India’s Disastrous Bangladesh Policy – Part II (India’s Cowardly Response)
As mentioned in the first part of this series, India had committed a blunder after Bangladesh was formed in December 1971. India failed to disarm the Bengali soldiers of the Pakistan Army who sided with Sheikh Mujib during the Liberation War but ideologically leaned towards Islamists. It also failed in carving out a separate Homeland for Hindus and dismantling the network of Islamists since most of them sided with Mujib and wanted Bangladesh’s liberation (and only a small minority of them collaborated with Pakistan).
This blunder by India can be explained by the nature of the Indian state and its political establishment. Even before India became independent, most leaders of India’s main political party, the Indian National Congress (and all other groups which were affiliated with them or came out of them) followed a policy of appeasing the Islamists. This trend started in the 1910s and then increased manifold after Gandhi arrived. There were exceptions to this rule, but they were mostly sidelined after Gandhi took over Congress. When the “transfer of power” happened in 1947, Gandhi’s cronies captured power in India and perpetuated Gandhi’s policy of appeasing Islamists of all types. The new Indian state (whose apparatus and institutions were a continuation of British era institutions) became a protector of Islamists and oppressors (mostly in a subtle form) of Hindus, both in India and abroad (many instances mentioned in previous articles). Hence, we see the reluctance of both Indian political class and its state machinery in eradicating the network of Islamist extremists both in India and in its immediate neighbours
This also explains why throughout the pogrom of 1971, the Indian government did not reveal the fact that an overwhelming majority of the Bengalis who were being killed by the Pakistan Army, and 80 per cent of the refugees who poured into India, were Hindus.
Even after Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s assassination and the subsequent coup by the Bangladeshi Army, which was followed by the change in Bangladesh’s foreign policy (getting close to China, Pakistan, USA), the Indian establishment and political class continued to delude themselves by believing that Bangladesh was a reliable ally. Apart from the Indian state’s love for Islamists, there are other factors which explain this attitude
Bangladesh mostly had (and still has in many places) a porous border with India and its large Muslim population could well be used as a vote bank by political parties in India. In fact from the late 1970s and early 1980s onwards, India’s political class cutting across party lines facilitated the illegal infiltration of Muslims from across the border. Illegal immigrants were given identity documents, their names included in the voter list, voter cards issued and were transformed into Indian citizens overnight. The state governments and bureaucracy of West Bengal and Assam and some other states facilitatedf this illegal migration. The various arms of the Central Government (usually led by the “Secular” parties) too would lend a helping hand. The Border Security Force under the central home ministry is notorious for allowing illegal immigration and smuggling across the border in return for generous kickbacks.
In fact the Indian state, by allowing illegal migration across the Indo-Bangladesh border not just facilitated the growing network of Islamists spreading their tentacles across Eastern India, but also allowed various separatist movements in India’s North East (particularly ULFA) to flourish.
Occasionally India, especially in the 80s and 90s, would lodge “protests” against Bangladesh for supporting militant groups. Bangladesh in return levelled counter-allegations, accusing India of supporting Hindu and Buddhist separatist organisations in Bangladesh. Indeed there were Hindu and Buddhist militant groups, the Banga Sena and Shanti Bahini (the latter representing the Chakmas) respectively which operated within Bangladesh with a clear separatist agenda. Banga Sena wanted to carve out a “Banga Bhoomi”, a Hindu state, by seceding districts with substantial Hindu population out of Bangladesh; Shanti Bahini focussed on the Chittagong Hilla Tracts inhabited by Buddhist Chakmas. But there is no evidence of any Indian involvement. India’s secular establishment would never support Hindu militant groups. Far from supporting these groups, the Indian government in the early 2000s (when Atal Behari Vajpayee was the Prime Minister and BJP led NDA was in power) teamed up with the Congress regime of Assam and Communist governments in Tripura & West Bengal to launch a massive crackdown on Banga Sena. Hundreds of Banga Sena activists were arrested by both the BSF (under the central government) and the police under various state governments.
From the 1990s onwards, with increasing globalization, Indian policymaking became beholden to the interests of big business. As Bangladesh began to attract Indian investments, India’s big business groups began to ask the Indian government to maintain “friendly” relations with Bangladesh. This meant that India had to overlook Dhaka’s excesses to facilitate trade & investments without any hindrance. Trade between the two countries expanded, even more, when Khaleda Zia led BNP and Jamaat alliance came to power. More trade between the two nations and more investments being made by Indian businesses meant more appeasement of Bangladesh. Somehow, vice-versa was never expected nor demanded. This meant that India’s political class, perennially dependent on mercantile class for political funds, allowing hordes of Mullah preachers to come from Bangladesh to West Bengal and indoctrinate the “faithful”. India’s mainstream media, owned and controlled by big corporates, indulged in propaganda portraying Bangladesh as a friendly nation; trade and investments flowing between the two nations being shown as evidence of “friendship”. Atrocities committed against Hindus in Bangladesh, though reported once in a while, were projected as aberrations! In the early 1990s, Indian government granted limited access to the Teen Bhaga corridor in Cooch Behar (a small enclave of land surrounded by Bangladeshi territory on all sides, with only a small corridor connecting it with India) to Bangladesh, thus threatening to cut off nearly 30,000 people from accessing Indian territory.
The Communist regime in Bengal and the “progressive” intelligentsia in Calcutta too played its role. The CPIM before coming to power with an overwhelming majority in 1977, projected themselves as a party of Bengali Hindus (explained earlier in an article). However, after 1977, they began to create an image of themselves as a secular party, representing aspirations of all Bengalis irrespective of religion. Literature written by writers with Communist leanings increasingly began to peddle the idea that Bengali identity is based on language alone; that Bengali identity is a “secular” linguistic identity and Muslims (including Bangladeshis) speaking Bengali too are culturally Bengali (a phenomenon known as Bhasha-baad). Hence Bangladesh was projected as just another Bengali nation & its Muslim population just another group of Bengalis who had every right to come and settle in West Bengal. Illegal immigration of Bengali speaking Muslims was compared with Bengali Hindu refugees coming from East Pakistan after partition – “if Bengali Hindus from East Bengal can come to West Bengal, why not the Bengali Muslims ? After all, we are all Bengalis irrespective of religion” claimed the Communists and the left-liberal intelligentsia. Besides, the Communists and their cheerleaders being internationalists who claimed nationalism of any form (especially Hindu nationalism) was evil, they romanticised the idea of a “pluralistic” and transnational Bengali community which transcended religious identities and national boundaries. On top of that, there was an economic angle too. As the quality of Bengali literature, music and cinema from 1970 onwards began to decline because of increasing hegemony of Communist fellow travellers, Bengalis from the 1980s onwards began to look beyond contemporary Bengali cinema/pop culture/literature (contemporary = post 1970s); those who dominated the cultural world in Calcutta began to look at Bangladesh as an untapped potential market, which could be explored. This explains their eagerness to establish cultural exchanges and trade between the two nations. Financiers backing these new age writers, publishers, filmmakers and musicians too joined the bandwagon. Not one of these intellectuals ever spoke about the persecution of Hindus on the other side of the border, nor did they raise the issue of Bangladesh supporting terror groups like ULFA, who specifically targeted Bengali Hindus in Assam.
Perhaps the government which has done the most damage is the present one, in power in New Delhi since 2014. It began its journey, of going at great lengths to appease Sheikh Hasina, by believing in the same fallacy which has affected India’s policy-making all these years – which is that Bangladesh is a friendly nation that can be tamed by generous trade, investment opportunities, loans and financial aid. The present regime in New Delhi did not just stop at that; they even went ahead and signed a Land Boundary Agreement with Bangladesh, which resulted in India officially transferring 17,160.63 acres of Indian land (enclaves inside Bangladeshi territory) to Bangladesh and Bangladesh in return transferring 7,111 acres of land to India (enclaves inside Indian territory). In short, India conceded territory to Bangladesh!
Appeasement of the Hasina regime did not stop there. The government of India helped Bangladesh with 8 billion dollars worth of financial aid, helped set up Special Economic Zones, arranged for loans, investment by Indian firms willing to set up businesses in Bangladesh, facilitated the supply of electricity by Indian companies, facilitated trade worth 10 billion dollars (official figures only – the addition of unofficial trade will increase this figure), helped with the setting up of Education institutions, all these in return for nothing. New Delhi, far from asking or rather pressurizing Bangladesh to ensure safety and security of Hindus living there, denied any persecution of Hindus. Former external affairs minister of India even went on to make a bizarre claim in Indian parliament that the percentage of the total Hindu population of Bangladesh had increased in the preceding few years. There is no doubt that the Indian government has failed to leverage India’s economic strength. What should have happened was India using its financial strength to arm-twist Bangladeshi administration into making policies favourable to Hindus. Instead, it is Bangladesh which uses Indian businesses to lobby with regimes in New Delhi & Kolkata. One only has to look at press releases by Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and Confederation of Indian Industries (CII), pushing for more trade between the two nations and demanding “stable relations”; subtle threats of cutting off business ties between Indian businesses and Bangladesh is enough for the spineless Indian political class to go into a tizzy. After all mercantile interests (which ensures continuous flow of political funds to the political class) triumph over everything else.
Indian government’s mishandling of Citizen Amendment Act and National Registration of Citizens (which shall be discussed later) has given Sheikh Hasina led Islamist regime of Dhaka an opportunity to jump into the Chinese gravy train. With a series of deals, Bangladesh perhaps hopes to become a Chinese protectorate (much like Pakistan) which will help China expand its tentacles in the Bay of Bengal. A geopolitical disaster of epic proportions.
References:
- Network of Terror in India. By S.K. Ghosh, Srikanta Ghosh
- Bangladesh: The Next Afghanistan By Hiranmay Karlekar
- My People Uprooted: The Exodus Of Hindus From East Pakistan & Bangladesh by Tathagata Roy
- ficci.in/international.asp?deskid=54522
- thefinancialexpress.com.bd/trade/fbcci-cii-to-sign-mou-on-indo-bangla-trade-1593456094
- www.livemint.com/Politics/PJNGy9mN1sOLFqVTKKdI5L/Bangladesh-signs-45-billion-loan-deal-with-India.html
