Any democratic mind anywhere in today's world would wonder, if s/he observes carefully, how South Asia's largest country could be politically so incorrect by taking a position against the people's will while maintaining her relations with the geographically closest neighbour!
Killing of Bangladeshis along the border, depriving the lower-riparian country of due shares of waters of common rivers, Delhi's tariffs and non-tariff barriers to cross-border trade and measures to blockmovement of natural persons, drug trafficking and smuggling into Bangladesh, providing shelter to terrorists and killers inIndian territoryand hostile propaganda by the Godi (India's pro-ruling camp) media - none of these issues would offer India a moral upperhand in decent diplomatic conversations.The policy she pursues towards Bangladesh lacks fairness and sensitivity to the people; obviously missing are magnanimity and prudence that a great power needs to show.
Recent measures such as visa restrictions on Bangladeshis and cancellation of transshipment facilities for Bangladesh, indicate decisions out of certain grudge Delhi has developed against a nation of 180 million following the ouster and fleeing of India's puppet and fascist ruler Sheikh Hasina through a revolutionary political changeover on 5 August 2024.
Both domestic and foreign affairs policies conducted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government of Hindutva ideology conform to what his team believe in, sayas part of their political rhetoric and do without any hesitation before the eyes of the civilized world.
Accordingly, India's media reports in late April claimed, their police had detained "at least 890' or 'more than 1,000' Bangladeshi 'immigrants' in Gujrat, the home state of premier and ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) supremo Modi. The detainees including women and children were allegedly involved in criminal activities and a minister from the state was quoted to have said the process was underway to deport them.
The common reports on this issue were verified by no independent sources and there were no proofs presented of how they could be considered Bangladeshis. Instead, the detainees had documents that confirm they were Indian citizens.
When asked, a high official in the Bangladesh government told this author that Dhaka has nothing to do with this issue since there is no Bangladeshi involved in the case mentioned. "The only issue is: the ill-fated people detained bear Muslim names. If the Indian authorities cannot respect their official documents, that is their domestic issue," the official added.
Like the practice of 'pushingin' unregistered Indian nationals or artificially made stateless persons,into the Bangladesh territory in the past, the Indian ruling authorities might be searching for an excuse to expel some people, compel them to enter into the neighouring country or at least embarrass the interim government led by Professor Muhammad Yunus formed after the fall of deposed prime minister Hasinawho fled to no other country but India.
The Bangladesh people's migration to an Indian state is also hardly likely as they usually migrate to countries of the Middle East, the Southeast Asia and the developed world, where per capita and working opportunities are muchhigher than in highly populated, developing Indiawhose per capita is lower than Bangladesh's.
The Indian media reports said the detainees might have procured documents in West Bengal, a state having long border with Bangladesh, which has around 30 per cent Muslim population and is governed by a non-BJP government of firebrand politician Mamata Banarjee. The so-called Bangladeshi immigrants were caught in a faraway state of Gujrat where some 2,000 Muslims were killed in riots in 2002 when Narendra Modi was its chief minister.
Also during the Modi rule in Delhi, another Indian state bordering with Bangladesh, Assamruled by a BJP government had a few years ago moved to strip almost two million people of citizenship by issuing National Register of Citizens (NRC). They were also termed as Bangladeshis who India claimed entered its northeastern state after 1971, the year Bangladeshgot independence. Those Assamese people were in fact Bangla-speaking Muslims, very much part of the population of northeast India for centuries.
The pawn of such heartless politics ignoring the rights of the religious minorities as the latest case is for Muslims in India, is Bangladesh, a country which has shown generosity of giving shelter to more than 1.5 million Rohingya people from Myanmar who too are Muslims in their belief.
Unfortunately, the heat of India's domestic politics affecting the Muslims somehow affects Bangladesh as a Muslim-majority nation. Conversely, the Hindu-majority India often raised concern over minority rights inside Bangladesh, as did in a recent case of death of an elderly Hindu Bangladeshi man in mob beating whereas it was later confirmed that the death was a natural one.
India is the country which has been criticised by rights agencies like Amnesty International for persecution of minorities.After 1947, India had captured two predominantly Muslim, princely states of Hyderabad and Kashmir, without holding any plebiscite to take opinion of the peoples.
Some retired Bangladeshi officials privately recalled that the Indian officials had brought forth allegations of repressionof minorities in Bangladesh before or during bilateral talks on, say, trade or water-sharing, even when there is a friendly or subservient government in Dhaka, to paralyse the Bangladeshi counterparts so that they could not bargain hard.
Hasina's exit from power after 15 and half years of obedient services to Delhi has left the Indian authorities in lurch as reflected in the outrage in the Indian intelligentsia and low official engagement. Indian authorities fail to acknowledge that giving shelter to an undemocratic ruler who killed her people, plundered national resources and escaped public wrath, has created irritants in bilateral relations.
New Delhi has maintained its bonhomie with a dictatorial regimesuch as Sheikh Hasina's and alsoone-party government of her father Sheikh Mujib immediately after independence. India's preference proves to be for a government that is ready to act against its own people at home the way Hasina suppressed the voting and other rights of people. How will Delhi appreciate friendly relations with the Bangladeshis and track-II diplomacy or a people-to-people contact?
Such mindset might have been circumscribed by a kind of 'hate Muslim' psyche as part of Islamophobia among an influential section of people around the world. Delhi's tilt towards Israel despite the genocide of Palestinian Muslims in Gaza is consistent with its treatment of the Muslims at home. A country which destroyed Babri Mosque has reportedly damaged a mosque during its attack called Operation Sindur on Pakistan, its arch enemy, which came into being at the end of the British colonial rule in this part of the world.
Even after the diamond jubilee of independence from Britain and drawing of South Asia's map based largely on concentration of Hindu-Muslim population, India has still been obsessed with the myth of great "India" coined actually by the outsiders.
To proponents of one Hindustan, the year 1947 was marked as what they called partition. And in spite ofdismemberment of Pakistan with India's direct support in 1971, East Pakistan turned into Bangladesh which still remains Bangladesh without being merged with Indian union.
So, a sovereign Bangladesh may remind some quarters in Delhi of the loss of Muslim-majority territory in 1947, loss of opportunity to retake it in 1971 and loss of empire through the end of pro-India rule of a namesake prime minister in Dhaka. Now, India has the option for redefining honestly its policy towards Bangladesh by freeing it from domestic issues of each other and hangover of the past.
The writer is a journalist
