Sadeq Khan
In its last world report on War against Terror, the US State Department made a succinct comment in its Bangladesh chapter. The comment suggested that both in domestic as well as foreign policy-making, the government of Bangladesh was being overtly influenced by India. Indeed these days, Indian officials and also the Indian media have begun to take it for granted that a hegemonic role for India is all but firmly established in Bangladesh.
To ordinary citizens in Bangladesh, India seems to have put all eggs in one basket for its dominance over Bangladesh since 2007, and that basket remains the grand alliance of expressly India-friendly political parties under the leadership of one and only Sheikh Hasina. Some analysts thought that recent trends, as particularly highlighted by the results of four big city corporation elections routing the grand alliance candidates, could have shaken up Indian over-confidence somewhat.
Border killings and Indian failure to resolve long-standing issues like Teesta water-sharing etc, notwithstanding repeated tall promises, have patently poisoned the Bangladeshi public mind against bloody-minded Indian security state. But the RAW establishment of India remains nonchalant. In an article posted in The Telegraph published from Kolkata, India, news analyst Charu Sudan Kasturi quoted an Indian official recalling the tension that marked Indo-Bangladesh relations when BNP was in power between 2001 and 2006, and saying “There’s much less anti-India rhetoric you hear, even from the BNP, during the civic elections. It’s different now.” That may prove to be a transient phenomenon, as contenders for power in Bangladesh are at this stage grappling with modality of general elections only, not substance of election rhetoric.
An experienced Bangladeshi political observer, on the other hand, found just the opposite psychological disposition evolving in Bangladesh. He ruefully remarked that in twenty-five years of Pakistani rule, the rulers were not able to make even fifty per cent of Bangladeshis antipathetic towards India; Sheikh Hasina’s rule have indeed in less than five years turned nearly all Bangladeshis antipathetic towards India.
The aforesaid article in The Telegraph gave the impression of a planted story as usually designed by the Research and Analysis Wing of the Indian security-state, for the purpose of psychological warfare in Bangladesh to constantly assert Delhi’s invisible stranglehold over Bangladesh affairs.
Titled “Delhi doesn’t lose sleep as Khaleda scores”, the article, published some 10 days after the 15 June City Corporation Elections in Bangladesh, noted: “India’s diplomatic establishment hasn’t forgotten the deep wounds its relationship with Dhaka suffered the last time Begum Khaleda Zia’s party led Bangladesh.
“But as Khaleda’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), now in Opposition, swept key civic polls last Monday ahead of the upcoming national polls, New Delhi stayed quietly optimistic — not apprehensive.
Experts are divided over whether the BNP’s win in municipal elections in Sylhet, Barisal, Khulna and Rajshahi necessarily suggests it has regained support it needs to defeat Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League in national polls possibly by the end of the year.
“But a decisive diplomatic push over the past two years to pragmatically engage with both Hasina, traditionally seen by many in Bangladesh as pro-India, and Khaleda, who frequently baited India in the past, has left New Delhi confident its ties with Dhaka are better insulated from the upheavals of domestic Bangladesh politics than in the past.”
Greater pomp and show for Khaleda
To explain Delhi’s “two years of efforts to insulate ties from domestic Bangla politics”, Mr. Kasturi wrote: “Politically, that effort involved inviting Khaleda over last November for a week-long trip during which she was accorded greater pomp and show than is normal for a foreign leader of Opposition — risky because it upset Hasina.
“But between 2001 and 2006, Khaleda rebuffed all overtures aimed at strengthening bilateral ties. ‘India tried very seriously in 2001 to engage with the BNP,’ said Deb Mukharji, former Indian high commissioner to Bangladesh, adding that India had — and would — work with Dhaka independent of the party in charge. “But these things depend on how the other side responds.” Over the past two years, Khaleda has responded.
“But Indian officials remain cautious, aware that domestic Bangladesh politics can yet set back their efforts. Khaleda snubbed India by cancelling a scheduled meeting with President Pranab Mukherjee when he visited Dhaka in March, citing a bandh (hartal).
‘‘We have been walking that extra mile with the BNP, showing that we are capable of doing business with them,’’ said Smruti Pattanaik, a research fellow at the Institute of Defence Studies and Analysis, a New Delhi think tank. ‘‘And I think they know they too have to work with India.’’ (But) ‘Finally, you have to see how people approach relations when they are in power,’’ Mukharji said.”
Deb Mukharji, who was Indian High Commissioner in Bangladesh quite some time back, continues to be engaged with Bangladesh and presumably with the Indian security establishment in a demi-official role carrying on with the “cultural offensive” for build-up of Indo-Bangladesh affinity. Coloured by the spectrum of cultural camaraderie, his cautions optimism about evolving positivism in India-Bangladesh relations, may prove to be fragile particularly as Indian and not Bangladeshi discordant sound waves aggressively claiming Bangladeshi “illegal migrants” being responsible for “growing proportion of Muslims” amongst residents in Assam, in Maharashtra (Mumbai) and in Delhi city state are emanating from hustings platforms ahead of 2014 general elections in India.
Source: Weekly Holiday
