The Great Game
It is only Bangladesh that is a nation-state with a single culture and with an overwhelming majority of a single people called Bengalis Mahmud ur Rahman Choudhury The Great Game was a term used for the strategic rivalry and conflict between the British Empire and the Russian Empire for supremacy in Central Asia. The classic Great Game period is generally regarded as running approximately from the Russo-Persian Treaty of 1813 to the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907. The term "The Great Game" is usually attributed to Arthur Conolly, an intelligence officer of the British East India Company's Sixth Bengal Light Cavalry. It was introduced into mainstream consciousness by British novelist Rudyard Kipling in his novel Kim (1901). Today too, the Great Game denotes the rivalry, the conflict and struggles of states, with each other, for influence, for resources and for power in different regions and continents, perhaps even for control over the whole world. The word Great Power therefore, describes a state which plays the Great Game and the word Super Power identifies a state which has won the Great Game and supersedes every other state in economic, social, political and military power. In Asia, the rise of China and India has initiated the Great Game in the continent; both of these are Great Powers with China aspiring to be a Super Power. With the USA, the lone Super Power, in deep trouble economically, politically and militarily, China has a better-than-even chance of achieving that coveted status of Super Power within the next one decade. Not so India however, which has for too many internal contradictions and tensions economically, socially and politically to permit it to project its influence and power beyond the South-Asia region; within South-Asia its Great Power status in undeniable. And so, while China attempts to exert influence and power over the whole of Asia, India attempts to maintain its influence in South-Asia giving rise to tensions, rivalry with potentials for out right hostility and conflict in the next one decade. Historically China and India have always been Great Powers but they have never been rivals and have rarely been in conflict over spheres of interest and influence. Also historically, right from the 17th century upto the end of World War II, both have been pawns in the Great Game of European and other powers, rather than its players. It is only in the later part of the 20th century that both China and India began to exert themselves to gain the status, they have right now. India has always been divisive and divided; in its more than 3000 years of history, has India rarely coalesced into a single state. The number of times it had formed a single entity can be counted: the Maurya empire (321–185 B.C.E.), the Mughal empire (roughly 1530 to 1700) and the British-Indian empire (1757 to 1947) and of these, twice India was cobbled together by foreign conquests. In the South-Asia region are the states of India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Maldives, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Bhutan and Myanmar – except for Bangladesh each of these states is a conglomerate of different cultures, religions, languages, ethnicities which gives rise to internal tensions and violent conflicts within these states, making the region the most trouble-torn and conflict-prone in the whole world, save the Middle-East. India alone is subject to as many as 7 insurgencies and separatist movements in its south-eastern states and in Kashmir in the north-west, besides religious extremisms – Muslim, Hindu and Sikh – and social unrests of various types and magnitudes; Afghanistan can no more be considered a state; Pakistan is tottering on the brink of collapse as a state; Sri Lanka is engaged in a brutal separatist conflict for over 2 decades; Myanmar is under the heels of a brutal military regime following various insurgencies and separatist movements and Nepal is still destabilized from its recent political conflict between the monarchy and Maoist led populist movement. It is only Bangladesh that is a nation-state with a single culture and with an overwhelming majority of a single people called Bengalis. Whatever problems Bangladesh faces are problems of economics, of government, governance and politics, all of which can be righted and none of which has spill-over effects in the region but the problems that other states in the region, including India, face are not only problems of economics, government, governance and politics but problems of state-building – that cannot be righted so easily and has spill-over effects in the entire region, as is evident from the conflicts in all states except Bangladesh. Even the BDR massacre of 25/26 February, aimed at destabilizing Bangladesh has had no impact on the region whatsoever. So, it is not Bangladesh which ought to be kept on the radar as the Indian Gen. Shankar Roychowdhury (Retd) recently claimed in an article, but India which must be kept on all radars. As for the Great Game, the nation-state of Bangladesh is as well placed as any other to play the game, as opposed to being a pawn. http://www.thebangladeshtoday.com/leading%20news.htm#lead%20news-03 |
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