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The people of Bangladesh have reasons to believe that it is primarily not the want of water on Indian's part that has been impeding successful negotiations. It is rather a negative mindset of the Indian policymakers that never allows the Indian authorities to forge positive negotiations with its neighbours, including Bangladesh, writes Nurul Kabir in a paper presented at the India-Bangladesh dialogues of journalists at the Bangladesh Enterprise
Institute in 2004
THE Indian authorities, however, proceeded with both the projects without even informing Bangladesh, let alone taking consent of the lower-riparian country, which was an obligation for the upper-riparian India under international laws and conventions that bar building of any structure blocking natural flow of waters at any point before a confluence.
The authorities of Bangladesh protested against the Indian moves on both the controversial projects at the last JRC meeting held in Delhi in September 2003, and demanded that both the issues should be specifically included in the agenda for discussion. India initially refused to officially recognise Bangladesh's concern over the twin issues on the pretext that the projects were still at the conceptual level. They eventually 'agreed' to recognise the concerns only when Bangladesh, following a whole night of failed negotiations, reportedly declined to sign the joint statement on the 'outcome' of the meeting. Indian authorities eventually 'agreed to consult on its river-linking project with all the stakeholders including Bangladesh', and the water resources minister of India 'also assured' that they 'will not build any structure at Tipaimukh in Tripura, without prior consultation' with the lower-riparian neighbour.
The Bangladesh water resources minister reportedly found the inclusion of India's river-linking project in the JRC agenda 'a major outcome' of the meeting, as the inclusion, he believes, 'paved a way for the future'.
But were the people of Bangladesh really assured? I have doubts, especially given the history of the breaches of similar promises by the Indian authorities. Did India not tell the world in 1951 that its Farakka Barrage project was at a 'conceptual stage', but silently went ahead in implementing the project? Did India not tell Bangladesh in 1975 that it was going to commission the barrage on a trial basis, and that too only for 11 days, but continued to operate the barrage at its will? Naturally, the troubled water of mistrust has contaminated the relation between the two countries.
It's just not water …
GIVEN the history of the failed negotiations over the contentious issues, including water, and the positions that the Indian authorities have been asserting in the process, the people of Bangladesh have reasons to believe that it is primarily not the want of water on Indian's part that has been impeding successful negotiations. It is rather a negative mindset of the Indian policymakers that never allows the Indian authorities to forge positive negotiations with its neighbours, including Bangladesh. It is really strange to notice that India has developed 'unfriendly' relations, of course of different proportions, with all of its neighbours. It is time that the Indian authorities started soul searching.
To return to the contentions issues between India and Bangladesh, one is free to ask as to what is the status of the first major agreement signed between the governments of Bangladesh and India in May 1974. The accord, what has eventually come to be known as the Mujib-Indira treaty, was signed to ensure a comprehensive settlement over the outstanding issues such as the exchange of (110) Bangladesh's enclaves in India and (51 of) Indian enclaves in Bangladesh, exchange of territories in adverse possessions, demarcation of 6.5 kilometres of land borders and demarcation of the maritime boundary.
The agreement was supposed to 'take effect from the date of the exchange of the Instruments of Ratification' 'as early as possible'. In a good neighbourly gesture, Bangladesh immediately ratified the agreement and handed to India over 2.64-square mile 'southern half of South Berubari union'. But India, as usual, failed to 'lease in perpetuity to Bangladesh an area of 178 metres × 85 metres near Tin Bigha to connect Dhagram with Panbari Mouza of Bangladesh' for long 18 years.
The Tin Bigha corridor was eventually open to the use of Bangladesh citizens in June 1992, but its conditionality is still so confusing and littered with so much of a bureaucratic complication that the life of the Bangladeshis in the Dhagram enclave has turned to be one of constant ordeals.
Notably, if the transfers of the enclaves are done, under the Mujib-Indira treaty, Bangladesh will regain around 10,000 acres of land, which is important for the geographically tiny Bangladesh. Besides, the Bangladesh citizens living in those enclaves would be able to enjoy all the civil rights they are constitutionally guaranteed to.
It has been 30 years since the signing of the Mujib-Indira agreement in 1974, while the Indian authorities are yet to implement the treaty on the pretext that they have to ratify the agreement in the parliament.
The two states also agreed, under conventions of international border treaties, not to do any construction 'within 30 yards of the no man's land or 150 yards from the zero line.' But India has repeatedly violated the agreement – the construction of a 90-foot road leading to the Padua border outpost of Bangladesh along the Sylhet border and subsequent occupation of the outpost by the Indian Border Security Force on April 11, 2001 is a glaring example of the latter's disregard for its small neighbour. The Bangladesh Rifles, the border guards of Bangladesh, however, reclaimed the camp on the 15th of the month.
But India's reaction to the reclamation was irrational of the highest order..
In the morning on April 18, some 300 BSF members invaded to occupy Bangladesh's border observation post at village Baroibari along the Raumari frontier of Kurigram district. A fierce clash in the Bangladesh territory claimed 19 lives – three of them Bangladeshis and the rest Indian.
The Indian authorities' 'nationalist ego' was hurt. Nationalism, as I mentioned earlier, has an inherent tendency to be jingoistic, which, in the present case, unjustly compelled the Bangladesh's government of Sheikh Hasina to order the BDR on April 19 to withdraw from Padua and tell the Indian prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, reportedly over telephone, that the Padua operation was 'a misadventure by the local commanders' of the BDR. India had been demanding removal and court marshal of the director general of the Bangladesh Rifles, Brigadier Fazlur Rahman, while a section of the Indian media was seen madly dancing to the tune of the establishment, simply forgetting its democratic responsibility to inform the Indian people that it was the Indian authorities that were on the wrong side of the international law.
The Indian authorities had its 'desire' eventually fulfilled by the government of Khaleda Zia, which sent Fazlur Rahman on a forced retirement, without showing any reasonable ground. Many in Dhaka believe that the government of Khaleda Zia took the step to satisfy the Indian authorities' jingoistic ego, and that too at the cost of hurting the patriotic feeling of the people of Bangladesh at large.
The result is obvious
THE result of India's Bangladesh policy is obvious. 'The anti-India feeling in Bangladesh is so strong that you can taste it,' writes Indian columnist Kuldip Nayar in a Bangladesh daily, in the second quarter of June this year, 'after a five-day stay at Dhaka'. To project the gravity of the situation, Nayar says, '…even Sheikh Hasina, considered New Delhi's friend, refuses to preside over the launching of a book, commending India's contribution to the liberation of Bangladesh.'
The message is clear. Given the amount of the resentment of the people in Dhaka over the years of India's acrimonious policies vis-à-vis Bangladesh, even Sheikh Hasina, president of the Awami League that presided over the country's war of independence in 1971, with Indian assistance, cannot politically afford any more hobnobbing with Delhi, at least publicly. Nayar has, therefore, advised India's 'South Block' to take 'generous and realistic attitude towards Bangladesh', hoping that such an attitude 'can help us fight anti-India feeling there [in Dhaka]'.
Nayar sounds patronising: He pleads for his South Block's 'generosity' towards Bangladesh, when he admits that 'Our [India's] official trade [with Bangladesh] is worth $1 billion as against [Bangladesh's] $60 million', and that 'non-official trade is said to be $2 billion in favour of India'.
Had Nayar noticed, from the figures provided by himself, that Bangladesh has been contributing to the economic growth of India at a rate much higher than that of India's contribution to Bangladesh's economic progress, he might have pleaded for India's 'just gesture', instead of a 'generous' one, towards Bangladesh. India's 'just gestures', particularly in the areas of water sharing and bilateral trades, can really help Bangladesh make progress.
However, Kuldip Nayar's advice, even if listened to by the 'South Block', would hardly help to solve the problems impeding the growth of a healthy relation between the two neighbouring countries, which is important for the development of both the peoples. In my view, the problem is political, or in other words, the problem lies with the parochial political attitudes of the policy planners particularly of India that obstruct them to take 'just attitude' towards the coterminous states. If the negative political attitude is changed, the right policies in different areas – be it water management or trades – will automatically follow. If India fails to change its political attitude to its neighbours, grievances against India will continue to grow among neighbouring peoples, which, in the last instance, will not be good either for India or its neighbours, of course including Bangladesh.
What is to be done?
I AM not comfortable with the idea of advising political authorities on what to do or what not, as I am quite uncomfortable with the idea of being advised by those authorities on what to write or what not. The peoples are my constituency and fellow journalists the comrades-in-arms in my struggle for the people's democratic rights and liberties. So I would like to emphasise certain democratic responsibilities of the media practitioners of both the countries aspiring for democratic emancipation of the peoples concerned.
I personally believe that it is primarily the parochial, and, therefore, myopic, political attitudes of a section, which is of course very powerful, of India's policymakers, politicians, bureaucrats and intelligence officials included, which are behind all these misdeeds against Bangladesh that more often than not amounts to crimes, both moral and legal, against millions of people of a neighbouring country.
I have also reasons to believe that the democratic section of the Indian population, which is again huge, is not adequately aware of how the policymakers of their country have for decades been provoking hatred against India among the people of Bangladesh by means of pursuing anti-Bangladesh policies.
To be continued
Reprinted from Dynamics of Bangladesh-India Relations: Dialogue of Young Journalists Across the Border, UPL, 2005.
http://www.newagebd.com/2009/jul/25/oped.html |