Dr. Sinha M.A. Sayeed
Influence and weight of circular polemics, interpretations and debates on Bangladesh-India relations since 1971 have been on in full swing, which, convincingly or unconvincingly, hunt the minds of many, perhaps, from all walks of life posing certainly a leading question in line with the law of evidence, how long will it continue? To what extent will it shoot up carrying microbes of distrusts, suspicions, abhorrence and phobia? Where and when will have it comma, inverted comma, semi-colon, colon, hyphen, bracket and full stop in the true sense of all these marks of punctuations in the context of mutually rewarding bi-lateral relationships?
There is no denying the fact that Bangladesh’s geographical location in this region of Asia is characterized with two realities, one is that she connects south Asia with south east Asia through Myanmar by her border on the south east and, accordingly, she has become a bridge between south Asia and south east Asia and the other being that Bangladesh is land-locked on the three fronts, excepting the south which stretches right way to the Bay of Bengal, by her gigantic neighbor India with 4156 kilometer border, 161 enclaves, vital maritime demarcation knots and all the 54 rivers inflowing into her from the Himalaya through India. In plain terms, all these denote that Bangladesh needs India for her peaceful journey and development and India requires Bangladesh, among others, also for her territorial connectivity with north eastern states called seven sisters.
Therefore, India, one may like it or not, by nature comes and continues as an unavoidable flaming issue in our internal and external standing. Hence crops up, prima fasciae, a proposition that the success of the Bangladesh’s foreign policy rotates as a rule around building and cementing ties with India as our major and maximum problems lay with India and to resolve these amicably and peacefully, confidence-building in place of long-standing suspicion and phobia is a condition precedent. Mistakenly or recklessly or intentionally, there is no scope to equate it with Indo-centric approach of foreign policy.
Bangladesh is essentially in a state of acute politico-diplomatic challenges from India---an emerging Asian power blessed additionally with assertions and supports from the leader of the uni polar world USA-- on points of bi-literal and regional ties and cooperation in south Asia. Upholding her national interests under all circumstances, Bangladesh wants to stick to both bi-literalism and multi-literalism as and when required while India prefers and insists bi-literalism predominately in all most all cases, covertly or overtly, squeezing even the realm of SAARC.
With due respects and acknowledgments to the historic role of India in our war of liberation, it must be noted that nevertheless in today’s Bangladesh ironically few line of thoughts are in force about India that should not go unnoticed and uncared for the sake of confidence-building as a whole. They, inter alia, are:
a. Geography tells Bangladesh to be with India but history tells her to be away from India. The former is the dictate of nature while the latter is the resultant consequence of acts and policies of leaderships, past and present. Such paradoxical propositions are really a Himalayan threat to peaceful and friendly co-existence for these bordering neighbors. Since the present cannot be delinked from the past, since upon the present gets shaped future course of actions, therefore, a comprehensive, pragmatic, accommodative, viable, durable and mutually worthwhile means must, must have to be excavated, discovered or invented even by the political leaderships of Bangladesh and India in this regard;
b. as a result of the piercing continuation of the above, there generated , exists and continues Indo-phobic Bangladesh at the mass level and India-friendly Bangladesh at the government level and the latter, truly speaking, being the compulsion from the perspectives of state security and regime security. Uprooting or scaling down of the former may only be possible if the answer to the above proposition ‘a’ is met with reasonable care and mathematics;
c. it is also held by many foreign policy think-tanks, analysts and strategists, political or otherwise, that the Indian foreign policy is based principally on ‘Nehru doctrine’, otherwise called ‘India doctrine’, aimed at establishing and perpetuating the supremacy of India in the sub-continent and, therefore, Guzrul’s doctrine that holds on stating that ‘peaceful co-existence needs more sacrifices from the big’ is a mere intellectual exercise, which apparently might have some fluid appeal to the south bloc for strategic reasons or else;
immediate consequential blasts of India doctrine, if one attaches importance to it, are the start and the development of vertical-horizontal standing at the negation of horizontal or equal standing between two sovereign, free and independent states. It is on record that a rising power in most of the cases behaves selfishly and ruthlessly and such behavior is demonstrated more acutely to small neighbors. Unfortunately, India is not an exception at all; and
d. because of all these, political parties from right to left to moderate to extreme right to extreme left in Bangladesh hardly feel comfortable to deal with India even on a matter that is likely to provide her a lot of benefits apprehending that there is every possibility of being identified as pro-Indian, a cheap and oft-quoted political weapon in the electoral or non-electoral politics of Bangladesh.
e. In fact, from India’s perspective, AL is closer to her and it appears to be more responsive to her calls and needs. From Bangladesh perspective, apart from public perception, there is, as a ruling party, barely any signpost difference between the petticoat parties AL and BNP on the matters with India excepting so-called modes of handling and political jargons. But BNP’s U-turn position about the same from the opposition’s standing makes a sharp difference between AL and BNP. Such double-standard is really a tragedy for our foreign policy. It’s a tragedy with more vehemence, velocity and casualties than that of a Greek tragedy. The only possible way to put an end to this is to move for bi-partisanship i.e. consensus on vital foreign policy issues between these two petticoat parties.
However, needless to reiterate that India is our big neighbor, she should be our best friend and there must have practical ways and means to resolve the problems, old or new, for the benefits of the both. If it is well realized that our leaderships in the past could not go beyond a point due to short of mutually rewarding formula on account of India’s reluctant or recalcitrant stands, then it is also true to a large extent that on our part lack of bold initiatives covered with vision and mission of forward-looking leadership and diplomacy are also held to be responsible for such debacles. It’s a priori that if there is a head there must be a head ache, which needs to be nursed and medicated timely and duly. In an era of globalization marked with a great march of science and technology Bangladesh and India cannot lag behind cultivating, nursing and sustaining hostilities and suspicions any more.
Therefore, looking at the drives in the form of treaty, agreement etc. in various sectors covering transits, transshipments, corridor under the mask of connectivity, border demarcation, water-sharing and so on by Bangladesh and India following Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s visit to India and signing there a historic MOU with Indian Premier Monomohan Singh in 2010, it’s a time to see what exactly we lose or gain in the final end ((attention to my article ‘Indian PM’s Comment, aftermath and his forthcoming visit’, Dhaka Courier, 15 July 2011). That’s why it’s an acid test for the grand-alliance petticoat government led by Sheikh Hasina who has to move here astutely above the line of Shakespeare’s great observation ‘frailty, thy name is woman’.
Let us experience beyond doubt that Bangladesh-India relations are emerging as a role model as termed by Indian Foreign Minister SM Krishna during his last visit to Bangladesh from 6-8 July 2011. Let us, for more in the positive direction, also welcome the visit of Monomohan Singh to Bangladesh.
[Dr. Sinha M. A. Sayeed, Chairman, Leadership Studies Foundation [LSF], e-mail: sinha_sayeed611@yahoo.com].
Published: The Financial Express, 4th September 2011
Published: Dhaka Courier, 9th September 2011
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