Pride and prejudice: Delhi-Dhaka's ties of woe

India-Bangladesh relations remain dominated by intangible attitudinal factors

Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Jr  Delhi

It is hard to ignore the rhetoric of the opinion-makers in New Delhi on relations with Pakistan on the one hand, and towards Bangladesh on the other. In the last give years, the chorus of the India-Pakistan friendship lobby is louder and more insistent than ever. This can be seen in the language of the hard-nosed group of strategic experts and that of civil society peaceniks with olive branches in their hands. There is an overwhelming sentimentalism underlying the overtures towards Pakistan. And the silken thread of cultural commonality that seems to bind peaceniks in both the countries can be seen most eloquently in the acting involvement of the Mumbai's Hindi film stars in the peace project. Of course, there is the commercial angle to it. Pakistan is a lucrative market for Hindi cinema. And it is necessary to state the unstated fact as well: the Punjabi lobby of pre-Independence era that is pushing hard for rapprochement between the two countries.

Turn to Bangladesh now. The strategy experts in New Delhi are both relentless and ruthless in enumerating Bangladesh's sins of omission and commission on the issues of terrorism, illegal movement of people across the border and trade ties. There is no civil society group, as in the case of Pakistan, which pushes for closer India-Bangladesh relations. And there is no Bengali lobby either in Kolkata or in New Delhi, comparable to the Punjabi sentimentalist lobby in New Delhi, to talk about the emotional bonds between Bangladesh and India. It is easy to see the limited appeal of amity between India and Bangladesh. The trend-setters in New Delhi and Mumbai and in other places of north India are more visible and colourful and everything they say and do about improving India-Pakistan relations gets media exposure. The emotional attraction of Bangladesh is limited to Bangla-speakers, who are confined to West Bengal and parts of Assam. New Delhi and north India do not much care about it. And also, the upper-crust, upstart Kolkata elite, which is mainly Hindu, has never been too enthusiastic about Bangladesh's Muslim population. There is an undeniable cultural snobbery, which has a savage tint to it, in what Kolkata's literati and glitterati think about Bangladesh.

The ruling Left Front, which has been in power in Kolkata for nearly 30 years, has not done much to improve the situation despite its ostensible progressive outlook. Yes, former West Bengal chief minister Jyoti Basu played a quiet and crucial role in settling the Farakka barrage issue. But nothing more than that. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) sympathisers in Kolkata attack the Left Front for creating a vote bank out of the illegal

Bangladesh migrants into the state. It is to counter this campaign, perhaps, that Left Front leaders do not want to be seen as being pro-Bangladesh. And in the last two years, West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee has been loudly expressing his concern about the growth of madrasas in the border districts, and the spread of Islamist fundamentalists.

India's Bangladesh-bashers have their prescriptions for what Bangladesh should do to please India. They want the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) to be voted out of power, and the India-friendly Awami League to be voted in. They do not state the issue in that way. They argue that BNP is politically allied to anti-India Islamic fundamentalist parties like the Jamaat-e-Islami, and that Awami League is more secular. They argue that India should support secular parties in Bangladesh. There is no doubt that such Indian positions display the attitude of a regional superpower, or bully, resembling that of the United States. The US policy-makers want democracy in other countries, but they also want those democracies to elect US-friendly governments. The Indian argument about Bangladesh is not very different.

It is, of course, absolutely true that the growth of fundamentalist and extremist organisations in Bangladesh is on the rise, and that these organisations are openly hostile to India. The argument of some Indian experts that the Bangladesh establishment is not reluctant to make political use of these fundamentalists, which is part of realpolitik anywhere will even pass muster. India itself is not innocent on this issue.

Indian political parties have flirted with extremist organisations in the neighbourhood, as well as within the country for many years now. So, there is no moral justification for Delhi to deliver sermons on combating terrorism from the pulpit. What is required then is a realistic assessment and adjustment between the governments in dealing with extremists and terrorism. It cannot be ruled out that Bangladesh would rein in the terrorists if India concedes something on the trade front. It is not very different from the Pakistan position, which is that of forcing India to talk on the issue of Jammu and Kashmir in return for controlling the jehadis.

Unlike Pakistan, Bangladesh is less likely to play the terrorism card because of its growing economy.

When Bangladesh emerged as an independent country in 1972, it was at the bottom of the rung of even poor countries. It belonged to that euphemistically named group called Least Developed Countries (LDCs). But the country has made significant progress since then. Its social indices on health, education have improved tremendously. It has made good use of its agricultural potential, and it is making strides on a modest scale on the industrial front. This has been an economic miracle, which went unnoticed in India as well as in the rest of the world. The US has played an influential role in the transformation of Bangladesh economy through international aid agencies like the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. Even influential Bangladeshis are not keen to acknowledge the role of the US on the economic front. Unlike Pakistan, which did not care much about transforming its economy because of the politics of aid-attached military alliances through the Cold War period, and now as part of the ostensible global war on terrorism, Bangladesh had to improve its economy to survive as a nation-state, and it did so.

There is no doubt that terrorists and fundamentalists can wreck this vibrant economy of Bangladesh, and it is for the Dhaka establishment to choose as to how much it would flirt with Islamists India can persuade at an informal level about the need to check the extremists, but it cannot be made part of state policy. And there are also indirect ways that India can play a positive role in providing a counter-weight to the lunatic fringe. Greater economic and trade ties with Bangladesh will enable the people of the country to keep the extremists at bay. It would also require for India to adopt an innovative policy on the issue of the movement of people across the border. It can be done by giving Bangladeshis entering India the status of "guest-workers", as the US has done with the Mexican migrants.

This process may not do away with the irritants and dangers the migration poses, but it would make it so much easier to handle. It is interesting that many Bangladeshis argue that most migrants from their country are gong westward to seek better jobs, and that the numbers coming into India is not too large. Small or big, there is need to regulate the movement of people across the border.

Unlike in the case of Pakistan that seeks an unrealistic parity with India on all fronts, Bangladesh has no hesitation in recognising India as a major power in the region, and all that Dhaka wants is a fair deal from the stronger and larger partner. Instead of throwing its crude weight around, India should be dealing with Bangladesh with greater sensitivity. Some Bangladeshis also admit that some of the demands made by their government are not always rational. For example, they concede that the Bangladesh demand to include the guarantee of the corridor to Nepal on a trilateral India-Myanmar-Bangladesh agreement does not stand to reason, but they argue that they require some assurance from Indians on that count for political reasons. India need not appease Bangladesh the way it is being asked to do with Pakistan by the US and the others. What is needed is a greater flexibility in India's Bangladesh policy. Delhi's present standoffish attitude towards Dhaka reflects India's churlishness rather than its strength.