The Bangladesh Syndrome
Dr. Manmohan Singh’s declaration that a quarter of Bangladesh’s population were anti-India and radicalized by Islam so embarrassed the Centre which had put it blithely on its website on the basis, one surmises, of “transparency” and then swiftly withdrew the statement (without anyone explaining officially why).
“… we must reckon that at least 25 percent of the population of Bangladesh swear by the Jamiat-ul-Islami and they are very anti-Indian, and they are in the clutches, many times, of the ISI [of Pakistan]. So, a political landscape in Bangladesh can change at any time. We do not know what these terrorist elements, who have a hold on the Jamiat-e-Islami [sic] elements in Bangladesh, can be up to.”
Taking those remarks off the PMO’s website doesn’t answer the basic issue – on what basis does the head of government make such statements? Is it on the basis of briefings from the Intelligence Bureau; incidentally, the traditional first meeting of the day, every day, for an Indian Prime Minister – that with the DIB (Director of the Intelligence Bureau) to get an assessment of what’s happening around the country – no longer happens.
So who briefs the PM on such matters or rather who does he listen to? Because his unexpurgated remarks bear the ring of an anti-Dhaka sentiment that one knows exists in many places in the Government of India, but especially the Ministry of External Affairs, the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Defence Ministry – not to speak of the “security analysts” and media pundits who specialize in belittling our eastern neighbour and finding little good what makes that nation tick and, in fact, develop a better population control programme, to speak of just one aspect, than India’s.
Indeed, the Prime Minister should know that such pundits should be kept at more than arm’s length. And he will miss the frank counsel of one of the sharpest minds and sensitive figures in the security establishment – Gopal Pillai, the former Home Secretary, who retired on June 30, who has perhaps done as much as anyone else, quietly, behind the scenes, to improve relations and deliver on confidence building measures.
It speaks of the largesse of the Bangladesh Government that it let the PM’s statement go without the fuss that other neighbours would have created. Dhaka has done so not out of any great love of altruism – it is placing a lot of importance to the Prime Minister’s September visit to Dhaka, because it believes it stands to gain enormously economically and politically.
It comes two years after Sheik Hasina Wajed’s government took a decision which has dramatically improved bilateral relations – it ordered the handing over of leaders of anti-India armed groups from Assam and Manipur, who had taken shelter in Bangladesh, to Indian authorities. The action broke the back of groups such as the United Liberation Front of Assam and the National Democratic Front of Bodoland; it also substantially affected the functioning of the United National Liberation Front of Manipur, whose entire political leadership barring one is now in custody.
So it is time for India to design and develop a political and economic package that will win Bangladesh – with or without its “25 percent” – firmly to its side. This should include the following: expanding opportunities for trade by business in either country; sharing of river waters; negotiating a return for the Tatas, blocked during Khaleda Zia’s time; cleaning up customs clearances, ensuring an end to the silent killings of Bangladeshis on the border by Indian forces (over 800 in the past years, according to our own officials) and getting Dhaka’s backing against China on the latter’s plans to build dams on the Tsangpo-Brahmaputra.
Our wishy-washy approach on the Chinese plans for the Brahmaputra – with one minister saying we should take the Chinese at their word while other reports say that Chinese can’t be trusted on this issue – has not helped.
Improved relations with the North-east can finally enable the latter to break free of the Chicken’s Neck Syndrome that binds it to a future as an economic backwater. The region’s internal economics will grow as it opens up to its neighbours, especially Bangladesh, instead of trying to continue expensive imports and exports from and to mainland India through the narrow corridor that links the two.
North by North-east
By Sanjoy Hazarika