Thanks, but no thanks

A few days ago, a huge cache of arms and ammunition was captured by the police when it landed by sea in Chittagong. Which groups the illegal shipment was meant for remains a mystery, as also who had provided the finance. The accidental detection may have been the act of the overzealous police personnel.

The Bangladesh government claims that the arms were meant for its political opponents. There is, however, the strong contrary view that the arms were actually meant for one or more Indian militant groups operating along our North-east borders. This suspicion is reinforced by the fact that leaders of the United Liberation Front of Asom and some other Indian terrorist groups have found refuge and comfort in Bangladesh and many of the incursions into Assam and the North-east are launched from the other side of India’s border. Nepal has been an old and known staging ground for the Inter-Services Intelligence, but it is now more preoccupied with its own internal uprising. Bhutan has recently cleaned up the Indian militant hideouts, but Bangladesh remains in denial.

The year 1970, the birth of Bangladesh as a new nation, now seems so faraway in the distant past. Alas, the bonhomie between our two countries following liberation, with the proactive help of India, was not destined to last. Although for a while the euphoria and the bonhomie between the two nations resembled the pre-Partition short-lived excitement of Shaheed Suhrawardy’s grand visions of a united Bengal, with a pace of inevitability, the excitement and relationship gradually settled down to the usual torpor of our sub-continental uneasiness.

The trauma of the assassination of Bangobondhu and several members of his family by his own generals was predictably followed by military dictatorships, political killings interspersed with uneasy elections and civilian governments with irreconcilable opposition parties.

Over the years, the terms “civil society” and “basket economy” have acquired a whole new meaning in Bangladesh. In the meantime, hordes of Bangladeshi economic refugees keep pouring into India in search of livelihood. Today Bangladeshis have spread across every nook and corner of India in search of livelihood and for survival.

During all these years, Indians kept nursing silent hurt at what was seen as ingratitude on the part of a nation, whose rescue from a marauding and rapacious Pakistan and whose very emergence as a nation was made possible by the generosity and support of its large neighbour. Was the Indian expectation of perpetual gratitude, if not friendship, justified? It is a truism that people and nations feel genuinely grateful towards their saviours in the immediate aftermath of liberation. This was also amply evident in the aftermath of the liberation of Bangladesh.

But as all sensible people and countries know, gratitude is not only a fragile commodity but also one with a very short half-life. Anyone who has any experience in calling back favours, share a common bewilderment at the reaction from the one favoured. In India’s case there was, of course, no need to seek any favours from Bangladesh, and hence the disappointment is even greater.

Bangladesh not being terribly friendly towards India is possibly understandable in the global context. Relations between France and the United States of America are good case in point. What is not readily explained is Bangladesh harbouring, and actively assisting, Indian militants to make forays into Indian territory. Even more bewildering is Bangladesh’s reported collaboration with Pakistan, its former tormentor and enemy and now its newfound Islamic brother, in assisting anti-Indian operations of the Pakistani ISI and other agent provocateurs.

The twin irritants of harbouring Indian militants, providing them with arms and funds, and pushing hordes of their own citizens as economic refugees into India, do not bode well for long term relations between India and Bangladesh.

In our euphoria about the liberation of Bangladesh and the resurgence of Bengali culture, art and ethnicity, we have overlooked the stronger pull of religion fuelled by economic backwardness. These factors had turned Shaheed Suhrawardy’s dream of a united Bengal into the nightmare of the pre-independence communal riots, and many years later the assassination of Bangobondhu looms as a symbol of irritation and disquiet between our two countries.

If our expectations during those early days of liberation of Bangladesh had been more modest, may be our disappointments would have been that much less painful. Compared to the daily fare of our difficult relations with Pakistan, that with Bangladesh is insignificant. However, the long term prospects are no less troublesome.