Author: Anand K Sahay
Publication: The Hindustan Times
Date: June 14, 2003
URL: http://www.hindustantimes.com/2003/Jun/14/printedition/140603/detOFF01.shtml
The Indian embassy in Dhaka issues
something like 2,000 visas a day! Thus, we have half a million of our Bangladeshi
neighbours visiting us each year.
By any realistic yardstick, this
is a decent number and should normally suggest a happy relationship.
But, wait. Most seem to come for
health care and education - the bare essentials. Clearly, schools, colleges
and hospitals are a lot cheaper here than in the West for an average Bangladeshi.
But probably so are facilities in Pakistan or Sri Lanka or even Thailand.
In the choice of India, then, there may be an implied acknowledgment that
this country is probably just as good as any other place for some areas
of medicine and education - a fact now recognised even by westerners.
But how one wishes the arrival figures
for tourism, recreation and trade and business were just as solid as for
health or education. That would have indicated that the Bangla people think
of India when they want to let their hair down or when they think to invest
in their future - and ours. Alas, this is where we enter the nether world
of suspicion and low politics.
During a brief stay in Dhaka recently,
this writer was surprised to see a steady dose of front-page stories in
mainstream newspapers suggesting that Bengali- speaking Indians were being
forcibly pushed into Bangladesh by the Indian border authorities. The subject,
as we know, is controversial, and India has been guilty of being ham-handed
and less than sensitive in the matter. But the regular flow of press items
- I'm not calling it news for there was no major event of that nature in
that period - did seem intended to generate ill will. Indeed, some Pakistani
delegates at the Dhaka regional conference of the South Asia Free Media
Association privately took the same view of the matter.
If illegal migration is a thorny
issue, so is, unexpectedly, the recently struck Bangladesh gas. India would
love to be a willing buyer, and both sides will be great gainers. But Dhaka
appears to be a far from willing seller. The issue is said to be caught
in the crossfire of politics between the ruling BNP and its arch opposition
rival, the Awami League. Is there, then, a bias against India in sections
of the Bangladesh elite?
Probably, yes - for historical reasons.
But that can't be the full explanation. True, on trade and investment issues
New Delhi could be more innovative, and permit the entry of goods and services
of neighbours on non-parity terms so that these could act as confidence-building
measures (CBMs). But in Bangladesh's case, a hindering factor is also probably
the way the country perceives its identity.
For instance is Sheikh Mujib, with
whose struggle India showed affinity, the country's founding icon or not?
In the President's House, his photo is only one among those of past presidents;
no separate fuss is made for him, as with Gandhiji here. Then there is
the tricky issue of religion, our subcontinental bane. Bangladesh is not
an 'Islamic republic', but official functions begin with a religious invocation.
Biman flights take off with the same invocation. If the religious angle
were absent in public affairs in India and Bangladesh, and in their mutual
relations, one could live the dream of a common market area and similar
cultural zone, like Europe does.
