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BANGLADESH-INDIA RELATIONS
The context of SAARC and emerging global scenario
Imtiaz Ahmed
The title of this article poses a challenge, to say the least. With the SAARC and the ‘Global Scenario’ in the sub-title, one is asked to make sense of the post-Westphalian bilateralism in the midst of the ever-growing multilateralism or, as some would say, pluralism. One cannot deny that the conventional thinking of inter-state relations is predominantly bilateral in nature, and this is more so with politicians and government officials, and of course with organic intellectuals as well, who have a vested interest in reproducing it as such, indeed, in the name of guarding what is at best a self-defined understanding of the reason of the state.
Question at Rajya Sabha
Not surprising was the following query taking place on the floors of the …… Rajya Sabha.
On 17 February 2006 two Members of the Rajya Sabha, Shri Manoj Bhattacharya and Shri Karnendu Bhattacharjee asked the Indian Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh, the following question:
Will the Prime Minister be pleased to state:
(a) whether Indo-Bangladesh relations have deteriorated, recently;
(b) if so, the details thereof and the reasons therefore; and
(c) what steps are being/have been taken to improve our relationship with Bangladesh?
The website in which I had a quick glance of the Rajya Sabha proceedings did not have the response of Dr. Singh, but it can be said with a good measure of confidence that the latter did not say anything that would have embarrassed his official position or the Government of Bangladesh.
This became clear when the Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Begum Khaleda Zia, visited India a few months back, incidentally after a gap of over seven years for a Bangladeshi Prime Minister, and the words the Indian Prime Minister had for her and the public while facing the press: “Bangladesh is a country with which we have intimate ties of friendship,” and then added to say, “a peaceful, strong, prosperous and stable Bangladesh is in Indian interest. It is in the interest of South Asia and all.” The Indian Prime Minister did not hesitate to web the relationship between the two countries within the framework of South Asia and even beyond and there are good reasons for this.
Two issues are critical here. Firstly, Bangladesh-India relations are faced with certain puzzles which need to be addressed with or without feelings of friendship or conversely animosity.
Secondly, the regional and global scenarios have transformed the Indo-Bangladesh relations in several key areas both for the good and the bad, and this is where a sheer bilateral perspective has come to be a handicap. Let me take up the puzzles first.
Puzzle I
The Indian government, under the supervision of the Ministry of Home Affairs, decided to fence the entire Indo-Bangladesh border at an estimated cost of Rs. 1,134 crore and the project was stipulated to end by March 2007. The fencing of Bangladesh will include a combination of actual border fencing (2409 km) and border roads (797 km). The actual border fencing will be in West Bengal maximum (1021 km) and the least in Assam (71.5 km). Tripura, Mizoram and Meghalaya will have 736 km, 400 km and 198 km of fenced borders respectively.
But interestingly, with the major portion of the fencing near completion, why has India thus far failed to stop the flow of Indian goods through informal routes —- what is popularly called smuggling —-to the tune of USD 2 billion? A sub-puzzle may be added here and this was reported to me by a photojournalist from Guwahati: why spend Rs. 1,134 crores when it takes only Rs. 10 (the cost of a pair of scissors) to cut through the fencing?
Puzzle II
Bangladesh and India have as many as 225 enclaves. Out of this, 119 are exchangeable Indian enclaves in Bangladesh and 11 non-exchangeable enclaves —- non-exchangeable because India has no control over or access to these. Bangladeshi enclaves in India total 95, out of which 72 are exchangeable and some 5,128.52 acres are non-exchangeable. In May 1974 both the countries agreed to exchange the enclaves and also agreed to allow the people residing in the enclaves to either stay where they are or move to their parent country.
While Bangladesh enacted a legislation to actualize the May 1974 Agreement in November of the same year, India is yet to do the same even after a lapse of over 30 years! Critics, such as Sumanta Banerjee, maintain that “there is a feeling in Dhaka that India is reluctant to exchange the enclaves because it would lose around 10 lakh acres of land to Bangladesh.” By delaying the process of ratification and implementation why is India contributing to such suspicions?
It must be quickly added however that opinion still differs as to how many acres of land are there in all these enclaves. Moreover, why did India request for a change of the text of the May 1974 Agreement after Bangladesh had ratified the Agreement in the parliament and that again barely five days before the deadline (31 December 1974) for the signing of the relevant maps in respect of ‘areas already demarcated’ and interestingly with a plea to do away with a firm deadline and have it postponed until the Agreement ‘has been ratified by the two Governments’? This in fact had the effect of postponing the exchange of “territories in adverse possession in areas already demarcated in respect of which boundary strip maps are already prepared” for an indefinite period, which in turn contributed to suspicions in the minds of the Bangladeshis.
It may be mentioned that the May 1974 Agreement clearly distinguished between the ‘already demarcated’ and ‘still to be demarcated’ areas and made it clear that the latter would not pose an obstacle to the exchange of enclaves “in areas already demarcated.” What made India revise the original text then?
No less puzzling is the query as to why lease out the so-called ‘Tin Bigha’ corridor ‘in perpetuity’ to Bangladesh, understandably for reaching Dahagram and Angarpota enclaves, when the 1974 Agreement clearly stipulated the exchange of enclaves?
Puzzle III
India has periodically blamed Bangladesh for harbouring anti-Indian elements, including ULFA (United Liberation Front of Assam) and NSCN (National Socialist Council of Nagaland), while Bangladesh has been blaming India for harbouring anti-Bangladeshi elements, including SBA (Shadhin Bangabhumi Andolon), UPDF (United People’s Democratic Front) and criminals or local Mastans wanted in Bangladesh.
In this blame game, India claims that there are 119 anti-Indian insurgent camps inside Bangladesh, while Bangladesh claims that there are 39 anti-Bangladeshi insurgent camps inside India. Two puzzles arise from this.
Firstly, why would Bangladesh support insurgent or terrorist groups that are quintessentially anti-Bengali cum anti-Bangladeshi? It may be mentioned that the ULFA, if we were to follow Bina Nepram on this, came into being precisely on the issue of illegal migration of Bangladeshi Muslims to Assam and the North East.
On a similar note, why would India support anti-Bangladeshi insurgent groups particularly when India wholeheartedly backed the CHT Accord between the Bangladesh government and the PCJSS (Parbatya Chattogram Jana Sanghati Samiti) and equally importantly, how does India benefit from harbouring wanted criminals and Mastans of Bangladesh? Secondly, why the respective governments are not letting the public know the exact location of such camps? Given the concentration of population on both sides of the border, wouldn’t that be an easy way of validating each other’s claims? Or, why are civil bodies on both sides of the border reluctant to carry out investigative research or even a survey confirming or negating the claims?
Puzzle IV
West Bengal government in 1998 came up with a figure of 10 lakh Bangladeshis living illegally on its territory while the BJP takes the number of illegal Bangladeshis to one crore! Samir Guha Roy of the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, however, finds the estimate of illegal Bangladeshi migrants “motivatedly exaggerated.” After crosschecking population growth and decline rates of the Indian States as well as that of Bangladesh, Roy goes on to state:
“A close examination of demographic statistics proves conclusively that it is not the refugees from Bangladesh but the influx of migrants from neighbouring Indian states that has caused West Bengal’s population problem…”
Muchkund Dubey, on the other hand, raised the issue of logical inconsistency as early as 1992:
“In the beginning communal elements in India perpetrated the myth that most of the illegal entrants are Hindus who are being forced out of Bangladesh because of the atrocities to which they were subjected by the majority community. The religion-wise breakdown of the figure of those who were intercepted and sent back told a different story altogether. The proportion of Hindus to Muslims among those who were intercepted along the Bangladesh-West Bengal border was roughly 60:40 and along the Bangladesh-Assam borders 25:75. Now the same elements are asserting that Muslims from Bangladesh have flooded the adjoining districts of West Bengal and Bihar and spilled over as far out as near Delhi. This also has very slender factual basis. Moreover, the two assertions cancel each other out.
Without going into the merit of Samir Guha Roy’s or Muchkund Dubey’s contentions there is no doubt that the term ‘illegal’ here is a misnomer. There could be illegality only when there is something legal. In the case of Bangladesh and India, and also Pakistan, save marriage [and that again, a very long process, and if we were to believe Sushma Swaraj and the BJP even Sonia Gandhi fails to fulfill the criteria in full!], there can be no legal migration. Both Nehru-Liaquat Pact of 1950 and two decades later Mujib-Indira Agreement of 1972 have territorialized and virtually froze the issue of citizenship. The 1972 agreement, in fact, made 25 March 1971 as the cutoff point for considering citizenship between India and Bangladesh.
One cannot help reflecting on a puzzle or two here. Firstly, why are the Chakmas in the Arunachal Pradesh, although having arrived in India from the erstwhile East Pakistan in 1964 following the construction of the Kaptai Dam, still ‘stateless’ after over 40 years and this despite having a Supreme Court ruling in their favour? Does this mean that the Nehru-Liaquat Pact of 1950, as a tragic outcome of the Partition, has a psychological bearing on the people of India which tends to override the Mujib-Indira Agreement of 1972? The puzzle is no less when the Indian government grants citizenship to Afghan (mainly Hindu and Sikh) refugees (totaling 13 in last twelve months) after the latter had resided in India for the required number of years (12 years at a stretch), and there is no mark of animosity or resentment anywhere in India.
Secondly, the Indians and Bangladeshis (and one can add Pakistanis here as well), while being barred from becoming citizens in each other’s countries, can migrate to Canada, USA or Australia and within a relatively short span of time become Canadian, American or an Aussie! Indeed, in the absence of a legal migration regime in South Asia, migration has come to hold meaning only in the sphere of illegality and as such remains vulnerable to the power of the non-state (i.e. the ‘dubious and shadowy’ elements) with the state (of both Bangladesh and India) merely becoming a spectator. Why would the state, somewhat knowingly, empower the ‘dubious’ non-state? More on this puzzle later.
Puzzle V
The territoriality of India and Bangladesh and the legacy of South Asian politics have made the transport of goods from the North East to the rest of India and the world a cumbersome process. Assamese and Tripuran goods, for instance, must now travel 1400 and 1645 km respectively to reach the Kolkata port. This distance and with it the transport cost could be reduced drastically if the Chittagong port is used or if the goods are transported through Bangladesh. The difference in the cost and the profit to be made from the transshipment could easily be calculated. Why is Bangladesh not taking charge of the transport (surely by developing the required infrastructure) and making a reasonable, if not a hefty, profit from it? Why is Bangladesh thinking that it would lose its competitive edge over India in selling its products to the North East if transshipment of Indian goods is allowed? Transshipment would require some reciprocity and the opening of the North Eastern market would be an obvious one.
I am reminded here of Nripen Chakraborty, the former and now late Tripuran Chief Minister, who was once asked by a Delhi-based journalist as to why he is failing to stop the flow of smuggled Bangladeshi garments to Agartala? Mr. Chakraborty bitterly responded, “Can you give me a cheaper shirt from Mumbai? If not, then just shut up!” Moreover, why would the North East continue to commit hara-kiri by blindly supporting the Delhi-managed trade policy, including the non-tariff barriers? In fact, Jairam Ramesh was sensible enough to say in public in Guwahati in September 2004 that “the time has come for the North East to be tied up with Delhi only politically but be free economically!” Is a win-win policy so difficult to devise? Or, are we schooled so much in zero-sum game that nothing beyond it could be devised?
Puzzle VI
Bangladesh has repeatedly raised the issue of its trade deficit with India. In 2005 India’s official exports to Bangladesh stood at USD 2.09 billion while its imports from Bangladesh amounted to only USD 144.19 million. That is, a trade deficit of about USD 1.8 billion. But then very recently figures from the Chief Controller of Import and Export have come to reveal that China has replaced India as the largest exporter to Bangladesh. In fact, during July-September period of the fiscal (July 2005 - June 2006) China’s official exports to Bangladesh reached USD 494.5 million whereas India’s official exports to Bangladesh during the same period amounted to USD 416.6 million. This only indicates that Bangladesh’s trade deficit with China, which stood at USD 1.56 billion in 2004-2005, is destined to become a bigger one, even surpassing the one with India. If this is the case, why is there so much fuss about our deficit with India and hardly anything of that scale when it comes to China? Or, is India’s nationalist fervour in the age of globalization helping China to befriend Bangladesh and further capture its market? Is trade deficit then a political issue conveniently expressed in the language of economics?
Puzzle VII
There was hope in Bangladesh that with the signing of the Farakka Agreement in December 1996 water dispute with India would come to an end. But then with the planned construction of the Tipaimukh Dam on the Barak River in Manipur, ostensibly for generating 1500 MW electricity, there is now a creeping fear that all the 54 rivers that Bangladesh shares with India would either dry up or inundate the river banks because of India’s developmentality.
Water dispute between Bangladesh and India is otherwise back in civil and political agendas almost with a vengeance. Added to this is also the idea of ‘river-linking.’ Although the latter at this stage is limited to southern India, there is no guarantee that the rivers in the north would not follow suit once such linking is implemented in the south.
Indeed, if India’s conscience is to be found in the words and deeds of Medha Patkar, Vandana Shiva and Arundhati Roy then it must be admitted that ‘water war’ has already begun within India. If this war now extends to Bangladesh (and India is definitely contributing to it with its national water policy), the immediate result would be a massive displacement of people within Bangladesh and a rapid increase in the flow of environmental refugees across the border. It seems that India is creating a vulnerable lot in Bangladesh and then engaging itself in the business of policing and fencing them!
All these puzzles and sub-puzzles may come to suggest that there are ‘invisible hands’ in both Bangladesh and India who have a vested interest in keeping alive such puzzles and even creating newer ones. One could end up with several conspiracy theories, some even bizarre and pompous ones, to corroborate the above contention. Racial, religious, class, caste, ethnic, and even civilizational, conspiracies could easily be constructed. Some tend to concretize this further and posit passionately, if not somewhat unashamedly, that the CIA, ISI, RAW, DGFI, South Block, Jewish lobby, RSS, World Bank, fanatics, fascists, communists, and the list is unending, must have had a hand in the deterioration of Bangladesh-India relations! Unlocking the puzzles in this case is even more difficult than resolving or doing away with them. But falling back on such conspiracies would be to fix the contention to post-Westphalian notions of bilateralism while discarding the quantum leap in multilateral engagements in the last three decades or so between people, communities and enterprises and that again not only nationally but also regionally and globally. Emerging regional and global scenarios have otherwise added fresh munitions to the puzzles and transformed the Bangladesh-India relations, indeed, as indicated earlier, both for the good and the bad. A closer exposition will make this clear.
Multiversity of globalisation
Reforms and economic globalisation have made a spectacular impact on India’s economy, and the country’s GDP growth of over 7.5 per cent for the third consecutive year is a good indicator of this. Already there are indications that India will have a larger GDP than Italy and the UK by 2006, and could even surpass those of France and Germany by 2025. India is surely emerging as an economic powerhouse and could end up with a place just below USA, Japan and China in another two decades or so.
India’s steady integration with the global economy is also felt in neighbouring Bangladesh. In fact, there are more than 100,000 Indians now working in Bangladesh, mostly in globalized ventures. Now that ‘production’ has become international, indeed, for the first time, along with ‘trade,’ ‘investment’ and ‘finance,’ making economic globalization qualitatively different from the previous phases of the internationalization of world economy, there exists the opportunity to engage in creative economic ventures for both India and Bangladesh without the prejudices of the post-Westphalian national state. A good example in this case would be the cement plant of the French multinational, La Farge, at Chattak, Sylhet, on the border of Bangladesh and Meghalaya, which uses limestone ‘transported by conveyor belt from a quarry in Meghalaya to the plant inside Bangladesh.’ Indeed, borders and even beyond could have a totally different meaning in the age of globalization.
For India and South Asia economic globalization had other outcomes as well. The most notable one was the recent transformation in Indo-US relations, with President Bush promising civilian nuclear energy to India. Instead, India agreed to separate its civilian and military nuclear reactors and made room for an IAEA inspection of the former. Premising on the age-old policy of containment, many take this as an Indo-American coalition against the formidable power of China. Given America’s robust investment in China and the assured supply of cheaper Chinese goods to the US the containment thesis falls flat on the face. Economic globalization merits better in the US decision of selling civilian nuclear energy to India and the hope is immense that this would pave the way for further opening of India’s market of over 1 billion people to American investments and profits.
In this light, there is now a consensus amongst the members of the ruling elite in South Asia vis-à-vis the United States, although the less is the case with the United States vis-à-vis South Asia. Pakistan, particularly for the earlier support of the Islamic militants beyond its borders, is an obvious issue and this is more so in the aftermath of 9/11 that has kept the policymakers of the United States divided whenever South Asia is discussed for US policing. Bangladesh also has lately irked and divided the US policymakers but this is more so for the failure of the former to contain the militancy and misgovernance at home. But then, both Pakistan and Bangladesh, given the intellectual orientation of their respective ruling elites, are ready to walk an extra mile to befriend the United States. Now with India joining the ranks of Americanophils the United States is blessed with a consensus in South Asia, possibly for the first time in its history, which must be nurtured creatively, with some amount of passion and pressure, if the United States wants to further the goals of economic globalization and profit maximization. Indeed, having evolved in the backdrop of economic globalization Bangladesh-India relations can only benefit from this emerging South Asia-US consensus. But economic globalization is only one of the versions of globalization. Two other versions – reverse and subaltern – are equally critical.
Two good examples of reverse globalization are Bollywood and what goes internationally in the name of Indian cuisine. The global reach of Bollywood is impressive, attracting not only the locals of its birthplace, South Asia, but also Africa, Europe, Middle East, Southeast Asia and even the Australian continent. It has certainly become the coca-cola of lust and leisure. Similarly, curry, masala tikka, biriyani, even dosa and idli are now household names and certainly gastronomic delights across cultures, nationalities and continents. South Asian diaspora has certainly played a role in reproducing the reverse globalization of Bollywood and Indian cuisine but it had the most formidable impact with religious discourses.
South Asian Diaspora
The post-national South Asian Diaspora, particularly in the Middle East and coupled with the reality of global anti-Muslim bashing, could not help but be attracted to a puritan version of Islam and in turn help promote Wahhabism in South Asia. In the process the diaspora has ended up reproducing puritanism and by implication the power of fundamentalist forces. I must quickly add that the power of petrodollars and the empowered status of some of the Middle Eastern countries, particularly Saudi Arabia, made the confluence between the locals, diaspora and Wahhabism all the more easy if not deadly. But this trend is also evident in other religious communities.
For instance, India Development and Relief Fund, a US charity based in Maryland, has funded organizations and people championing the cause of Hindutva for many years, which, according to some critics, has helped reproduce many of the sectarian communal violence in India. And this brings us to the third version of globalization, namely subaltern globalization.
There are both positive and negative sides of subaltern globalization. The former mainly refers to the global networks resisting economic globalization. Such networks include environmentalists, NGOs, small farmers, labour unions, women’s movement, anti-sweatshop activists, and the like, constantly struggling against the impact of economic globalization. But then, there is a further subaltern variant, very negative in nature. This refers to the relationship between and amongst the ‘dubious and shadowy groups’ ranging from the smugglers of goods and people, illicit producers and traders of small arms and explosives, money launderers, narcotics producers and traders, terrorists, and the like, whose networking now goes beyond nationality, ethnicity, race, and even religion.
Subalterns are easy targets
The subalterns, particularly the poverty-ridden and marginalized population, become easy target of such groups, but more importantly the state of being itself becomes a factor for certain relatively well off individuals to rally support and even clandestinely work for their cause. It is no wonder that increasingly we are finding the ‘dubious and shadowy groups’ of India, Bangladesh and the rest of South Asia and beyond linking up creatively and creating a dent in the security of the state. JMB, ULFA, LoT, narco-terrorists, SBA, Ghulam Eazdhani and the Varanasi bomb suspects, all are manifestations of such networks. It must be quickly noted that a national resolution of regional or post-national insecurity further empowers the dubious elements of subaltern globalization.
SAARC-isation of Bangla-India ties
Indeed, the puzzles informing Bangladesh-India relations have attained a different dimension with globalization (economic, reverse or subaltern) and the quantum leap of multilateral engagements, both at the state and non-state levels. The response can never be national isolation or a hyper reproduction of national security state. Rather, for unlocking and resolving the puzzles, particularly in the age of globalization and post-national insecurity, a greater hope lies in what I would like to call the regionalization and SAARCization of Bangladesh-India relations.
De-puzzling the mind?
The UNESCO Constitution, echoing the words of an anonymous poet, proclaims: “Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed.” If this is the case then it must be admitted that the puzzles and misgivings informing Bangladesh-India relations resulted from a precise mindset and therefore any unlocking or resolutions of the puzzles must be sought in changing the mindset at first. It is probably with this view in mind that SAARC Social Charter in Article V champions the cause of ‘regional consciousness.’ Put differently, the regionalization and SAARCization of Bangladesh-India relations require above all the changing of the mindset, ingrained as it is in post-Westphalian notions of bilateralism and mutual intolerance. But then, where do we start? Let me limit myself here to only three ventures.
A South Asian University could be a good starting point. Myself having mooted the idea with a senior colleague of mine some 14 years back, I was personally thrilled when I heard Dr. Manmohan Singh committing India to the establishment of a university of this kind in the last SAARC Summit. In fact, in the last 10 years, a team of South Asian scholars and researchers, with financial support from Ford Foundation, ran a project on South Asian University and gave serious thoughts not only to the possible courses and curricula but also the organizational structure of the university.
The idea that we collectively came up with was mainly to have issue-based faculties spread throughout the region. That is, the university will not be placed at one location or even in one country. Instead, and to provide some examples, the Faculty of Water Management could be located in Kathmandu or Dhaka, the Faculty of Development or Gender Studies could be located in Delhi, the Faculty of Peace Studies could be located in Islamabad, the Faculty of Ethnicity and Violence could be located in Colombo, and so on. All these faculties would then be linked to a network and collectively called South Asian University. This would surely provide an environment for post-national discourses free from the constraints of the reason of the state.
South Asian Mobile Museum could be another. When post-colonial India requested that the diamond, Koh-i-Noor, be returned, Pakistan also quickly laid a claim on it. But that was not all. Someone traced it to Bangladesh and laid a claim, and soon Sri Lanka also joined, claiming that historically the diamond belonged to the island! The British could only enjoy this bickering and quickly discard the claim as unworkable. But then there is a way out and the Koh-i-Noor could easily be brought back to South Asia. All that is required is the making of a post-national mobile museum, where Koh-i-Noor and many other artefacts transferred during the colonial era could be brought back and displayed in each of the South Asian countries on a rotation basis. Millions in South Asia would certainly line up to have a glimpse of the things that have contributed so much to the making of the Westphalian state and the healthy demise of it. Emotions would no doubt reign high but so would be the cause for celebration in the region and elsewhere around the world.
Finally, South Asian Library could also make a difference in this exercise of de-puzzling the mind. Modernity could not have come about without the Bodleian Library at Oxford, the first public library in modern times. Similarly, the libraries at Harvard, Yale, Princeton and the MIT have made what the United States is all about today. South Asian Library, with branches having thematic specialisation and spread throughout the region, could connect South Asians on a scale beyond comprehension. South Asian scholarship would at once cease to suffer from want of knowledge.
Waking up to the reality
In the age which has transformed the dictum ‘knowledge is power’ into ‘power is knowledge,’ one must be wary of the fact that ‘borrowed knowledge’ is bound to produce ‘borrowed power’ or ‘colonized mind’! Both India and Bangladesh must wake up to this reality and make knowledge-production and knowledge-creation a South Asian exercise if puzzles are to be resolved and breakthroughs to be made in their state of relationship.
Puzzles are created by humans and can only be resolved by humans. What is required above all is trust free from the ‘realist psychoses’ of fear, mistrust and inferiority complex. When it comes to Bangladesh-India relations, the latter, mainly for reasons of 1971, has an advantage over the former for having a good number of friends or lobbies in Bangladesh. Bangladesh, on the other hand, devoid of any such experience of helping India, remains largely friendless or without a lobby in India. The failure to cultivate time-tested friends in India lies squarely with the government, although it need not be so. Civil groups too had limited success on this. There is, however, some hope with the Indians who have lived and served in Bangladesh, including the 100,000 or more I have referred to earlier. Indeed, if we were to name a committed friend or two in India, the list would certainly have Mr. Muchkund Dubey, once India’s High Commissioner here. I am also confident that when the time would come for Her Excellency Mrs. Veena Sikri to retire from the service and (hopefully) join Track Two diplomacy she too would turn into a trusted friend of Bangladesh, making an extra effort to resolve the puzzles in Bangladesh-India relations. But then why wait for the retirement? Let such trust and friendship begin today!
Dr Imtiaz Ahmed is Professor of International Relations, University of Dhaka. He can be reached at: imtiaz@bangla.net. Website: www.imtiazalter.netfirms.com
[The above article was presented as keynote paper at the seminar held at CIRDAP and organized by the Centre for Development Research, Bangladesh (CDRB) on 6 April 2006. An earlier version was published in Foreign Affairs Journal, a quarterly publication of the Association of Indian Diplomats, New Delhi, Volume 2, Number 1, January-March 2007.]
Notes & references
The Daily Star, 22 March 2006, p.15.
Nitin A. Gokhale, “A Tale of Two Blunders: Misplaced machismo and a poorly demarcated border combine to lead to a flare-up,” Outlook Magazine, 22 April 2001.
Sumanta Banerjee, “Indo-Bangladesh Border: Radcliffe’s Ghost,” EPW Commentary, 5-11 May 2001.
For a closer exposition, see, Avtar Singh Bhasin, ed., India-Bangladesh Relations: Documents – 1971-2002, Volume IV (New Delhi: Geetika Publishers, 2003), pp.1889-1901.
The allegation of insurgent camps within India and Bangladesh was raised in a meeting of the border security forces of the two countries in Delhi on 5-10 January 2004.
According to Bina Nepram:
It was the issue of illegal migration which gave birth to insurgent movements like ULFA. The issue of illegal migrants has snow balled into a major political controversy in many other North Eastern States.... The influx has not spared Nagaland too. Some estimates put the number of Miyans (Bangladeshi Muslims) in the tribal and Christian majority Hill State as high as 20 percent of the population.
See, Binalakshmi Nepram, South Asia’s Fractured Frontier: Armed Conflict, Narcotics and Small Arms Proliferation i India’s North East (New Delhi: Mittal Publications, 2002), p.158. See also, Imtiaz Ahmed, “Contemporary Terrorism and the State, Non-State and the Interstate: Newer Drinks, Newer Bottles,” in Sridhar K. Khatri & Gert W. Kueck, eds., Terrorism in South Asia: Impact on Development and Democratic Process (Colombo: Regional Centre for Strategic Studies, 2003), pp.353-387.
The Statesman, 11 September 1994.
The Hindu (Madras), 9 December 1992.
In the National Human Rights Commission Vs State of Arunachal Pradesh, the Supreme Court of India, while referring positively to the content of Section 5 (1) (a) of the Indian Citizenship (Amendment) Act, ruled in 1996 that the Chakmas and also the Hajongs fulfilled the requirements of the Act. The Court then affirmed the right of these people to apply for citizenship and ordered the State government to take necessary steps to facilitate their registration. Despite this overwhelming legal backing, the Chakmas and also the Hajongs still remain stateless and are increasingly the targets of the local population as well as of the State government.
Shahab Enam Khan, “Re-engineering Bangladesh-India Trade: Resolving NTBs to Facilitate and Improve Trade and Investment.” Paper presented in a Seminar on Promotion and Facilitation of Trade between Bangladesh and India, 19 March 2006, Guwahati, India, fn. 4.
Anand Kumar, “China Replaces India as Largest Exporter to Bangladesh,” South Asia Analysis Group, Paper no. 1717, 3 March 2006.
Ibid.
For a closer exposition of the state of India’s and Italy’s economies, see, IMF Survey (International Monetary Fund), Vol. 35, No. 5, 13 March 2006, pp. 72-75. See also, Kazi Anwarul Masud, “Contours of possible Indo-Bangladesh relations,” The Daily Star, 11 July 2004.
Farooq Sobhan, “Estranged neighbours,” Seminar, # 557, January 2006.
Ibid.
J.C. Robert Young, Postcolonialism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p.63.
Imtiaz Ahmed, “Contemporary Terrorism and the State, Non-State, and the Interstate: Newer Drinks, Newer Bottles,” in Sridhar K. Khatri and Gert W. Kueck, eds., Terrorism in South Asia: Impact on Development and Democratic Process (Colombo and New Delhi: RCSS and KAF, 2003).
B.K. Jahangir and Imtiaz Ahmed, “Reformulating Culture and Thought: A Plea for a South Asian University.” Paper presented at the seminar on South Asia: Beyond Nation-State, organized by the International Studies Association, Bangladesh, Dhaka, 25 September 1992. Two more papers on the idea of South Asian University were subsequently presented in Dhaka and Delhi. See, Imtiaz Ahmed, “Remaking Education in South Asia: Making a South Asian University.” Keynote paper presented on the occasion of the Launch Meeting of the South Asian Visiting Fellowship Programme, organized by Bangladesh Study Group for Alternative Thinking (BASGAT), Dhaka, in association with the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), New Delhi, Nepal Water Conservation Foundation (NWCF), Kathmandu, Sustainable Development Policy Institute, Islamabad, and Regional Centre for Strategic Studies, Colombo, held in Dhaka, 27 January 1996; and also, Imtiaz Ahmed, “History, Education and South Asian Society: The Need for a South Asian University.” Plenary lecture presented at the Regional Conference on Education in the South Asian Context: Issues and Challenges, organized by the Department of Education, University of Delhi, Delhi, 14-18 November 1999.
The author is a Professor of International Relations University of Dhaka.
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