Fifty years of liberation: How India lost and found Bangladesh

Even as golden bells chime across India and Bangladesh in what is truly a celebration of a well-deserved triumph 50 years ago, the day ought to also present itself as a time for stocktaking and retrospection. After all, the years that followed the day of liberation had also been marked by a period of great uncertainty and turmoil for Bangladesh. Indeed, the pro-liberationists were overthrown in a bloody coup and its founding father was assassinated on 15 August 1975 — less than five years after the historic victory of 16 December 1971.

Indeed, the most important question pertaining to India-Bangladesh relations that needs to be raised is as to how a country whose liberation was ably aided by its larger neighbour India, and in the military campaign for which many Indian lives were lost, acquired a “turn around” and became a hostile nation within a matter of few years. While a mature democracy like India appreciates the imperatives of non-interference in the domestic affairs of a sovereign nation, and consequently did not either “billet” its armed forces in the erstwhile East Pakistan for longer than it was necessary or engineer aggressive diplomacy to dominate Dhaka, the fact of the matter is that the Indira Gandhi-led government — for some reason or the other — preferred to turn a blind eye to some of the aspects that were threatening Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s Awami League government. Indeed, it cannot be countenanced that the traditional minders of such business (at the time) in India could not have known that active subterfuges were afoot inside Savar (the military garrison near Dhaka) to overthrow Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s government. But such monitoring notwithstanding the worst took place and India lost considerable ground in the aftermath of the putsch.

The 1975 coup d’etat, in one fell swoop, negated the advantages that India had sought to garner after the dismemberment of Pakistan. After all, despite the fact that there were humanitarian considerations in the Indian aid to the Mukti Bahini, one of the positive consequences of the Indian intervention was the ridding of a two-front enemy. But, as aforesaid, the gains were frittered away, possibly because the dispensation in New Delhi — in 1975 — was occupied with internal strife by way of the declaration of Emergency in the country.

In the absence of any intervening force, the radicalisation of Bangladesh began. The country’s garrison politics took recourse to Islam for political sustenance. Furthermore, pro-Pakistani elements that had collaborated with the Pakistan army in carrying out pogroms in the pre-liberation days and had fled the country after it was liberated were rehabilitated. Despite the fact that a large constituency in Bangladesh remained steadfast to the spirit of 1971, the military rulers and later the Islamists defined almost every institution in the country on anti-Indian sentiments and consequently Islam, the latter with a strategy to further the India-Bangladesh divide.

War criminals like Gholam Azam returned to Bangladesh and the Jamaat-e-Islami, of which Azam was the Emir, became a powerful factor in the country’s politics. The growing radicalisation of the country also began linking it with the global Salafi movement and home-grown Islamist groups were soon making their way to places such as Tora Bora in Afghanistan to fight alongside the al-Qaeda. Thereafter, Islamist groups such HUJI (B) were on the fast track towards converting Bangladesh into another Talibanised Afghanistan.

But, history holds its own, and the forces of secularism are presently in the seat of governance in Dhaka. Relations between India and Bangladesh are once again on the path of detente. Deliverance was quick, and Dhaka handed over important Indian insurgent leaders, including the chairmen of ULFA and NDFB to India. It has also signed deals with New Delhi on a variety of security, cultural and economic fronts. Indeed, the present could well be characterised as a “honeymoon” period between Delhi and Dhaka. Indeed, it is hoped that the geniality will continue between the two countries despite the scavenging efforts of anti-India, anti-Bangladesh forces that are attempting to drive wedges between the two nations.

Narendra Modi’s “Neighbourhood First” policy that has been put in place across the sprawling lawn that comprises Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Maldives is one that is being watered with a grace of insight, judiciousness and camaraderie, and not some sweltering fanaticism or overbearance that Pakistan and China seem to be obsessed with. Indeed, the “string of pearls” that China is hell bent on constructing would undeniably face a barrage of resistance from all right thinking neighbours of India including the country which it had helped liberate from a loathsome appendage by way of the reprehensible Pakistan.

Fifty years may not quite define a lifetime, but the togetherness of agenda that had been cemented in the battlefields of 1971 has paved way to a warm association of inseparableness. The future of India-Bangladesh relationship is, therefore, all set to march forward into the amphitheatre of bonhomie and prosperity. Indeed, the two countries’ friendship would together stave off detractors in and around the region, as also from shores afar and alien.

High fables hail India as the magnificent elephant, a benign gigantism that does not care to attest puerile canine attention. Such a benevolent approach, however, must not be mistaken for timidity. As a matter of the intimacy in which 16 December is all set to be observed by India and Bangladesh should stand out as a warning for not only evil, fire-sprouting dragons and scavenging hyenas that follow it, but ones inside India as well.

The writer is a well-known conflict analyst and author of several best-selling books on security and strategy. The views expressed are personal.

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