India’s Disastrous Bangladesh Policy – Part I (Bangladesh, A Perennial Nuisance)

Ever since the eastern part of Pakistan broke away from the west & became Bangladesh (with India’s help of course) in 1971, India’s policy with regards to it has been an epic disaster. 

A nation that is surrounded by Indian territory on three sides (with the fourth side facing the Bay of Bengal and a tiny portion of land bordering Myanmar) should have been a perennial colony or a client state of India, with India dictating the terms of the relationship between the 2 nations. It should have been under India’s sphere of influence, with every aspect of the nation controlled directly or indirectly by India. It should have existed as an independent and sovereign state (only on paper of course) at the mercy of India. Any attempt by Bangladesh to break free of India’s hegemony should have been met with severe punishment; its political class, owing to India’s hegemony and also control over its economy, should have been puppets in the hands of New Delhi and Kolkata.

Instead what ended up happening is that it is Bangladesh which always has an upper hand in the Indo-Bangladesh relationship. Right at the outset, it must be mentioned that India, after winning the war against Pakistan and liberating Bangladesh in 1971, blundered on many counts. First, India did not annex the areas which had a substantial Hindu-Buddhist population in the newly formed Bangladesh — which would be around 20 to 25% of Bangladesh’s territory, roughly a little less than the erstwhile Hindu majority areas like Khulna, pockets of Faridpur, large parts of Dinajpur claimed by Hindu Mahasabha during partition (mentioned in the previous article), besides the southern part of Sylhet, Chittagong hill tracts and the port town of Chittagong and then rehabilitate all the Hindus and Buddhists into those areas, a type of population exchange within the area of newly formed Bangladesh.

Second, India neither de-militarized Bangladesh nor cleansed Bangladeshi society and polity of the Jihadi elements. Since all Bengali soldiers in Pakistan army and most of the Bengali speaking Jihadis (like Maulana Bhashani) fought against Pakistan and for the liberation of Bangladesh, they were assumed to be pro-India, anti-Pakistan and therefore “moderates”. Only a small minority of them fought alongside Pakistan army, committed atrocities on moderate Muslims, who formed rank & file of the Awami League, and the Hindus (it must be said that the majority of the victims of Pakistan sponsored genocide were Hindus). 

As a result of this blunder, a large Hindu population remained within Bangladesh, who could well be used by any Islamist regime as a bargaining chip in order to coerce India to tolerate excesses committed by the Bangladeshi establishment. 

Since the assassination of Prime Minister Sheikh Mujibur Rahman through a violent military coup in 1975 & subsequent takeover of the Bangladeshi state by the Army (led by General Ziaur Rahman) backed by the Jamaat e Islami, it is Bangladesh who always had an upper hand in the relationship. India’s relationship with Bangladesh has been fluctuating from being superficially good (that is trade, investments flowing both sides combined with so called cultural exchanges) to low level open hostilities. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and Indira Gandhi, as we mentioned above, blundered by not having de-militarized Bangladesh and by allowing an opposition led by Islamist forces to function. Even though these forces supported the liberation war, they did not want Bangladesh to be a “secular” state which would be a safe haven for Hindus and be dependent on India. Their ideal Bangladesh was a continuation of erstwhile East Pakistan minus interference from and economic exploitation by West Pakistan. Essentially they envisioned a nation state exclusively for Bengali speaking Muslim population. An Islamic state, preferably ruled by the Shariah, where non-Muslims would be second class citizens – was their ideal;  either to be tortured & expelled, their properties taken over with no protection from the Law or the state machinery. Their hatred for India and Hindus was too much. After all, the same people who were in charge of newly formed Bangladesh were also instrumental in demanding a separate Pakistan in the 1940s. India was only temporarily tolerated because they don’t share borders with any other nation apart from India (border with Myanmar is inconsequential) and Bangladesh being far from a self sufficient nation had to heavily rely on India on the economic front. India for these Islamists was only a piece of land to be colonized in a distant future slowly and gradually.

Even before Sheikh Mujib’s assassination, Maulana Bhashani and his cohorts were speaking of “Greater Bangladesh”, a “lebensraum” to accommodate Bangladeshi Muslims, lands which must be populated with Bangladeshi Muslim immigrants and which with the passage of time would assimilate into Bangladesh owing to its demographics. Ideas would be floated on how West Bengal, parts of Bihar and Assam must be gobbled up and made part of the Bengali Muslim nation! For these Jihadis colonizing West Bengal with Kolkata, Assam and large parts of Bihar was the unfinished business of partition. During partition, they could not turn whole of Bengal and Assam into East Pakistan, neither they could get Suhrawardy’s plan for United Bengal (ruled by a Muslim majority), which was an even better deal for them. The efforts of Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee put an end to their ambitions. They continued to dream about ‘conquering’ the lands lost by them due to what they saw as the meddling of Dr Mookerjee

After Sheikh Mujib’s death, these Jihadis controlling the affairs of Bangladesh became stronger with the due passage of time and tried to break free of any vestige of India’s hegemonic influence. When Bangladesh was formed in December 1971, the Soviet Union and its satellite states in the Communist bloc in Eastern Europe were the first ones to recognize this new nation state (by January 1972). After all, it was India which broke a pro-America Pakistan into two. The USA, which supported Pakistan Army’s crackdown on Mukti Bahini in 1971, supplied Pakistani military with arms to fight the Bangladeshi “insurgents” recognized Bangladesh only reluctantly, that too after the passage of a few months when it became apparent that Pakistan was not getting united (in mid-1972). Sheikh Mujib’s regime, backed by Indira was expected to be a satellite state of India; therefore close to the Soviet bloc and away from both USA and China (the latter recognized Bangladesh only in 1975).

However, things changed after Mujib’s assassination. The new military regime under General Ziaur Rahman backed by Islamist organisations moved closer to both the USA and China. It also began cosying up to Pakistan (which recognized Bangladesh in 1974). With the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, the equation in the Islamic world changed. The “Afghan Mujahideen” by the joint efforts of USA, Pakistan (under the rule of General Ziaul Haq) and Saudi Arabia to fight the Soviet forces enabled Islamists of all shades to enrich and empower themselves, that too with the full support of the Americans. With oil prices soaring after the 1973 Oil crisis, Saudis began to pump in “petrodollars” all over the Islamic world to spread & propagate the Wahabi ideology under the patronage of the USA. Bangladesh too was affected by it. With a military regime backed by organizations like Jamaat e Islami in power, it facilitated the spread of Wahabi ideology through religious institutions which focused on a puritanical form of religion combined with the belief in violent Jihad against “infidels”. It is not that such violent ideologies never existed in Indian subcontinent prior to the 1970s. Contrary to the popular myth (that Wahhabism came to India with petrodollars in the 1980s), India was actually the birthplace of Wahhabi ideology in 18^th century; it travelled from India to the Arabian peninsula, with many more Jihadis picking up from there while on their way to the once in a lifetime pilgrimage. The ideology in itself always existed in the Indian subcontinent. What petro-dollars did was to provide the financial muscle needed for the large scale propagation of the ideology among the masses, which is precisely what happened in Bangladesh from the late 1970s onwards. Though most of educated Bangladeshi Muslims remained and still remain very moderate or even nominally Muslim (the average Muslim woman in Dhaka from upper middle class family is indistinguishable from a Hindu woman in Kolkata in dress, appearance or demeanour, barring the few symbols of Hinduism), the violent underbelly was rapidly growing – with the patronage of the state (more and more women among the urban underclass would be seen in hijab from 1990 onwards). 

In 1981, President (the General had become President in 1977) Ziaur Rahman was assassinated by a faction of Bangladesh Army; subsequently, General Hussain Mohammad Ershad became the new military dictator. He would go on to remain in power till 1990. During Ershad’s rule, ISI was allowed to establish its network in Bangladesh.  From the early 80s, Bangladesh became the base from which every separatist movement against India was operating! In fact, there was a well established nexus between Pakistan’s ISI, Bangladesh’s military regimes and the Islamists organizations backed by China. By 90s, Maoist insurgents in Nepal too joined the party! Thus, Bangladesh became a huge threat to India’s national security as well as to the lives of Hindus & Buddhists living both within Bangladesh and in India. Tons of books and papers have been published since the late 90s by Indian intelligence officers, Indian armed forces personnel, police officers and geopolitical experts covering these aspects. The notorious ULFA, whose aim was to carve out a separate and independent Assam by seceding Assam from India, operated mainly out of Bangladesh. The porous Indo-Bangladesh border, lack of fencing, lack of border security, corruption within BSF and lack of political will to crack down on terrorism in the North East of India, allowed malcontents on both sides of the border to easily access each other.

From 1980 onwards, Muslim immigrants from Bangladesh began to infiltrate illegally into Indian territory and settle in the border areas of Assam and West Bengal. It is estimated that between 1980 and 2010, more than 15 million Bangladeshi Muslims have illegally immigrated and settled across various parts of India. In all likelihood, the Bangladeshi regime – as a part of well calculated policy – began to push illegal immigrants into India, in accordance with Maulana Bhashani’s “Greater Bangladesh” agenda. 

Also with the rising Islamization of Bangladeshi society in the 1980s, Hindus began to face hostilities. There were phases in which Hindus fled Bangladesh in large numbers. The large-scale violence against Hindus along with vandalism of Hindus temples after the demolition of Babri Masjid in December 1992, is well known and has been well documented. But there were several more incidents of similar large scale violence against the Hindu minorities. 

In the 90s, irrespective of the party (Awami League led by Sheikh Mujib’s daughter Sheikh Hasina and Bangladeshi Nationalist Party led by Ziaur Rahman’s widow, Begum Khaleda Zia) or group in power, Bangladesh continued to remain a base from where terror outfits like Harkatul-Jehadi-Islami (Huji) and separatist organizations in North East of India operated. ISI’s presence was all pervasive, operating from both Nepal and Bangladesh, both of which had open or porous borders with India. Indo-Bangladesh border witnessed not just large scale illegal immigration, but also smuggling of all kind of goods. From smuggling into India drugs, counterfeit currency, arms to support militant groups to smuggling out cattle into Bangladesh, the border areas remain a hub of notorious activities, often happening under the watchful eyes of the BSF and India’s spineless political class. The “chicken’s neck”, the narrow strip of land in North Dinajpur district (the Raiganj area) connecting India with the North East has been increasingly coming under pressure because of unfavourable demographics due to illegal immigration combined with porous Nepal & Bangladesh borders.

Bangladesh, from the mid 1990s onwards, found a new way to influence Indian foreign policy. It began to attract investments from Indian businesses and corporate groups. In return, these moneybags lobbied with the Indian government and political establishment to overlook excesses committed by Bangladesh. Pink papers (business newspapers) covering Indian business groups often publish news about corporate lobbies urging the Indian government to maintain more “friendly” relations with Bangladesh in order to facilitate trade and investments between the 2 nations; a trade which does not bring much benefit to India or Indians but certainly enriches the pockets of India’s moneybags who often double up as political financiers.  

Meanwhile, the condition of Hindus and Buddhists continues to deteriorate. The population of Hindus and Buddhist in Bangladesh as a percentage of the total population has been decreasing with each passing decade. Atrocities, forceful land grab, usurping properties of Hindus are quite common. The military regimes and governments of Khaleda Zia led Bangladeshi Nationalist Party (BNP) & Jamaat-e-Islami alliance were notorious for their anti-Hindu activities.

Lately in the last decade, after Sheikh Hasina led Awami League had formed the government, things have changed slightly, though only superficially. There have been frequent crackdowns on not just ULFA and other terror outfits including separatist groups operating from Bangladesh, but also on Islamist organizations like the Jamaat-e-Islami. In 2013, many war criminals belonging to the Jamaat who helped Pakistan Army perpetrate the genocide of Bengalis (both Hindu and Muslim) in 1971, were put to death. Even the opposition BNP led by Khaleda Zia was neutralized, barred from contesting elections and jailed. 

Yet problems remain. Although Sheikh Hasina led Awami league pretends to be “secular” and “moderate”, they allegedly have links with groups like Hefazat-e-Islam who are no different from the Jamaat in their ideology. Violence against Hindus which continues to happen on a regular basis increases manifold during elections. Since the mid 2000s, Bangladesh has increased its engagement with China on the economic front. China is now the largest trading partner of Bangladesh, though its balance is heavily tilted towards China. This has been used as a bargaining chip against India. The message from Dhaka is that India must continue to pamper Bangladesh (and sign water & river related agreements which would be tilted in favour of Bangladesh) or the latter would end up becoming a client state of China. 

Very recently China waived off tariffs for Bangladeshi imports (which though is too little, would end up benefiting Bangladesh in a way) and promised a hefty loan for a Teesta river development project. Bangladesh as of now is fully under China’s sphere of influence.

India’s policy with regards to Bangladesh has been a failure all these years. Despite the fact that Bangladesh has behaved no different from a rogue state ruled by a foul regime, which blackmails & extracts undue concessions from India, India has never been able to tackle this nuisance. 

India’s policy since the 1970s under various governments and its response to Bangladesh’s excesses will be discussed at great length in the next part.