Despite peace-mongering, India remains the bully on the block. Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Nepal have been variously alienated. Now, four years after the Gugral peace initiative settled the water dispute with Bangladesh, its eastern neighbour has been given a dose of New Delhi’s aggressive intent.
Last week, 16 Indian soldiers were killed by the Bangladesh army when they violated the international border in the Sylhet-Meghalaya sector. Understandably, Indians were angry to learn that the dead bodies had been mutilated. Inexplicably, however, the Indian government didn’t shed any light on what had happened, despite a string of nagging questions by the Bangladesh media. Nor has India registered the message of the protesting people of Bangladesh. Instead, the BJP’s allies want aggressive action. Accordingly, New Delhi has reinforced its forces on the border and registered a case of “war crimes” against Bangladesh in an Indian court.
India needs to look at what is happening inside Bangladesh in order to understand why its army has encountered such fierce resistance from the Bangladesh army. Mrs Hasina Wajed’s Awami League government is friendly with the Hindu-nationalist BJP government (it was friendlier still with the Gujral government earlier). But India and BD share a potentially troublesome 4000 km long border guarded by 700 ‘border outposts’ because both countries have enclaves penetrating far into each other’s territory. This is the legacy of the 1947 Radcliffe Award. It should have been straightened out but wasn’t when Bangladesh was still East Pakistan. However, an agreement to do so was signed in 1974. But this wasn’t subsequently ratified by India because it perceived ‘unfriendly political trends’ in Dhaka that led to the political eclipse of the pro-India Awami League of Sheikh Mujiburrehman. Meanwhile, India has continued to suffer from a steady ‘leakage’ of Bangladeshis into India which could have been better prevented if the treaty had been ratified.
Most Indian security experts insist that India should adopt a “forward policy” and teach Bangladesh a lesson. They accuse Bangladesh of culpability on other counts too: that a senior BD army officer paid a visit to Pakistan recently; that Khaleda Zia, the opposition leader, visited China; that the ISI had set up office in a certain quarter of Dhaka and was behind it all; that the Bangladeshi army was pro-Pakistan and that General Musharraf’s current visit to Myanmar could be part of a grand design against India. But no one cared to note that the Bangladeshi media was unanimous in criticising India for provoking the conflict.
Indian security minds are unwilling to see Bangladesh as a small state next door that should be sympathetically treated. They also tend to encourage the Indian public to think of India as an innocent and righteous state constantly destabilised by its’ wicked’ small neighbours. Indeed, the Indian state is so disabled by passions of misplaced nationalism that it cannot fathom why a small and poor state like Bangladesh should choose to kill and maim its troops in such a manner. This, despite the eventual great cost to India when a Sri Lankan soldier hit prime minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1990 with his rifle butt during a ceremonial parade long before he was assassinated as a direct consequence of the Indian role in the civil war in Sri Lanka. The fact that the Indian ‘free’ media has also failed to present the other side of the story — how the BSF has gradually encroached on Bangladeshi enclaves – reinforces the negative aspect of Indian nationalism.
The hostile Indian reaction does not auger well for the future of Indo-BD relations. Prime minister Hasina Wajed’s popularity will plunge if she isn’t sufficiently defiant. Right wing politicians might also try to deepen the wedge that already exists between her and a suspicious BD army. Therefore Bangladesh might be destabilised unless India shows understanding, ratifies the treaty and gets out of the enclaves it has seized.
If India wants to be recognised as a global player it must first be accepted as a generous regional power trusted by its smaller neighbours. But this is highly unlikely in view of the prevailing circumstances. Now that elections are on in some Indian states hosting Bangladeshi refugees, local politics is bound to turn on communal issues, with leaders putting on the war paint in states like Assam, Bihar and West Bengal, and souring the regional atmosphere further. Let us not forget that there are over one million Bangladeshi refugees in India and the Bangladeshi economy is overwhelmed by goods smuggled across the unprotected border from India.
India’s quarrel with Pakistan is out in the open but Nepal and Bangladesh have tended to downplay their simmering squabbles with their big neighbour. However, when governments sweep big issues under the carpet, their people tend to form their own views about what India is doing to their country. Thus India’s villainy tends to be exaggerated and harms its bilateral relationships. Therefore, as the big country, India should understand this better than the small countries in its neighbourhood. But it doesn’t seem to give a damn. That is classic small-power behaviour in a nation that bids to become a global player and sit inside the UN Security Council.