Weekly Holiday
Friday, 30th August, 2013
M. Serajul Islam
The Indian Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid has been trying his best to convince
the BJP and Mamata Banarjee to come on board to ratify the Land Boundary
Agreement (LBA) and the latter also to agree to the Teesta deal. His sincerity
in this regard is above question. However, there is reason to worry whether he
sometimes goes out of line to give a sense of optimism to Bangladesh where the
ground reality is negative. During his visit to Dhaka in February, he had said
that both the Teesta deal and ratification of LBA would be delivered to
Bangladesh without further delay.
Recently, he made light of
news that the BJP and Trinamool had hardened their respective stands on the
LBA. He stated that the Congress led government would raise the LBA
ratification bill in Rajya Sabha and insisted that the BJP/Trinamool would
support it. At one point, he made a comment that sounded weird because it was
difficult to understand whether he was trying to encourage Bangladesh or making
light of its concerns. He said the LBA became a done deal like a marriage as
soon as the Indian Prime Minister inked the additional protocol to the 1974
Indira-Mujib Agreement when he visited Dhaka two years ago and the ratification
process was just a formality like the photo session part of that marriage!
When news reached Dhaka, Salman Khurshid’s assurance notwithstanding, that the
ratification bill had not been placed before Rajya Sabha, journalists turned to
the Prime Minister’s International Affairs Adviser Gowhar Rizvi for comments.
He echoed Salman Khurshid’s description of the LBA as a marriage to allay concerns
and stated that the ratification would inevitably follow like the photo session
of a marriage! In their weird way of explaining the failure of the Congress led
government to place the ratification bill, both missed or deliberately ignored
a historical fact.
Poor diplomacy
In 1974, Bangladesh-India signed the Indira-Mujib Agreement. Under the
agreement, Bangladesh transferred South Berubari immediately afterwards. In
return, India was supposed to hand over sovereignty of Teen Bigha corridor to
Bangladesh for passage to the Bangladeshi enclaves of Dahagram and Angorpota.
India never kept its commitment to an Agreement that Indira Gandhi and Sheikh
Mujibur Rahman signed for their respective countries. In 2011, 37 years after
the Agreement was signed, India allowed Bangladesh permission to use the
corridor round the clock but did not transfer sovereignty to Bangladesh.
In fact, Bangladesh negotiators, for reasons unknown, had shown the tendency of
the International Affairs Adviser all along while negotiating with India. They
followed India blindly and believed in Indian promises without checking against
ground realities. Unbelievably, they failed to realize what hugely important
cards they bargained away to India on just promises. Muchkund Dubey, Dev Mukherjee,
Veena Sikri and Rajeen Mitter, all former Indian High Commissioners to
Bangladesh recently but belatedly criticised New Delhi for its failure to
deliver the Teesta and LBA deals to Bangladesh after Sheikh Hasina had answered
India’s dreams by providing it security support and trial run of the land
transit for which the Awami League has been pushed to a undesirable political
predicament with national elections only months away.
In desperation, the Bangladesh Foreign Minister made an ill-advised trip to New
Delhi last month and the Bangladesh High Commissioner to India travelled to
Ahmedabad to call on Narenda Modi. The moves failed and reflected the naïve way
in which Bangladesh conducted negotiations with India. Foreign Policy Adviser
Gowhar Rizvi’s choice to use Salman Khurshid’s description of the LBA to
explain why the LBA bill was not raised in Rajya Sabha was another example of
the poor quality of diplomacy. People wanted to be told unequivocally when the
deals would be delivered. They did not expect the Adviser to pick the weird
comment of the Indian Foreign Minister to make light of their concerns.
Delhi’s weird
concern
New Delhi, aware that its failure to deliver the two deals had placed a
friendly government in dire political straits, showed concerns over it in
recent months. It held discussions with the BJP/Trinamool as well as published
papers to convince the people that no harm would come to any parties in India
if it delivered the deals. Salman Khurshid’s description of the LBA as a done
marriage was also a sign of that concern, albeit a weird one. In another sign
of that concern/pressure, the Indian External Affairs Ministry released a
letter to the media that was written by Mamata Banarjee before the visit of the
Indian Foreign Minister to Dhaka in which she had clearly given West Bengal’s
clearance to both the deals to put the mercurial Chief Minister on a spot.
Unfortunately, the release of the letter had the opposite result from what the
Indian MEA expected. The Chief Minister went on a rage and more or less ended
any hope of the two deals receiving her clearance anytime soon. On the LBA, she
said unequivocally: “…our state of West Bengal will get only 7,000 acres of
land but will have to recede 17,000 acres of land to Bangladesh. This cannot be
accepted without taking into confidence and consent of the local people who
live in the transferable areas.” Mamata Banarjee was equally negative on the
Teesta deal over which she accused New Delhi of insincerity. She also said that
at the draft stage of the deal, New Delhi “had said something but proposed
something totally different in the final stage.”
BJP’s Sushma Swaraj was equally dismissive of agreeing to the LBA after New
Delhi had failed to raise the LBA ratification bill as Salman Khurshid had
promised. She said: “On the India-Bangladesh Land Boundary Agreement, I wish to
clarify that the BJP is completely against it.” In what has put the Congress
led Government on a spot, the BJP accused it of negotiating with Bangladesh in
bad faith as well as failing to take on board what it considered the “emotions”
of people to be affected by the land exchange deal. It was again Sushma Swaraj
who exploded the bombshells on New Delhi and Dhaka. She said emphatically that
the BJP’s position on the LBA was not a new one and that it had been opposing
the Congress led Government’s attempt to ratify the 1974 Indira-Mujib Agreement
and the additional protocol signed in September 2011 all the time. She accused
the Congress led government for “inking” the additional protocol “casually”
that raised serious questions on the Indian Foreign Minister’s description of
the LBA as good as a marriage deal!
India’s bad faith
The latest statements of BJP and Mamata Banarjee established that the Teesta
and the LBA deals never had any realistic chances of being delivered to
Bangladesh, a fact about which New Delhi was well aware all the time. These
statements together with what the former Indian High Commissioners have
recently stated in the media have established that for the failure to achieve
the paradigm shift in Bangladesh-India relations for which Sheikh Hasina had
taken great political risks was not entirely due to poor negotiating skills of
the Bangladesh negotiating. The Indians negotiated in bad faith that
contributed equally if not more to why Bangladesh-India relations have altered.
Salman Khurshid’s latest reference to the LBA being as good as a marriage deal
should now haunt New Delhi if it reflects on its dealings with Bangladesh
honestly.
Indians too, have reacted sharply to the way New Delhi treated Bangladesh. In a
recent survey conducted by IBN/CNN/The Hindu, Bangladesh came on top as the
country Indians trusted most, ahead of even Russia! Analysts explained this as
the result of guilt among Indians over New Delhi’s failure to be fair to
Bangladesh. The 7 northeastern states where the prospect of land transit
leading to regional connectivity had raised great hopes felt the same way as
those who were interviewed for the IBN/CNN/The Hindu poll. More importantly, the
failure convinced most Bangladeshis that India could not be trusted.
Nevertheless, New Delhi and the parties that objected to the LBA and Teesta
deals know too well how important Bangladesh’s sustainable cooperation is for
India’s critical security concerns and for regularizing the land transit deal
that Bangladesh had given on a trial basis. At the same time, on the Bangladesh
side, it is now accepted on a bipartisan basis that if relations were to be
built on reciprocal basis, Bangladesh would have the genuine prospects of
becoming the regional connectivity hub within which the outstanding bilateral
problems related to water, trade and land boundary would be peacefully
resolved. Therefore, although the paradigm shift that Sheikh Hasina had
envisioned have stalled for which both sides contributed, the Bangladesh-India
negotiations over the last five years have established the rich potentials of
friendly relations.
Delhi can still
help
Unfortunately, there are now no cards in the hands of the AL led government to
influence negotiations over the Teesta/LBA deals. New Delhi has also exhausted
its cards. There are little prospects of anything happening from the Indian
side that must make the next move to take relations forward. Therefore
realistically, both sides must now wait till new governments come to power in
Dhaka and New Delhi through elections in the respective countries. However, the
elections in Bangladesh have become uncertain that should encourage New Delhi
to take a fresh look at Bangladesh. The ruling party’s insistence to conduct
the next general elections under an interim government headed by Sheik Hasina
is pushing the country towards what many believe a civil war. It would be in
India’s interest to ensure that this would not happen because if Bangladesh
were to face a civil war, India’s security concerns would become a nightmare
where Bangladesh could very well become what Condoleezza Rice had predicted in
New Delhi in 2005; the “next Afghanistan.”
The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has aggregated the international concern
over Bangladesh. He made phone calls recently to the Prime Minister and the
Leader of the Opposition to urge talks between them for free, fair, transparent
and “inclusive” general elections. The SG’s concerns notwithstanding, his
initiative has little chance of succeeding in the current mood of the ruling
party. However if the Congress led government of India intervened with the
Awami League, with which, its failures to deliver the deals notwithstanding, it
still has close contacts, the prospect of SG’s initiative succeeding would
enhance dramatically. In fact, India is the only country at present that can
encourage the ruling Awami League to see the wisdom of holding free, fair,
transparent and inclusive national elections.
It is in India’s interest that it should encourage the ruling Awami League to
ensure that the BNP was not kept out of the next national elections by putting
its weight behind the UNSG’s initiative. It is also in AL’s interest because
holding “inclusive” general elections would give it the chance of going to the
voters with its performance and a chance to win. The AL chances of returning
and remaining in power in national elections without the BNP would be a
fantasy; damage the credibility of the party, push the country towards civil
war and leave it holding the BAKSAL flag once again. The people of Bangladesh
would also hold India responsible if the country exploded over the elections
for contributing its share in that, God forbid, predicament.
[The writer is a retired career
Ambassador]
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