For friendship Bangladesh should look East
September 12 2004
Dr. Fakhruddin Ahmed
Bangladesh Foreign Minister Mr. M. Morshed Khan's "broadside" at India at for "unfair trade" practices at the session on India-Bangladesh Dialogue for Young Journalists was unusual for its brutal frankness and lack of diplomatic finesse. Coming on the heels of The Statesman's editorial on the August 21 carnage entitled, "Khaleda's game plan: Kill Hasina and banish democracy," these make Bangladeshis wonder how much of a true friend India is.
Bangladeshis have always acknowledged and will forever remain grateful to India for its crucial assistance during the nine months of Bangladesh's war of liberation in 1971, without which the liberation war would have taken much, much longer. But we would have prevailed. It does not take more than a cursory look at the predicament of the mighty US in Iraq to realise that a militarily weak and impoverished Pakistan would not have lasted in Bangladesh against a united nation for more than a few more months. We must also remember that at the most critical juncture in the history of our nation China and America opposed us. Only India and the USSR stood by our side. There is no way anyone should attempt to revise these truths about our liberation war.
Real charity is for its own sake. In one wants something in exchange for charity, that kind of quid pro quo cancels charity. If India's ultimate aim was to subjugate Bangladesh, then its assistance during the liberation war was tainted. The world has to understand something about the Bangladeshi psyche: we cannot stand hegemony and domination. If we preferred servility, we would have stayed with Pakistan. Nothing unites Bangladeshis and ignites their passion faster than the threat of foreign interference and domination. India should get used to the fact that it does not own Bangladesh!
If I were an Indian, I would be fuming at the successive governments of India for transforming a very grateful friend, Bangladesh, into, if not an enemy, something next to it. Bangladeshis witnessed India's first unfriendly act when they saw right before their eyes Indian soldiers loading their trucks with civilian and military hardware the Pakistani POWs had left behind in cantonments and elsewhere.
Our father of the nation Sheikh Mujibur Rahman embodied one of the finer attributes of the Bangladeshis, generosity. On a simple word from Indira Gandhi, in 1975 Sheikh Mujib ceded to India the Bangladeshi enclaves of Dahagram and Angarpota in a land exchange to make both the nations around Bangladesh more contiguous. Thirty years later, Bangladesh is yet to receive an equal slice of land from India as Indira had promised! We all know how hard India fought us for the puny Tin Bigha. India is 22-times bigger than Bangladesh. Where is the big brother's reciprocation, let alone generosity?
Generosity makes a nation great. One reason for America's greatness is its generosity. Even after 9/11, America has kept its door open for immigrants of all colour, race, and religion, including Muslims. One cannot say that of Australia, for instance, which is comparable to America in terms of land mass and resources. Still clinging to a white Australia policy, it severely restricts non-white immigration, and consequently occupies one of the lowest rungs among the western nations! It is not for a Bangladeshi to comment on India's generosity or lack of it, but a Bangladeshi is free to cite an Indian source. If a fraction of what film director Mani Ratnam showed in the film Dil Se (starring Manisha Koirala and Shah Rukh Khan) about the repression of the people of the Seven Sisters of North-East India fifty years after independence is true, then clearly India is not generous to them or to us, and we should get used to it.
Recently, in a television programme I saw scenes from present day Darjeeling which reminded me of Feni in the 1950s! Perhaps so much money is spent on internal security in India that not much is left for developing the Seven Sisters. Ask any Nepali and he will tell you that India's interference is responsible for many of their problems.
As Mr. Morshed pointed out, for the people of the Seven Sisters, goods are 40 per cent cheaper to buy from Bangladesh than from Kolkata and beyond. In their peace treaties, there was a clause for free trade with Bangladesh, which has not been honoured. Instead India has imposed non-tariff barriers. For instance, if the seven north-eastern states want to buy cement from Chittagong, the central bank of India does not allow them to open a letter of credit for it. When Bangladeshis started exporting batteries to India, an anti-dumping tariff was imposed to terminate it! India exports $3 billion of goods to Bangladesh legally annually, and much more through smuggling through the porous borders, but is unwilling buy products made in Bangladesh. Based on broken promises of the past, it is difficult to accept India's assurance that it will not link its rivers and deprive Bangladesh of water in the dry season and flood Bangladesh during rainy season. Diplomatic sources say that the year before last, the BJP government campaigned actively for Bangladesh's inclusion in the list of terror-risk nations! India bogusly accuses Bangladesh of harbouring anti-Indian terrorist camps and turns a deaf ear when Bangladesh points out exactly where anti- Bangladeshi terrorist camps are located in India. Every other day, Indian border security forces kill 2 or 3 Bangladeshi civilians. With friends like these, who needs enemies?
It was good of Mr. Joseph Cofer Black, the US State Department's coordinator for counter-terrorism to visit Bangladesh recently. He is most welcome. But it was a mistake to consult the India media and "get some good insights from the Indian team on what is going on in Bangladesh." Before "developing a position on it," Mr. Black should consult the Bangladesh government exclusively, and not inquire of an interested and anti-Bangladesh third party. Mr. Black should have known that he would hear nothing good about Bangladesh from the Indian press. For example, last month when Bangladeshis everywhere were grieving over the August 21 massacre, in an editorial The Statesman of Kolkata libelously accused our current Prime Minister of attempted murder without offering any iota evidence! Unlike other heads of government who called both our Prime Minister and the leader of the opposition to express their condolences in the aftermath of August 21, in an unprecedented breach of protocol, the Indian Prime Minister called only our leader of the opposition!
It appears that a certain section of the Indian population is jealous of Bangladesh's success as an independent nation. In thirty-three years, Bangladesh has become a moderate Muslim majority nation with a thriving democracy led by two women. As the largest contributor to UN peace missions, Bangladesh is the world's number one peacekeeper and is respected worldwide for it.
The President of the US, the Prime Minister of the UK, and heads of the government of many important nations have visited Bangladesh recently, and continue to do so. Bangladesh is the site of several international conferences every year. Dhaka and the rest of Bangladesh are developing at a breathtaking pace. On top of it, Bangladesh is a test cricket playing nation (currently not doing too well, admittedly). One can commiserate with those who believe that the unsophisticated "Bangals" should not be having so much success!
Bangladeshis have always wished India well and will continue to do so. All we want in exchange is to be left in peace. Bangladesh cannot choose its enemies, but it can certainly try to choose its friends. Our near neighbours to the East -- Myanmar, Thailand, China, Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia -- value and court our friendship. We should offer it to them. Instead of wasting time in SAARC, we should try to join ASEAN. After all, we have a border with Myanmar, which is a member of ASEAN in the making. People in America who know Bangladeshis comment on how generous they are.
In my visits to Bangladesh I am always gratified by the generosity of not only friends and relatives, but also simple villagers. Perhaps this generosity is what is fueling Bangladesh's furious development. All of the ASEAN nations are also generous; that is why they have developed so fast. Being generous themselves, they appreciate our charitable attributes and want to be our friends. Bangladesh should associate with nations that cherish and share the same values it does.
