Sheikh Hasina praying at Khwaja Mainuddin Chisti Dargah in Ajmer Sharif.
After two and a half months, Sheikh Hasina was ousted from Bangladesh and landed in Delhi on a military plane. Since then, he has not been seen in public for a single moment, no photos of him have been ‘leaked’ on social media, audios of various alleged phone conversations have been leaked, but there is no proof that they are his voice.
Since coming to India, he has practically vanished into thin air!
Indian government spokespersons, ministers or policy makers have not uttered a single word about her (or her accompanying younger sister Sheikh Rehana) since she landed in Delhi. Not in any press conference, not in any interview.
However, the Indian government on Thursday (October 17) afternoon officially and indirectly said only that he is still in India. As BBC Bangla reported last week that the news of Sheikh Hasina going to the Emirates or any country in the Middle East is completely baseless, so at least now the Indian government is officially ‘confirming’ it.
While it is true that the Indian government has succeeded in maintaining complete secrecy over Sheikh Hasina’s stay in the country, Delhi is still completely in the dark about how long she will be kept in India.
“It’s going to be a long haul”, says a top government official in Delhi’s South Block – who thinks the government is getting ready for the reality that Sheikh Hasina will have to stay in India for a long time.
Sheikh Hasina with Narendra Modi. Dhaka,
So, as in the past, as the Tibetan cleric Dalai Lama or Afghan President Mohammad Najibullah’s wife and children were given ‘political asylum’ or political asylum by India, are similar steps being considered in the case of Sheikh Hasina?
In order to find answers to these questions, the BBC in Delhi spoke to officials from different levels and ministries of the Bengali government.
Firstly, in the eyes of India, Sheikh Hasina is currently a ‘guest, but under compulsion! India knows very well that he came to India because his safety or security was threatened in his own country. Now in this ‘guest’ status he can be kept in the country day after day, month after month – India has no problem with that. As an old friend and guest of the country, he will receive all due respect.
Secondly, if the situation is different later, something else can be thought of – but right now India has no plans to grant political asylum to Sheikh Hasina. Most importantly, he himself never applied for asylum. But if such a proposal does come later, the Indian government knows that all parties in the country will agree on it and building a political consensus on granting asylum to Sheikh Hasina will not be a problem. But Delhi does not want to take any such step forward now.
As a result, in a word, for the time being, India wants to provide ‘hospitality’ to Sheikh Hasina – not ‘shelter’.
