomacy,” published in November 2023, commercial satellite imagery revealed significant progress on this naval base, which both signaled Beijing deepening its influence in the Bay of Bengal while also attempting to strengthen ties between Bangladesh and Myanmar, aimed at undercutting New Delhi’s influence in its neighborhood.

Since 2010, half of Myanmar’s and two-thirds of Bangladesh’s arms imports have come from China. However, Bangladesh’s military still conducts annual bilateral exercises with the Indian military, most recently in October 2023, showing how Dhaka balances India and China even as it actively courts Beijing.

Over a fourth of world trade passes through the Bay of Bengal each year, with ports located in the bay that handle 33 percent of global trade and half of the world’s container traffic. Additionally, the Bay of Bengal is located at a strategic chokepoint, the Strait of Malacca, connecting the Indian Ocean to the South China Sea. This chokepoint is vital because it controls maritime access to the Far East and is used by a large amount of international shipping. Upon Hasina’s ousting, in one of her first statements from her refuge in a military base in India, she stated that she could have remained in power had she acquiesced to a US demand for a military base in Bangladeshi territory — St. Martin’s Island.

The Padma Bridge, inaugurated in February 2022, is Bangladesh’s largest bridge, standing at 3.88 miles in length and 60 feet wide, able to carry 10,000 tons, and projected to boost the country’s GDP by 1.2 percent. Proposed in 1998, the bridge had many setbacks in construction due to the withdrawal of support by the World Bank in 2015 after allegations of corruption. A Chinese engineering firm, China Major Bridge Co., hadtaken over construction of the bridge following the World Bank exit. The Padma Bridge is the largest bridge built by a Chinese company outside of China and was dubbed the “dream bridge,” by the Chinese Ambassador to Bangladesh, Yao Wen. Ambassador Wen further stated that not only will the bridge “contribute to the connectivity in South Asia,” but also that whenever China’s President Xi Jinping “mentions Bangladesh, he will mention the Padma Bridge.” Additionally, a much-needed $12.65 billion dollar nuclear power plant in Rooppur is pledged to be 90 percent financed by Russia as of 2023. Putin has also made inroads in Dhaka, helping the country shift away from energy dependence on India, while also benefitting from Bangladesh abstaining from a recent 2023 UN vote to cease the war in Ukraine.

Washington’s Approach for Bangladesh’s Role in the Indo-Pacific

Bangladesh plays a tough balancing act in the Indo-Pacific due to its immense population, resource endowments, and strategic location in the Bay of Bengal. This was played to Hasina’s hand, who sought to balance neighboring Beijing and New Delhi while maintaining Bangladesh’s role as an important trading partner to the United States and European Union. Her capture of state institutions, momentum for turning the country into a one-party state, and ability to navigate the trail of Western sanctions, all while maintaining consistent economic growth at a 7 percent annual rate, attests to this small-state-leverage playing larger powers off one another. Ultimately, mass rebellion and inability to provide effective governance and economic opportunity succeeded where coercive US measures could not.

With Yunus at the helm, Bangladesh is under a transitory governance scheme where Washington has a more receptive head of state. However, commitment to free and fair elections that releases far-right Islamist elements, while committing to deepening Western and Indian interests, presents a conflict of interest. More pressing, the Chinese inroads made in Bangladesh with BNS Sheikh Hasina, military imports, and the Padma Bridge have distanced Washington as a strategic competitor in the region. The steps Washington takes next with Bangladesh must account for the need to assure an effective democratic framework for elections, state security and law and order for the regime that assumes power after the interim government holds its election. The announcement that Yunus would not run himself and the momentum gained by the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party and Islamist parties has raised alarms in New Delhi and Western capitals, with Indian Defense Minister Rajnath Singh recommending at the Indian Air Force Commanders’ Conference to be ready for “new challenges” in response to the changing posture of the incumbent and coming regime in Dhaka. In response, the former Bangladesh Army Chief of Staff, Iqbal Karim Bhuiyan, has led the Bangladesh military to assess putting the country on war footing under a model of the French levée en masse—referring to the French Revolution’s policy of requiring all able-bodied men to serve the military to defend the nation.

Washington is uniquely poised to help Dhaka deter any confrontation with New Delhi, while also reeling the strategically-located country from China’s embrace ahead of the 2027 projected Chinese invasion ofTaiwan. Diplomatic overtures and economic cooperation can collectively aid in preventing Bangladesh from becoming another autocratic regime, as well as from becoming a vassal for Beijing’s interests in the Indo-Pacific neighboring its regional rival, India. However, Yunus must hold the line against Islamists, as Chinese Ambassador to Bangladesh, Yao Wen, recently praised Jamaat-e-Islami as a “well-organized party.” Yunus must also continually court the United States and European Union in order to reel Bangladesh from the crosshairs of China’s grand strategy in South Asia.

While the Yunus-led interim government’s decision to lift the ban on Jamaat-e-Islami was rooted in ending the Awami League’s one-party governance, Beijing’s open embrace of Islamist forces who have historically antagonized Washington, New Delhi, and European capitals has raised alarms for the country’s trade, people-to-people ties, and defense posture. A Bangladesh where institutions are captured by the anti-Awami League axis of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and Jamaat-e-Islami will allow Beijing unprecedented leverage in Bangladesh, given both their anti-Indian and anti-Western track record, ongoing rhetoric, and overall platforms. The Yunus-led interim government is Washington’s last window ofopportunity to chart a prosperous and democratic Bangladesh for decades to come, or it can serve as a missed opportunity that offered China and Russia an indefinite foothold.

• About the author: Rimon Tanvir Hossain is a Research Assistant with the Middle East Institute’s Strategic Technologies and Cybersecurity Program. He received his M.P.P. from the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and his B.A. from UC Berkeley. He was a former congressional staffer in the United States Senate and conducted research with the UCLA Luskin Global Public Affairs program on U.S.-China competition in the Bay of Bengal.
• Source: This article was published by FPRI