By R N Ravi
The strategic reality of Bangladesh is that it is India locked. The arc of its lock is the North-East and East India. However, it is equally true that North-East India is Bangladesh locked. While the two are inextricably inter-locked, the genius of the two countries lie in turning this inseparable co-existence into a mutually beneficial one and not let it degenerate into a death-lock.
It is an acknowledged fact that much of the woes of North-East India owe their existence to the geographical and emotional distance from the mainstream India rendered so by the reckless partition of the sub-continent by the British. This region, overnight, became a far- flung periphery. Places within an arc of less than 600 km from Kolkata were pushed twice or thrice the distance away. Through the circuitous Siliguri corridor Guwahati is 1081 km, Silchar 1496 km, Agartala 1680 km and Aizawl 1547 km from Kolkata. The Indian establishment began defining the region predominantly in strategic terms. It became paranoid over its potential vulnerabilities embedded in its geo-political texture. Its tenuous land link with the rest of India by a 18×22 km thin land strip near Siliguri in West-Bengal metaphorically called “the chicken neck” and its about 98% border with foreign countries dominated its perception in policy formulations for the region.
During a recent one week tour of Bangladesh which included visits to its major cities including Dhaka and Chittagong and interactions with members of academia, student leaders, political and social activists, artists and corporate leaders one could palpably sense their overall friendliness towards India. Equally palpable was the widespread urge of Bangladeshis for retributive justice for the quislings who had collaborated with the Pakistan Army and committed mass murders and rapes during the nine month Liberation War of Bangladesh. There is groundswell support for the ongoing trials of war criminals.
In the midst of a popular outrage against collaborators of Pakistan I was struck by a common refrain, ‘Why does India hate Bangladesh and view it with suspicion?’ Some of them had their tales of personal tragedies and unsavory experiences. A professor at Chittagong told how he, while recently in Mumbai for medical treatment of his wife, was turned away from hotels after hotels merely because he held a Bangladeshi passport. Another one narrated an incident at Chennai railway station where while negotiating for some train tickets the railway officer quizzed him, “Why you Bangladeshis are anti-India?” Many in Bangladesh wonder why an agreement on sharing Teesta water could not be reached whereas the much more complicated sharing of the Ganges water could be thrashed out way back in 1996. Many in Bangladesh erroneously believe that India has banned telecast of Bangladesh TV channels.
Intensity of widespread anguish over the tragic death of Fellani, a 15 year young girl while illegally negotiating border crossing at Anantpur-Phulbari on January 7, 2011 was strikingly palpable. The unfortunate victim, as widely reported in the Bangladesh media, was seeking to re-enter her country for marriage. Her father who accompanied her successfully jumped over the fence using a ladder. She got entangled in the barbed mess over the fence. Scared she screamed for help and was shot at by the approaching BSF-the border guarding Indian force, patrol. The picture of her limp body left hanging at the fence went viral on the inter-net. In her death, Fellani became a metaphor for India’s attitude towards Bangladesh.
While Bangladesh is grappling with its numerous internal contradictions and socio-political pathologies- power struggle among secular, moderate and rabid islamists, production of a patriotic history of the nation in the spirit of its Liberation War vis-à-vis deliberate distortions introduced and institutionalized by successive regimes post-1975, ubiquitous corruption in public life and self-destructive never-ending confrontational politics between the ruling and opposition alliances to name some prominent few among the issues; India needs to introspect if its political and diplomatic orientations towards this country need course corrections. An urgent exercise to this effect is an imperative for the mutual good of the two countries especially in the context of the North-East India.
Partition of the sub-continent has left a pernicious legacy of mutual suspicion and bitterness. However, the post-colonial and post-Bangladesh liberation Indian diplomacy did little to mitigate its toxic implications. The post-colonial Indian diplomacy was drenched in the blood of partition and swayed by the wars with Pakistan. The post-Bangladesh liberation diplomacy, in the wake of tragic assassination of Bang Bandhu, was soon hijacked by the security establishments of the two countries and was guided largely by the military logic. For the Bangladesh establishment the liberator(India) became a military hegemon with imperialistic ambitions. A deeply shocked and embarrassed Indian establishment recoiled into a military stand-to at the new regime in Bangladesh. A protracted cold war between the two countries ensued.
In such an unfriendly environment, within a few years of Sheikh Mujib’s assassination, North-East India exploded with anti-Bangladeshis movements. Assam witnessed unprecedented mass mobilization bordering on collective hysteria against alleged illegal influx from Bangladesh that was popularly perceived as an existential threat to it. The strategic community in India joined the chorus. They cherry-picked quotations from real and imagined history to prove their point that Bangladesh had sinister and even imperialistic intentions on North-East India. The thesis of a brihad Bangladesh(greater Bangladesh) was given currency in strategic discourses. In this backdrop New Delhi sought to calm the agitated nerves not through honest attempts at reckoning the issue and seeking a nuanced solution to it but by promising to build an impregnable border fence to shut off the Bangladeshis.
27 years down the line since 1985 when India began its project to fence the Bangladesh border, the recent riots in Assam and its echoes in other states of the region show that the issue of undocumented Bangladeshis in India remain unresolved. The fence has failed to address the issue, instead it has become a living metaphor of mutual animosity and hate. The barbed fence extending over several thousand kilometers and patrolled by military is demonstrative testimony of failure of Indian diplomacy with Bangladesh.
Instead of learning lessons from this quixotic venture, some powerful elements in the Indian establishment are contemplating to repeat it on Myanmar border. Of late, some in the military establishment in India has mooted the idea of fencing its border with Myanmar. It is being peddled by them as a cure-all for all the ills of the region. Given the preponderance of cynical politics and fickle Indian diplomacy one should not be surprised if it materializes. That would be a blunder and it will push the region, especially the Naga inhabited areas, into further chaos. Of course, then India, fenced from west, south and east, will have the dubious distinction of a self-caged nation having robust regional and global ambitions!
A border is not a mere line on political maps of countries. Decided by distant players of geo-politics it puts the unwilling border population in an unenviable predicament of everyday tight rope negotiation of an externally inflicted dichotomy of their political and sociological identities. Such a forced dichotomy compels them to resort to ways not always held legal by the establishment. Thus it is imperative to take its due cognizance while formulating border policies.
A friendly Bangladesh is crucial to the relevance of India’s look east policy being looked upon by the people of the North-East with lots of positive expectations. There is an apprehension among many in the region that in absence of co-operation from Bangladesh it will become ‘overlook the North-East’ policy.
India’s policy towards Bangladesh is reflective of its slipshod casualness to the North-East. It is ill-informed, inadequate and reactive. The day India gets genuine with this region, its Bangladesh policy will get on the right track.
(The writer is a retired special director, Intelligence Bureau, reachable at ravindra.narayan.ravi @gmail.com)