India-Bangladesh Relations Are At A Tipping Point.

Colombo, December 10: The Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri will be in Dhaka for 12 hours on December 9 to meet his counterpart Mohammad Jashim Uddin and also the Chief Advisor to the Interim Government Dr Yunus, who is like the Prime Minister.

Though described as being part of the regular“structured dialogue” between the two countries, Vikram Misri's talks with the Interim Government in Dhaka will decide if India and Bangladesh will return to being friends or will continue to be antagonistic. India-Bangladesh relations are at a tipping point now.

After Sheikh Hasina was ousted from the Premiership of Bangladesh and was forced to flee to India on August 5, India-Bangladesh relations went down the chute. It has been going further down consistently since then, with serious charges being bandied about by both sides, not officially, but by loud mouths in political parties and YouTube channels. Demonstrations are held in various cities in both countries queering the pitch and adding fuel to the fire.

Interested parties in India have, for their own narrow political gain, interpreted the July-August student-led mass movement against Hasina's oppressive rule as a movement against the Hindu minority in Bangladesh and also against India with which the Hindus have been unfairly bracketed.

On the Bangladesh side, radical Islamic forces like the Jamaat-e-Islami and Hefazat-i-Islam saw in the July-August political crisis and its uncertain aftermath, an ideal opportunity to attack the Hindus who they dub as infidels deserving only a subordinate place in an“Muslim” Bangladesh. Thus, a popular, though violent, movement, against a dictatorial ruler, turned out to be a Hindu-Muslim and an India-Bangladesh conflict.

The crisis has made the Hindus of Bangladesh (who are 8% of the 170 million Bangladeshis), fear attacks from the Muslim side. Indeed, a large number of Hindu properties and even temples were vandalized by Islamic zealots and anti-Awami League hot heads. And the Muslim majority feared an Indian attempt to twist the arms of the weak Interim Government of Prof. Muhammad Yunus to restore Hasina's rule. This was based on a popular belief in Bangladesh that Hasina was powerful for 15 years because she had India's full backing.

Hackles went up in New Delhi when the Bangladeshi authorities said that Hasina would be extradited from India and tried in the International Criminal Court (ICC) at the Hague. As per Dhaka Tribune, a complaint had been lodged against Hasina and 24 others at the ICC.

Forces opposed to Hasina saw her relations with India during her 15-year tenure as having been patently asymmetrical and skewed in favour of powerful India. But those of this view had turned a blind eye to the fact that Bangladesh too had gained a lot from close ties with India. Bangladesh would not have been able to grow and even survive without close economic and people to people ties with India. Bangladesh is surrounded on three sides by India and the Bay of Bengal in the fourth side. Many commodities of common use are available in Bangladesh at reasonable prices thanks to trade with India. India is the main medical treatment destination for middle class Bangladeshis.

Geopolitical Dimension

The crisis had acquired geopolitical dimensions as well. Among Indians, the attacks on the Hindus in Bangladesh rekindled fears of rising radical Islam. They rekindled Islamophobia in the West. Some British MPs condemned the attacks on the Hindus in Bangladesh. US President-elect Donald Trump stung Bangladeshis by his condemnation of the attacks on Hindus on October 31. Bangladeshis saw a US-India axis emerging to thwart the August 5 regime change.

On the other hand, Indians tend to see the ouster of Hasina as a“Pakistani-US plot” aimed at ending India's monopoly of influence over Bangladesh. When Bangladesh eased visa procedures for Pakistanis and improved trade with Pakistan, India smelt an anti-India axis emerging.

The India-Bangladesh conflict is being exacerbated by unverified reports of India deploying troops on the border and Bangladesh using Turkish drones over the border. There were attacks on the Bangladesh mission in Tripura and demonstrations in Dhaka against the Indian mission. Bangladeshi and Indian flags were burnt.

For Indian Hindus, the latest provocation has been the arrest of a Hindu monk, Chinmoy Krishna Das Sammilita Sanatani Jote, on“sedition” charges and the denial of bail to him. There intense propaganda in India that Chinmoy Das is a member of the renowned International Society of Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON). It was alleged that Chinmoy has no lawyer to defend him because they were beaten up. India called for a fair trial.

However, ISKCON's international spokesman Devshekhar Das told The Week that Chinmoy Das did not belong to ISKCON. He had left the organization some months ago to start his own outfit.
But ISKCON Bangladesh publicly stated that he was sacked in July for child abuse.

It is in the midst this volatile situation in both India and Bangladesh that India's Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri would be in Dhaka on December 9 for talks. These Dhaka talks will decide if India and Bangladesh will return to being friends or continue to be antagonistic.

Chinmoy Das's issue is of immediate importance politically. There is a Hindu nationalistic government firmly ensconced in New Delhi for which the Hindus are the core political constituency. And the brand“ISKCON” is highly valued in India, though in this case ISKCON is not actually involved as its spokesman Deveshekhar Das stated.

Misri is expected to seek a fair trial forcefully in his meetings in Dhaka. And on this issue, India is backed by the US.

Business to the Rescue

However, in the midst of gloom, there is light at the end of the tunnel. It looks as if the business community in both India and Bangladesh will press the two governments to bury the hatchet and resume normal relations. Reports from India say that businessmen both in retail and in cross border trade, are feeling the pitch after entry and exit points were threatened with closure.

The call for a boycott of Bangladeshis by eating houses and hospitals in Tripura and Kolkata had begun to hurt these institutions financially.
Eventually, the boycott was lifted. Indian and Bangladeshi authorities reopened the largest land port between the two countries which connects Petrapole in India and Benapole in Bangladesh.

The speedy restoration of trade was a result of the economic interdependence between India and Bangladesh. India is Bangladesh's second-largest trading partner. Bangladesh shares 94% of its 4,367 km-long border with India. Bangladesh relies on India for many essentials like rice, wheat, cotton, iron and steel, electronic equipment and textiles for its garment industry.

Saner Voices

Meanwhile, saner voices in both India and Bangladesh have called for restraint while being firm on fundamentals. Ambassador Harsh Vardhan Shringla, a former Indian Foreign Secretary, told an Indian TV channel that India-Bangladesh relations had a win-win quality when Hasina was in power as both nations had gained.

If Bangladesh needs India for its economic growth and survival, India needs Bangladesh for its security and defence against separatism in North East India and expansionist radical Islam.

In Bangladesh, Zillur Rahman, executive director at the Centre for Governance Studies (CGS), wrote in The Daily Star:“What Bangladesh needs right now is justice and a path to healing. At present, no one can ignore the rise in vitriolic rhetoric targeting certain minority groups and indigenous communities. This escalation has left these groups feeling frustrated and fearful, prompting some to resort to their own brand of vitriolic, populist, and anti-establishment sentiment. What is deeply concerning is that individuals carrying such radical views may now have the ear of some of the advisers.”

“At the moment, long unresolved divisions in society are catalysing due to the machinations of subversive foreign and domestic factors. This kind of division only worsens due to rampant misinformation pushed on social media without any accountability.”

Rahman appealed to the Interim Government to remain above the fray of the culture war and focus squarely on its mandate to restore democratic institutions. He also asked the government to stop the public humiliation of groups or institutions not directly linked to the Hasina regime.

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