The expected highlights of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s first visit to Dhaka have been announced in advance by the man himself on his Facebook page. “In Bangladesh, I will attend several programs, which include meeting with PM Sheikh Hasina, who has played an important role in strong India-Bangladesh ties. There will be delegation-level talks and signing of agreements. I will join the program to unveil the plaques for various Grant-in-Aid projects,” he wrote.
He also mentioned the LBA, a visit to the Bangabandhu National Museum, and receiving an award on behalf of former Indian prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. “Further, to promote greater people-to-people ties and connectivity, I, along with PM Hasina and West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee, will flag-off bus services on Kolkata-Dhaka-Agartala and Dhaka-Shillong-Guwahati routes. I will be visiting the Ramakrishna Mission in Dhaka. It was founded by devotees of the Belur Math in 1899. I will also visit the famous Dhakeshwari Temple in Dhaka,” Modi wrote.
He concluded his message saying: “I am certain my visit will be beneficial for the people of both our nations and in the larger good of the South Asian neighbourhood.”
Considering the trepidation with which his election as prime minister was greeted almost exactly one year ago, this visit and the high expectations from it are already a sign of progress in mutual understanding between important constituencies in Bangladesh and India. The world media before and after Modi’s election had been inundated with alarmist stories whose general drift was that the dangerous “Hindu nationalists” were going to do horrible things all around and perhaps turn the country upside-down. Now a lot of the same people are complaining loudly that this government is too much like the last one.
Steady state
There is continuity in policies between the previous and current administrations in Delhi. Work on the LBA that had been done by the Congress-led government had been brought to fruition by the current BJP government under Modi. This is said to have required his personal intervention. The Assam unit of the BJP was against the agreement, as it meant giving some land to Bangladesh.
This is opposed by Assamese sub-nationalist groups such as the Asom Gana Parishad. Elections are due in the state next year, and rhetoric over Bangladesh and the alleged migration from there has been a factor in electoral politics in that state for decades.
The Congress chief minister of Assam had taken a position in favour of the agreement saying it would lead to better border management, and Assam would gain land in the bargain. The BJP’s Assam unit will probably be forced to take a similar line now. The party had made a strong showing in Assam for the first time in the parliamentary elections last year, and the agreement may cost it politically if it is unable to sell the deal as one necessary in the interests of Assam and India.
The fact that Modi’s government was willing to take that political risk would suggest that he considered the LBA very important.
This may have to do with an appreciation of Bangladesh’s importance to stability in Northeast India. Co-operation between India and Bangladesh has improved greatly in the past decade in matters such as security. The presence of insurgent leaders from Northeast India in Bangladesh, and training camps of their various outfits, was an irritant in relations between the two countries. There is gratitude in India for the role played by the Bangladesh government and military in dismantling such camps and helping apprehend extremists.
The importance of Bangladesh as a neighbour is also enhanced by growing prospects of co-operation in a sub-regional framework. The Bangladesh Bhutan India Nepal (BBIN) grouping can potentially move ahead with enhanced trade and transit at a pace unencumbered by the negativity that hampers SAARC. This will benefit all.
The launching of bus services from Guwahati to Dhaka via Shillong, and Agartala to Kolkata via Dhaka, are signs of forward movement on the issue of transit. Dr Joyeeta Bhattacharya, an expert on Bangladesh with the Observer Research Foundation, points out that the Agartala-Kolkata bus will be transiting through Bangladesh.
That such a service can come into being is at once mundane and amazing. For centuries, people have gone back and forth between the places where the English drew lines on a map in 1947. There are relationships of language, food, culture, and even family across the line.
Yet, the lines on the map took on a menacing reality over time. The mental distance from Shillong to Dhaka grew even as the geographical distance shrank as roads and cars made travelling faster.
So near, so far
Shillong is 137km from Sylhet. At one time, it was the capital of undivided Assam and East Bengal. Populations flowed freely up and down the Khasi hills into the adjoining plains of Assam and Bengal. Even before Shillong became a town, the tribal Jaintia kings had their capital in Jaintiapur, in what is now Bangladesh.
The Partition and subsequent migrations have damaged that intricate network of connections. Notions of exclusive ethnic homelands have come to dominate thinking. People colour areas on maps and say, “the green area is for Bengali Muslims only” or “the blue area is for Bodos” only. In Northeast India, the tribal communities have internalised the concept of pure ethnic homelands.
Many of the insurgent outfits that fought, and still fight, are doing so to secure ethnic homelands in which notions of racial purity play an important part. The Earth doesn’t come colour-coded, but you can’t stop people from trying.
Fears of outsiders swamping them in their traditional homelands have been a big thing for many north-eastern populations since at least 1947. The outsider most feared and hated has long been the Bengali. There’s a considerable history to this. It arguably dates back to the times of Aurangzeb, when the Mughal general of Bengal attacked kingdoms in what is now Assam.
The Assamese still remember Mir Jumla, the general who raided the Ahom kingdom. They don’t remember, though, that he was not Bengali but a Persian from Isfahan.
The more recent troubles between the Assamese and Bengalis in the north-east started with big migrations of Bengali populations in 1947 and 1971. The border didn’t exist in 1947, and was opened in 1971. It has generally been porous since. This becomes apparent when thousands of cows are smuggled across into Bangladesh, or an unexpected politician from there pops up on the edge of the golf course in Shillong.
That there is smuggling and trafficking of people across the border is generally known and accepted on both sides by people who live near it. The differences in perception crop up when the BSF shoots at someone who either turns out to be innocent, or claims to be.
Despite such incidents, the people on both sides, and their elected representatives at the local levels, generally tend to favour greater trade interaction. The chief minister of Meghalaya, for instance, has spoken out in favour of more border haats in the run-up to Modi’s visit.
The relationship has vast potential for good on both sides, but the underlying tensions will continue to exist until there is greater clarity and public understanding on the issues of migration, smuggling and trafficking, and the role of the border guards of both countries in all this.
Not just Delhi and Dhaka
The plight of the Hindu minority in Bangladesh is also likely to impinge on politics and society in India as it has in the past. The advent of large numbers of Bengali Hindu settlers due to Partition in 1947 and wartime genocide by the Pakistanis in 1971, contributed to the fears of marginalisation among various ethnic groups in the north-east. This in turn led to agitations and fed into insurgencies.
The current situation is different. After 1971, forced migration is perceived to have been replaced by economic migration. The number of such migrants has been a matter of conjecture for decades. However, there are ongoing agitations in Assam, Meghalaya and Manipur that draw their support from suspicions that a very large number of illegal immigrants are entering India from Bangladesh.
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological fountainhead of the Sangh Parivar of which the BJP is a part, has expressed concerns over what its mouthpiece, The Organiser, called “silent invasion.” It has also raised the issue of attacks on Hindu populations in Bangladesh and the border districts of West Bengal.
The Modi government has made it clear that, while it will grant asylum to migrants escaping persecution, it is against allowing economic migrants in. However, trade delegations, tourists, and students are welcome.
The relationship between India and Bangladesh is not merely the relationship between Delhi and Dhaka. While governments in Delhi, past and present, have been strongly inclined towards better relationships with Dhaka, the powers in Nagpur (RSS), Kolkata (Mamata Banerjee), and the north-eastern states have pulled in other directions.
The fact that Modi, an RSS man, is heading to Dhaka along with Ms Banerjee, who famously ditched former prime minister Manmohan Singh on his Bangladesh trip, is significant. Concrete results may not fructify immediately, but the process of dialogue between these stakeholders and various sections of the polity and society in Bangladesh is important for the greater good of the South Asian neighbourhood.