September 20, 2013
M. Serajul Islam
The Congress-led government’s efforts to deliver the
land boundary agreement (LBA) to Bangladesh failed when it gave up its attempt
to raise the ratification bill on the last day of its monsoon session of the
Indian parliament amidst opposition from two members of Trinamool and Asom Gana
Parishad. The next session of Indian parliament will be in December when
Bangladesh would be going for elections. Thus India’s chances of delivering the
LBA to the AL-led government during its present term are over. The Teesta deal
had earlier met the same fate over Mamata Banarjee’s unrelenting intransigence.
Although New Delhi has ordered retrial of the Felani murder after outrage in
Bangladesh over the first trial, the damage over it in the context of
Bangladesh-India relations has already been done when the special tribunal had
handed the not guilty verdict.
New Delhi’s failures for which the AL led government
had taken great political risks would undoubtedly be a major factor in
Bangladesh’s elections. In fact, New Delhi has been fully aware of this in
recent times as the AL-led government became stuck with major issues of
governance. It did not want to add to the AL’s burden by embarrassing Shekih
Hasina for being too overtly pro-Indian with India betraying her. New Delhi
thus went out of the way to convince the BJP/ Trinamool/Asom Gana Parishad to
back its efforts to ratify the LBA and Trinamool by withdrawing its objection
on the Teesta deal. New Delhi decided in favour of trial for the Felani murder
after remaining silent for nearly 3 years because it realized in recent months
that it needed to help the AL to come out of the political corner.
Incompetent negotiators
Unfortunately, New Delhi’s realization came too late.
A lot has been written and said about how Bangladesh’s negotiators played away
Bangladesh’s invaluable security and land transit cards to India without
seeking reciprocity from them on its concerns on issues of water sharing, land
boundary demarcation, trade, killing of innocent Bangladeshis on the
Bangladesh-India border by the BSF, etc. All said and written on the naïve way
the Bangladesh team negotiated were true. They behaved as if they were
representing New Delhi, not Dhaka. Many wonder why AL leaders should lose their
temper when critics cautioned them about New Delhi’s intentions.
The composition of the negotiating team to deal with
India was also wrong. In dealing with India, Bangladesh needed a team with the
best professional competence the country could offer under well-defined
leadership. Many felt that the PM herself should have provided that leadership,
having proved her leadership qualities in dealing with India in her first term
when she had achieved the Ganges Water Sharing and the Chittagong Hill Tracts
Agreements. Instead, the team was disorganized nobody knowing who was leading.
To compound the confusion, at times every minister thought it was his/her
responsibility to deal with India.
Lost opportunity
It was therefore no surprise that Sheikh Hasina’s vision for a paradigm shift in Bangladesh-India relations for which she unilaterally took courageous steps of providing India with total security assurance and grant of land transit on trial basis was squandered. Also squandered was the benefit that Bangladesh should have received from New Delhi for handing 7 top ULFA insurgents that helped New Delhi break the back of the many decades old ULFA insurgency. After literally gifting away the 7 ULFA leaders, Bangladesh is now holding on to Anup Chetia hoping to force New Delhi for concessions that only underlines the humungous mess that Dhaka made. Anup Chetia is a mid level ULFA leader while the 7 Bangladesh gifted were top ULFA leaders.
The Bangladesh negotiators realized their mistake in
blindly believing New Delhi while committing Bangladesh’s only playing cards
without ensuring reciprocity during Indian Prime Minister’s visit to Dhaka in
September 2011. The Indians withdrew the Teesta deal when Dhaka was ready to
celebrate it as a major victory of its foreign policy initiatives with India.
Although the additional protocol to the 1974 LBA was signed on that visit and
was publicized by the two sides as a major achievement, it got stuck in the
ratification process soon afterwards as the BJP and Trinamool refused to lend
the numbers in Parliament for he 2/3rd majority needed. The twin failures
thereafter stranded what promised to be the best times in Bangladesh-India
relations.
New Delhi, nevertheless continued to lighten
Bangladesh’s concerns by repeated promises that the deals would be delivered
anytime no doubt to keep Bangladesh happy for continued security support that
it needed very badly. It will remain a mystery why the Bangladesh negotiators
continued to believe these empty promises when it became obvious that New Delhi
was not making them seriously. Nevertheless, while the Bangladesh negotiators
could be faulted for lack of their professional competence but they failed more
because India did not negotiate in good faith. Take for instance the Teesta
Water Sharing Agreement. New Delhi was aware of three things regarding the
Teesta deal during the negotiations. First, the agreement would need West
Bengal’s concurrence as per the Indian Constitution. Second, New Delhi was
having serious problems with Mamata Banarjee. Finally, Mamata was facing
election from the constituency through which the Teesta flows to Bangladesh
where the constituents were not favourably disposed towards Bangladesh.
Delhi misguided Dhaka
The position on ratification of the LBA was also
similar. New Delhi knew when it signed the additional protocol that the BJP and
Trinamool would not back it with the numbers for ratification. The BJP’s
position against the LBA was well articulated and was available on its website
clearly and unequivocally. Yet Prime Minister Manmohon Singh said categorically
in Dhaka that he would be able to deliver the LBA to Bangladesh upon his return
to India from his official visit to Bangladesh. The way the Bangladesh side was
taken off guard when the Teesta deal was withdrawn from the table during the
Indian Prime Minister’s visit left no one in doubt that Dhaka did not have even
the faintest idea of what was happening and that New Delhi had alerted it in
any way.
In fact such was Dhaka’s blind faith in New Delhi that
while the Indian Foreign Secretary Ranjan Mathai had told reporters that the
Teesta Deal off the table in the afternoon of the day before the visit of the
Indian Prime Minister, Foreign Minister Dipu Moni insisted few hours after
Mathai’s statement that the Teesta Deal would be signed the next day. Dhaka
exposed its disappointment by an unusual undiplomatic gesture. While the Indian
Prime Minister had landed in Dhaka, Bangladesh’s Foreign Secretary called the
Indian High Commissioner to the Foreign Ministry and informed him that Dhaka
was withdrawing the exchange letters from the table that would have given India
land transit on a permanent basis.
The Indians showed bad faith also on the issue of the
border killings. While Bangladeshis continued to be killed regularly by the BSF
that was causing bipartisan anti-Indian feelings to rise, New Delhi went into
denial over it. The Felani case was the ultimate example of the Indian denial
where it failed to react to Bangladesh’s concerns while knowing that the BSF
was caught committing a crime that had barbarity written all over it. New Delhi
took the inexplicable and unreasonable stand that the Bangladeshis killed were
not their responsibility because they were killed in a place where they were
not supposed to be. They refused to take note of the fact that most of these
Bangladeshis killed were shot from the back while running away and could have
easily been arrested.
Bad faith, bad taste
New Delhi’s promises to Dhaka since Manmohon Singh’s
visit to Dhaka were made when it knew that the chances of delivering those
promises were becoming less and less. The marriage and photo session
description to the LBA by the Indian Foreign Minister was the ultimate proof of
bad faith by New Delhi one that also had a spattering of bad taste. It was
therefore unbelievable that the Prime Minister’s Adviser would give a spin to
that weird description to legitimize New Delhi’s sincerity! When two members representing
Trinamool Congress and Asom Gana Parishad raised their voices against the LBA
on the final day of the Indian Parliament’s monsoon session, the Foreign
Minister did not even make a feeble attempt to speak out for the ratification
bill! He had conveniently forgotten that Dhaka was desperately waiting for the
photo session of the LBA marriage deal to happen!
Thus while it would be undoubtedly correct to assume that Sheikh Hasina’s vision for a paradigm shift failed because of lack of diplomatic/professional skills of the team to which she had entrusted responsibility, New Delhi’s lack of sincerity in the negotiating process was equally, if not more, the reason for what happened in Bangladesh-India relations in the last five years. The Bangladesh negotiators may not have said so for reasons they alone can explain but prominent Indians have. Editor of Indian Express Sekhar Gupta; and four former Indian High Commissioners – Muchkund Dubey, Dev Mukherjee, Veena Sikri and Rajeen Mitter – and many others in India have blamed New Delhi for frustrating Sheikh Hasina’s vision for a paradigm shift in Bangladesh-India relations for which they have sympathized with her for her current political troubles over it.
In fact, a recent IBM/CNN/The Hindu poll has named
Bangladesh, as the nation Indians trusted most. Analysts said that Bangladesh
was placed there because Indians were unhappy with New Delhi for letting Dhaka
down when the latter had provided India what it needed most from Bangladesh,
namely security assurance and land transit.
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The writer is a retired career Ambassador
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