As New Delhi prepares to host Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina from April 7 to 10, Indo-Bangladesh strategic partnership has the need to re-tune its gears to take upon newer challenges and explore emerging opportunities.
It is beyond doubt that Bangladesh has transpired into a phase of momentous growth period — after a prolonged haul for decades. In the side-lines of China’s aggressive expansionism and Trump’s ‘unpredictability’ shrouding the region — Bangladesh garners immense strategic magnitude. As Dhaka grows at 6.5%, India emerges as an ‘all-weather’ friend that the former can’t do without. In this complex climate, India-Bangladesh relation can build primarily upon three pillars: trade and commerce, concerted counter-terror initiatives, and bilateral trust and confidence building efforts.
Indian subcontinent was massively rattled by 1971, East Pakistan disintegration from west — or more acutely put — fragmentation of Pakistan. It was only for India’ consistent support to broiling struggles led by Awami League leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in East Pakistan that tilted the balance towards Bangladesh.
As a safe haven, Indian government erected safeguards to protect the Bengali refugees (over 10 million) — turned into helpless victims of Pakistan military intervention. As maintained an official, by the end of April 1971, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi summoned the Indian army Chief General Manekshaw to smarten up its inventory to confront Pakistan over Bangladesh. Sooner engaged in a full-fledged war with Pakistan for over 13 days, India played a crucial role in the establishment of Bangladesh as an independent nation. Thereon, Indo-Bangladesh partnership flourished on mutual ‘trust’ and ‘confidence’ — as also marked by signing of the 25-year friendship treaty on March 19, 1972.
While India stacked in all its resources to support Bangladesh’s freedom struggle, however, later in the face of escalating domestic turbulence Indian government stood as a blind observer. In the immediate post-independent Bangladesh, Mujibur Rahman assumed absolute power, but much early into the day, infrastructural blockades- rampant corruption and poor distribution system aligned with economic impediments crowded the nascent South Asian nation-state.
In 1975, Bangladesh was unravelled to the darkest chapter of history — assassination of the ‘Father of the Nation’ Mujibur Rahman. This inflicted a notable dip in Indo-Bangladesh ties. To date, Bangladesh is wary of and disenchanted over India’s purported hesitancy to intervene as Bangladesh was clouded with umpteen socio-economic roadblocks — conditions that propelled Rahman’s assassination.
It was only recently with Sheikh Hasina’s accession in 2008 that Bangladesh gravitated towards a stable economy. Additionally, India also buckled up to increasing exchanges with Bangladesh — on trade front and ironed out impending border issues.
India has extended a line of credit of $2 billion — expected to create over 50,000 jobs in Bangladesh. Alongside breaking ice over the Land Boundary Agreement — exchange of 162-adversely held enclaves — Indo-Bangladesh has forged key partnerships in energy and power sectors, including export of 600 megawatt power from India to Bangladesh. The two-way trade stands at a remarkable $7 billion and is anticipated to reach a record $10 billion by 2018. During Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Bangladesh — over 22 agreements were penned in addition to Reliance Power promising an investment of over US$3 billion to set up a 3,000 MW LNG-based power plant. Furthermore, to accelerate people-to-people interaction, both the countries resolved to ease visa regimes providing 5 year multiple entry visas to minors below 13 and elderly above 65.
Thus, Indo-Bangladesh relation is consolidated with heightening bilateral ties, including commerce, culture, military, and people-to-people links, which are deeply intertwined with inter-state trust. In an inter-state relation, trust implies a willingness to take risks on the behavior of others based on the belief that potential trustees will ‘do what is right’. In the context of Indo-Bangladesh relation, trust involves particular beliefs about the motivations of others. To that end, an issue that necessitates urgent deliberation by both parties is the ‘illegal’ immigration of Bangladeshis to India — figures for which are mired in contestation.
On answering a question at the Indian Parliament in 2016, Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju informed the Rajya Sabha — that there are around 20 million illegal Bangladeshi migrants staying in India. Previously, during the UPA government, the then Union Minister of State for Home Sriprakash Jaiswal informed — over 12 million illegal Bangladeshi infiltrators reside in different parts of the country. Such inconsistency with facts has sparked off huge disappointment in and received contestations from Bangladesh. As some scholars maintain, India’s bloating numbers and usage of terms such as, ‘illegal’ and ‘infiltrators’ stands as a hurdle to growing bilateral relationship and degrades ‘mutual trust’ between the two countries.
It is pre-eminent for the both the states to flesh out common threads to strengthen mutual ‘trust’ and build up cooperation on trade, security and military lines. One such common thorn is the rising threat of extremism, Islamic radicalism — in particular.
Over the years, Bangladesh has struggled to maintain stability and more so, in the face of proliferating Islamic extremism. With the advantage of technology accompanied by easy modes for spread of ideas such as the social media platforms, the transnational Jihadist organizations readily taps into the domestic fora. Several homegrown extremist organizations — the likes of AQIS and Jaamat-ul Mujahideen — have adopted both conventional and non-traditional mediums for spreading radicalism in Bangladesh. In the immediate memory, the Holy Artisan incident has shaken up collective conscience, claiming lives of over 20 civilians — including many foreigners in Bangladesh.
It was remarkable precisely for the transition witnessed in the extremist group’s modus operandi — dynamic shift from traditional to semi-automatic equipment. An impetus to swelling extremism are the simmering societal inhibitions: surging poverty, dismal state of the health and education sectors. This has propelled large-scale disenchantment amongst the young Bangladeshis towards their families, the political establishment as well as the ill-grown civil society. In this tested hour, India ought to be the friendly shoulder Bangladesh can rest upon.
In the Indo-Bangladesh relation, several strains leave dark marks, let it be the prolonged water dispute of Teesta river-water sharing. Another key factor that continues to imperil Indo-Bangladesh ties is China’s growing links with Bangladesh.
In 2016, Xi Jinping’s landmark visit to Bangladesh after three decades signalled Beijing’s increased focus on Bangladesh — two-way trade is slated to reach a whopping USD 30 billion by 2021.
Further, Xi Jinping reiterated, ‘We agreed to elevate China-Bangladesh ties from a comprehensive partnership of cooperation to a strategic partnership of cooperation’. As China remains Bangladesh’s largest trading partner, China’s One Belt, One Road (OBOR) and revival of the Maritime Silk Route (MSR) yields massive opportunities for Bangladesh. This has been complemented with stronger military ties — Bangladesh accounts for 20% of China’s arm export on a review of the last five years transactions.
In such scenario, as Bangladesh deepens mutual trust and trade ties with Beijing, India has an urgency to drum up its Bangladesh policy. In countering terrorism, India’s intelligence sharing as well as agreements over building comprehensive counter-terror mechanisms — both cyber and space security is a must-do to strengthen bilateral ties. Both the countries being major stakeholders in regional as well as international groupings: IORA, BIMSTEC, SAARC, and the commonwealth have a range of options to cooperate and collaborate on. Alongside, India has the onus to resolve issues pertaining to illegal immigration - supported by adequate facts (suggesting the exact number of refugees) whilst maintaining sensitivity towards Bangladesh’s historic tragedy. With the spiralling Rohingya refugee crisis inspired by occurrences in the neighbouring state Myanmar, India has a proactive role to play — not only as an advocate of democratic regimes but also as an endorser of international human right doctrines.
As Sheikh Hasina ropes in Beijing as a trusted capital provider, India has to evolve out as a ‘permanent’ partner in Bangladesh’s peace building and developmental efforts. The Bangladeshi Prime Minister’s visit had to be deferred twice in the last three months and without a satisfactory and valid explanation. In such scenario, if India doesn’t leverage the strategic space — that neighbors as significant and close in proximity as Bangladesh lay open — threat of outpouring Chinese dominance in the regional hemisphere will continue to loom large.
The author is a research intern at ORF, New Delhi
This commentary originally appeared in The Huffington Post.
The views expressed above belong to the author(s). ORF research and analyses now available on Telegram! Click here to access our curated content — blogs, longforms and interviews.
PREV
