Terming the US notion that Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami is a moderate Islamic party flawed, former Indian High Commissioner in Dhaka Pinak Ranjan Chakravarty has said this argument only helps Jamaat gain leverage.
“The US believes that the Jamaat is a moderate Islamic party ... The US argument is flawed ... it only helps the Jamaat gain leverage,” he told a roundtable in New Delhi on Thursday, says a UNB report.
The daily hartals (shutdowns) by the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP)-Jamaat alliance to push for a caretaker government have been hurting the economy and the common man in the nation of 155 million people.
On Thursday, Bangladesh’s Election Commission declared the Jamaaat-e-Islami ineligible for the coming polls in line with a court order.
Pinak Chakravarty, who retired recently as secretary in the Indian Ministry of External Affairs, said there is “convergence” between US, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan in their leaning towards Zia, and consequently the Jamaat, which is riding piggyback on the BNP, reports ZeeNews on Friday.
“The Jamaat has intimate relations with its namesake in Pakistan and is close to Saudi Arabia, and getting funds,” he said, adding that the Islamist party, which advocates that women be in purdah and remain indoors and targets minorities, has lost none of its “obscurantist” ideology.
He said both Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and BNP chief and former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia are to blame for not fostering faith among people in the institutions of democracy.
He also said that while the “shadow of the army looms in the background”, the “open calls by opposition parties for it to take over are severely undermining democracy”. Bangladesh has seen several coups, including the one on Aug 15, 1975 that saw the assassination of the country’s founder-president Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
A political “storm” is brewing in Bangladesh ahead of next year’s elections with the opposition BNP and its Islamist partner Jamaat-e-Islaami indulging in daily shutdowns and violence, experts in New Delhi warned and noted that the US, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have shown a “convergence” in their support for the BNP-Jamaat combine.
Addressing the daylong roundtable on ‘Bangladesh: Prospects of Democratic Consolidation’ at the India International Centre in New Delhi on Thursday, government officials who have dealt with Bangladesh and knowledgeable experts also said that Bangladesh’s sound economic growth, its social and human development indicators -- which are better than India’s, and its democracy are, at the same time, a reassuring factor for India on its eastern border.
Former foreign secretary Shyam Saran, addressing the roundtable, said: “India is facing a difficult situation on its western border, but on the eastern border (with Bangladesh) there is a sense of assurance,” Saran, chairperson of the National Security Advisory Board (NSAB).