No India's (JUJU) Fear of Sheikh Hasina! M.T. Hussain Silly On the 9th September, Sheikh Hasina, the leader of the House and the Prime Minister of Bangladesh while speaking in the Parliament and seen in the TV screen looked very exuberant and confident that she had no fear at all of India JUJU. Her logic and assertion appeared to have been based on that the people of Bangladesh fought for and sacrificed for independence in 1971. On the same evening in the Parliament there was a row and serious indiscipline continuing for fifteen minutes as the report we had in the media that the 1971 war owed all to the armed men and not to any politicians! The indiscipline cooled down only after the State Minister Tajul Islam, himself an army man and freedom fighter amended his comment and included in the list the politicians, as well. The other silly remark she made was that should Bangladesh not join the 'Asian Highway' the country would be isolated from the world! Sheikh Hasina in 1971 Recalling back one may find that Sheikh Hasina in 1971 had both good and bad days; she had been carrying her first issue JOY and her father in the West Pakistan prison. The independence war went on in the real war fronts not only in the absence of her father but also in her being in almost royal care of the army doctors and nurses in the Dhaka Cantonment Combined Military Hospital (CMH). In that sense State Minister Tajul Islam was right before amending his first comment about politicians' participation in the war fronts. Many fought undoubtedly very courageously for the name of Hasina's father but none for Hasina's name, because she was then a young house wife of a working young scientist and rarely known to other people except to the very near ones. The question of her participation in the war did not arise at all for her age just passed teens and first child carrying or expecting mother. Only historical forces and incidents of rare kind made her the P.M. not only this time in 2009 but also in the earlier term (1996-2001). Even so, when she as the P.M. shows courage for upholding the sovereignty of Bangladesh against India (JUJU), the attitude is undoubtedly laudable. People would appreciate her in the exuberance shown. But the crucial questions remain elsewhere. India in 1971 The first is the tricky issue of legacy of India's active help in the 1971 war of independence and the way they came in for help that in the end despite heroic sacrifices of the Bangladeshi freedom fighters, the war ended in the form of war between India and Pakistan. Whatever may have been the argument against this thesis and whatsoever have been the style of rhetoric, the surrender of Pakistan Eastern Command was not made, in fact, to the joint command of the Mukti Bahini and the Indian Army Eastern Command but to the Indian command General Arora alone who signed the document as against Pakistan's General Niazi. That documentarily made Bangladesh then an occupied territory of Indian army. The incident preceded another lacuna that established India as the invader for at least three days of the territory of East Pakistan starting on the 3rd December 1971 for the simple reason that Indian Government did not recognize Bangladesh as an independent country until on the 6th December 1971. Such initial lacunas put the Indian lordship on top that clearly impinged on and limited the sovereignty of Bangladesh. Thus until the withdrawal of the Indian army in March 1972, Bangladesh had been not only under Delhi's full army control but also the administration were being run by them. Fall out of 1971 The withdrawal of the Indian Army from the soil of Bangladesh was not completed and took effect unless and until the so-called 'friendship' treaty was undertaken on the 19th March 1972 in Dhaka that made Dhaka in reality subservient to Delhi for the term of 25 years set therein. The articles of the treaty 8, 9 and 10 were clear proofs for the point. That amazingly looked like an extension of the Seven Point Treaty Tajuddin, the Exile Government P.M., undertook as pre condition for armed help before the war began in December 1971. The interesting issue about the total subservience under the treaty was such that the then Acting President of the country Syed Nazrul Islam got fainted as Tajuddin had signed the treaty in his presence in Delhi for the document was nothing but a signed piece of paper for Bangladesh to give in to remain bonded subservient to Delhi for good for Delhi's help for winning in the impending war against Pakistan and getting Bangladesh out of Pakistan frame work. The clauses 8, 9 and 10 of the 25-year treaty, in fact, formalized those conditions of subservience Tajuddin had yielded. In other words, the recognized formal leader of Bangladesh gave a clear and irrevocable nod to those disabilities about sovereignty of Bangladesh at per with India. 1996 onwards The treaty duration expired in March 1997 when Hasina had been in power as the P.M. in her first term. She tried to renew the treaty for her safe survival, but could not do so for stiff opposition in the country against the treaty. But she took other means to give India other advantages against the sovereignty of Bangladesh. The first one being the 30 years treaty for Ganges water sharing that in fact gave all advantage to India so much so that Bangladesh since then continued to receive less than what normal natural quantity should have been obtained as from the age old natural course of water flow down in Bangladesh territory in the Padma River. The other one was the inequitable treaty signed with the Hill Tracts people so much so that the people other than tribal groups turned into second-class citizens in their own 'sovereign' country. Term 2009 onwards In the second term she began in January 2009, she is well on for giving land transit to India first by nodding to use the Ashuganj River port that was resisted by the people for decades, seems to have yielded to India for the Tipaimukh Dam /Barrage at the cost of consequent desertification of about one fourth of the eastern south of Bangladesh that is estimated to cost Bangladesh nearly two and a quarter million Taka loss of production etc. each year for adverse effects of the Tipaimukh Dam just as Farakka Barrage's adverse effects have been costing nearly one and half million Taka each year to Bangladesh and would continue so possibly at increasing figures year after year. Nod is given by the recent visit of the Bangladesh Foreign Minister also to the loss of Bangladesh due to India's Gazaldoba Barrage erected recently at the upstream of the River Teesta like the Farakka is yet to be figured out but the likely figure would be anything of thousands of million Taka each year as adverse effects during each dry season scarcity of water flow since about a decade now as the Teesta Irrigation Project of Bangladesh has been made almost nonfunctional due to withdrawal of almost all water in the dry season by India (See, Asaf Ud Dowla, Daily Naya Diganta, 13 September, 2009). The amazing thing is that when she has been pursuing without putting the slightest resistance against India for the sovereignty of the country clearly as a loyal good woman of India, her humbug on the question of sovereignty can be nothing, to say the least, but only absurd rhetoric. Anti-Indians It is reported in The Times of India on September 11, 2009 that Delhi need be 'hard' on Dhaka for anything and everything that Bangladesh tend to hit India's interest. The prestigious daily of India has invented that the bureaucracy and intelligence people being trained as 'anti-Indian' have been trying to restrain Hasina to become soft on India in any matter! What a new theory! Fortunately, the daily has, in their way, reconfirmed that compared to the patriotic bureaucracy she is much more for protecting Indian interests. Albeit, so. How can she forget that she had the best sympathy and protection in Delhi not only during her six years of trying time following the 1975 August coup in Dhaka but also it is well known that Delhi played the crucial role in bringing her the second term into power this time in the December 2008 general election revealing lately as the fraudulent one of only of its kind in the history of Bangladesh. Humbleness The real situation and geographical position is that Bangladesh has remained encircled by Indian territories almost on all sides. Bangladesh has, as such, genuine fear (JUJUR VOE) against the sovereignty and that mainly from India not only for India encircling Bangladesh but also much bigger in military might in comparison to the much smaller might of Bangladesh. There is thus no scope to remain careless about the threat that may at any time come from India as the past experience shows that since six decades now she has forcibly occupied many of her smaller neighbors and assimilated them all into the Indian domain, the only exception has been the continuing resistance in the Indian held Jammu and Kashmir. India's fear I am sure India has a genuine fear that should India violate the sovereignty of Bangladesh, she might face continued resistance like the overwhelming people of Jammu and Kashmir now going on with huge sacrifices for over six decades. If Hasina has in mind the example of the continued resistance of the overwhelming majority people of Jammu and Kashmir, that is certainly appreciable and a different matter. Hasina grossly wrong I am afraid she is grossly wrong, illogical and very much silly when she said that Bangladesh would be isolated from the world unless it gets on the Asian High way obviously the way India has imposed on Bangladesh. Is that at all so? If she had really meant Asian Highway of the type of historic Grand Trunk Road of the 16th century that would have been something worth. Because we could then get road connection to the east and the West from further east of Akiab (Myammar) to Bangladesh to Delhi to Peshawar to Khybar to Kabul and onwards, not only to Nepal and Bhutan, our two other closest neighbors. Let's not be fooled that we are now in 2009 A.D. in the fastest moving internet-age connecting one another from one corner of the globe to another in seconds, not even minutes. Besides, road transports are now a day considered not at all suitable for heavy goods both for quantity and for road durability in alluvial soil that most Bangladesh soil is. Bangladesh had no direct road/rail transports for the last six decades the way India has been insisting on and Hasina seems to have yielded to the idea. Even so, the people of Bangladesh, much less the country had not been isolated from the world. The silly remarks she made in the Parliament might have made, if one may use the term used by BBC's renowned journalist Serajur Rahman, the HUQQA HUAs pleased but not any sensible one in the country. |
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