Opportunity for Neighbours to Bridge Divide in Dhaka
It is rather well known that in mid-1947, just before Partition, Great Britain’s top civil servant Sir Cyril Radcliffe, assigned by the departing imperial power the crucial responsibility of delineating the borders between the two emerging nations of India and Pakistan, made serious cartographic gaffes. His hasty, illogically demarcated boundaries left a legacy of unresolved land disputes between India and Pakistan. Thus, when East Pakistan became independent and transformed itself into a sovereign Bangladesh in December 1971, it not only inherited a 4096km-long boundary on India’s east, but, inexplicably, the 1947 division had carved out 162 enclaves, out of which 111 belonged to India and 51 to East Pakistan (now Bangladesh)—thus a perfect recipe for mutual recrimination and attendant security problems!
Notwithstanding Radcliffe’s faux pas, the birth, 25 years later, of Bangladesh witnessed in its early years of nationhood much bonhomie between the architect of its freedom struggle and first PM, Sheikh Mujibur Rehman, and India’s formidable PM Indira Gandhi. The latter occupies a hallowed place in the minds of Bangladeshis for having taken the historic decision to launch the Indian Armed Forces to evict the Pakistanis from their eastern wing in 1971. Thus in 1974, overruling all local motivations, both these charismatic leaders agreed to sign a Land Boundary Agreement (LBA) to resolve all boundary issues between the two nations.
India-Bangladesh relations, however, since the latter’s birth have been somewhat of a roller coaster ride. While Bangladesh’s current, secular-oriented ruling party, Awami League, led by Sheikh Mujib’s daughter Sheikh Hasina has been traditionally cordially disposed towards India, the earlier ruling dispensation of Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) leader Begum Khaleda Zia or its earlier military rulers have been pro-Islamist and anti-India. Both China and Pakistan have been fishing in troubled waters whenever the BNP or the military rulers have been in power in Dhaka. Chinese abetment of insurgency in our NE is a well-documented fact since years.
That Pakistan’s notorious ISI, to needle India and stoke insurgent fires in India’s Northeast, has maintained intimate professional links with Bangladesh-based fundamentalist organisations like the Harkat-ul-Jihadi-al-Islami (HuJI-B), Jamat-e-Islami, the Talibanised Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh, Indian insurgent groups the ULFA and NDFB are widely recognised facts. Some indigenous militant groups have been found to have links even with foreign terror outfits like the al Qaeda, LeT, HuM and even the ISIL. During military rule in Bangladesh, in particular, the ISI had successfully cultivated Bangladesh’s intelligence agency, DGFI, for its anti-Indian agendas.
Most anti-Indian insurgent groups operating in NE, since decades, have operated either from Bangladesh or neighbouring Myanmar. It is to the credit of PM Sheikh Hasina’s government that it has strongly discouraged the nefarious anti-India activities of these groups from Bangladeshi soil besides handing over terrorist leaders like ULFA’s Arabinda Rajkhowa and Raju Barua to India.
In September 2011, PM Manmohan Singh had travelled to Dhaka to sign the LBA with Bangladesh PM Sheikh Hasina apart from ironing out other major differences with India’s strategically located eastern neighbour. However, back home, the then major Opposition party, the BJP, did not let Parliament pass this Bill terming it an “attack on Indian sovereignty”. But in a remarkable change of stance, after assuming power in New Delhi, the BJP has vigorously piloted the same Bill in Parliament and with the assistance of the entire Opposition, led by the Congress, this landmark Bill was unanimously adopted on May 7 to ratify the 100th amendment to India’s Constitution.
PM Modi now travels on June 5-6 to Dhaka to formally sign the Bill with PM Sheikh Hasina. All Indian states bordering Bangladesh, especially Assam, have also been taken on-board and also many minor irritants on transfer of land in the enclaves and the future nationality of the inhabitants, mutually resolved with Bangladesh. However, India has to reach out in a magnanimous manner to assuage the other genuine problems for which Bangladesh feels strongly aggrieved.
The fair sharing of the Teesta River waters, the Farakka Barrage issue and not constructing any more barrages upstream (Bangladesh is the lower riparian state) is a major issue. Bangladesh opines that owing to the Farakka Barrage, India does not give it adequate water during the drier seasons utilising these waters for the Hooghly, while during the monsoons, India releases its excess water causing floods in low-lying areas of Bangladesh.
Some other contentious issues including the trade deficit, in the overall mutual trade of over USD 7 billion between the two nations, currently heavily loaded in India’s favour; the large-scale shooting of innocent civilians by India’s BSF at the unfenced border—some trying to get across into each other’s country—need resolution.
Bangladesh, of course, has to address the major problem of massive and regular illegal immigration into India which, unfortunately, it has been denying. By conservative estimates, India has over 15 million Bangladesh immigrants with its attendant security, health (HIV/AIDS carriers) and economic consequences. It’s also an unfortunate fact that the demography of Assam has radically been altered owing to illegal immigration from Bangladesh and without the latter’s sincere support it cannot get resolved. The security ramifications of these illegal settlers from Bangladesh are indeed a cause of serious concern for the Indian state.
Strategically, too, Bangladesh is a lynchpin in India’s “Look East” strategy. With mutual accommodation, Bangladesh could become a springboard to support serious Indian forays in its “Act East Policy”. As the waters of the Indian Ocean get warmer owing to an assertive Chinese naval presence, a friendly Bangladesh ensures that the Bay of Bengal and thus the Indian coastline close to it remain peaceful for economic exploitation without any security headache. Both nations must also strive for greater security cooperation in the areas of counterterrorist operations, sharing of intelligence including maritime cooperation. China is the major supplier of defence equipment to Bangladesh and India may wish to factor in Bangladesh’s defence needs. India and Bangladesh have conducted joint army exercises in the past, namely the Sampriti (Unity) series, and these could be enlarged in their scope and content to also include disaster management apart from counter-terror operations.
Today, India and Bangladesh stand on the threshold of forging a mutually beneficial and enduring relationship. Hopefully, the political leadership of both nations will not let this historic opportunity elude them any further and the bilateral relationship will become a model in good neighbourliness for the entire region.