“In order to reduce the incidents of shooting/killing/injuring/beating of unarmed citizens at the border to zero level, both sides agreed to increase joint patrols in vulnerable areas of the border,” read the statement after a meeting in New Delhi of top officials of India’s Border Security Force and Border Guard Bangladesh ended on February 20. This capped other discussions and statements, including on patrolling the border, constructions along “no-man’s land,” and other matters.
In a world inured to the horrors of Gaza and eastern Africa and Myanmar and Haiti and other instances that would chill even a seasoned human rights defender to the bone, it might appear strange to be writing about Bangladesh’s border with India. Especially when there are demonstrably more geopolitically fraught borders in the region -- India’s borders with Pakistan and China, for instance. Or the border that India and Bangladesh share with Myanmar, where chaos has only just begun.
But that is where we are with Bangladesh and India -- besides all the other bilateral dissonance that erupted since the exit of former prime minister Sheikh Hasina in August 2024. The border is a staggering 4,096km-long flashpoint, with the potential for immense violence and dislocation. And where mostly Bangladeshis are with disturbing frequency injured or killed by India’s BSF, which pleads that it does so in the pursuit of criminals.
All too often those killed are minors, or farmers. Earlier this month some border troops, allegedly disoriented with new geography after a fresh “posting,” entered a patch of Bangladesh and beat up locals. Official apologies followed.
That is scant mollification for both public trust and bilateral bonhomie. As is the declaration of intent by the border guard agencies of India and Bangladesh. But while this declaration should be taken at face value until there is either proof of concept or demonstration of just another glib declaration -- or injury, or death -- there is another aspect we need to consider.
This is not simply a matter of guarding a border to protect a territory or country. Deaths at the border, about the border, are an outcome of dehumanization. This lies at the very core of response.
All countries in South Asia, despite their boastful prophylactic of democracy, have ethnic and religious fractures, and, often, political systems that coalesce such fractures to deliver injustice. Indeed, to such an extent that, under particularly vengeful and majoritarian administrations, dehumanization is inserted ever deeper into political rhetoric and through engineered responses.
Nepal generally dehumanizes those outside the pale of Kathmandu valley let alone the country’s massive, routine othering of “janjatis.” Pakistan dehumanizes those outside Punjab, Sindh, and parts of its northwest frontier; as it does much of its minorities. Afghanistan dehumanizes Shias in general and Hazaras in particular. Bhutan has a record of dehumanizing many of Nepali origin.
Bangladesh has largely dehumanized the Indigenous populations in Chittagong Hill Tracts, among other instances of dehumanization. Myanmar regularly dehumanizes itself. India is the subcontinent’s dehumanizing giant, routinely recording staggering atrocities and injustices against several ethnic groups, minorities, and those of a lower caste.
All countries in South Asia have ethnic and religious fractures, and, often, political systems that coalesce such fractures to deliver injustice
These lamentable realities remain the internal matters of sovereign nations. But when domestically encouraged political attitudes and hatreds are applied to cross-border folk, when rhetoric routinely describes a minority as despicable and undesirable -- and, infamously in the case of India, as “white ants,” and in the case of its eastern Assam state, when certain ethnic groups and religious minorities are even held responsible for food inflation in Guwahati -- it can corrupt the public mind as well as a structural response.
So, even as New Delhi speaks of détente with Bangladesh, 1,500-to-1,800km to its east it is possible for sector commanders at the border or those at the head of a border patrol to take hair-trigger justice into their hands. In this Bangladesh has not exactly been a saint, but India has, by far, been the greater sinner. Even accounting for the murky realities of the smuggling of people, narcotics, and cattle, which fatten political and security food chains on either side of the border despite much of the border being fenced, despite every claim to deter criminality, arbitrariness of response and injustices stack up.
A year ago, in an essay headlined “Bangladesh and India: To fix what is broken,” this columnist flagged the issue: “It doesn’t also make salutary news to hear every few weeks of Bangladeshis being shot at the border by India’s Border Security Force,” noted the column.
“This shoot-first-ask-questions-later policy is horrific even as successive BSF chiefs plead last-resort for such deaths, or claim that many of those killed were smugglers with violent intent. Odhikar, a Bangladeshi rights organization listed nearly 1,300 Bangladeshis killed between 2010 and 2023, and nearly 1,200 injured. Media pointed to how even one death of a Nepali citizen along India’s border with Nepal in 2017 triggered a bilateral crisis. With India and Bangladesh, body counts aren’t even a blip on India’s policy radar.”
Some subsequent estimates count half the number of Bangladeshis killed along the border with India between 2009 and 2024, but even one death is one too many. The sad truth is that the India-Bangladesh border is among the most vicious borders in the world.
On the one hand, the Indian establishment would like to see the entire border with Bangladesh either completely fenced or, in case of riverine borders, unapologetically, even brutally, patrolled. On the other hand, India increasingly views Bangladesh as a bulwark against China; and, alongside, India seeks to secure its borders by securing Bangladesh against every manner of implosion and explosion in a range from political to demographic.
This has been the go-to strategy for more than a decade and has firmed up since 2015. It remains the core principle after the bilateral meltdown since July-August 2024 which is only now being patchily repaired.
But for all the talk of re-energizing trade and issuance of visas, not much will change in terms of perception and reality so long as human rights organizations maintain charts of transgressions, as the Dhaka-based Ain o Salish Kendra does, for instance. Column heads for cross-border statistics are chilling. “Death (shoot).” “Death by physical torture.” “Death by chase of BSF.” “Injured.” “Abduction.” “Return after abduction.”
These must be zero at ground zero. Or it all amounts to nothing.
Sudeep Chakravarti works in the policy-and-practice space in Eastern South Asia, greater South Asia, and the Indian Ocean Region.
