The abject failure of national security adviser Brajesh Mishra’s mission to Dhaka is best gauged from the fresh atrocities against Indians on the Meghalaya border, where the Pakhria hamlet was ransacked by over a hundred heavily armed intruders, and a resisting tribal youth hacked to death (Pioneer, 30 October 2001). The decapitated body was recovered near the international border, triggering panic in neighbouring villages. Pakhria is not far from Pyrdiwah, were sixteen BSF jawans were mutilated and murdered in cold blood last April. Tribal chiefs complain that following Mrs. Zia’s victory in the October election, threats from Bangladesh Rifles to the Indian villagers to vacate their homes or face violent attacks have vastly increased. The insecure villagers have understandably decided to take matters into their own hands should the intrusions recur.
Dhaka’s intransigence comes with the startling news from Bangladesh’s Sangbad that the ruling Bangladesh National Party cadres have imposed the Jiziya tax on Hindus and other minorities wishing to stay in their ancestral homes in Chittagong. This should help South Block appreciate that regimes wishing to be taken seriously must not cringe before cavaliers.
It is to be hoped that Prime Minister Vajpayee would have realized that his failure to publicly disapprove of the horrendous atrocities against Hindus and other minorities in Bangladesh in the wake of the BNP victory itself undermined the Mishra visit. Mr. Vajpayee’s omission further had the deleterious effect of encouraging the international community (pre-occupied with Afghanistan) to largely ignore the most disgraceful violation of human rights since the ethnic cleansing in Serbia.
Tactically as well, the trip was a fiasco as Mr. Mishra left the country almost surreptitiously, with no briefing to the media, which was shamefully anxious to black out the atrocities for reasons best known to itself. One does not know what actually transpired in Dhaka; Mr. Mishra himself did not brief correspondents stationed there. But New Delhi’s claim that Prime Minister Khaleda Zia had assured protection to Hindus was scornfully dismissed by Bangla foreign secretary, Shamsher Choudhury, who said the issue had not even figured in the talks! To add insult to injury, the Zia regime responded to New Delhi’s concerns with a pay-for-tranquility attitude, with the Begum demanding reduction of the one billion trade deficit with India, duty free access to 25 categories of goods, and a review of 1996 Ganga Water Treaty (Hindustan Times, 20 October 2001).
What takes the cake, of course, is the Sangbad report that BNP candidates have asked Hindus and other minority groups to pay Jaziya, a tax levied by the Islamic invaders on their non-Muslim subjects, and hated for being both discriminatory and excessively extortionist. It therefore comes as no surprise that reports from Kolkata suggest that hundreds of Hindu families have already crossed into India, alleging ‘torture’ at the hands of the Islamist-allied regime.
Fortunately, some NGOs have come forward to help in the treatment of the tortured women. The refugees, who are said to be entering mainly West Bengal and Tripura and staying with family and friends, narrate the most heartrending stories. A thirty-two year old woman from Burhanuddin village, Sikha Rani Das, told AFP that she could not save her teenaged daughter from a drunken gang, and that her husband, a shop-owner, was dragged out of the house, never to return. She and others like herself then hid in marshy paddy fields for three days, writhing in pain without food or even a drop of water. They walked ten days to reach the border.
A primary school teacher from Bangladesh’s Bhola district, Tarak Chandra Majumdar, who fled leaving his wife behind, told reporters that the fundamentalists were systematically targeting the male members of Hindu families and forcing them to leave, after which the women were being molested. Even an eight year old girl was not spared, he wept. Majumdar, who served as assistant presiding officer at a polling station during the recent Bangla elections, stated that BNP cadres had openly declared that Hindus would have to leave the country if they came to power. He claimed the administration was party to a conspiracy to grab the properties of Hindus by creating a reign of terror.
While the reports emanating from Bangladesh link the atrocities against Hindus with their electoral support to the defeated Awami League, India can hardly ignore the reality that Hindus were ethnic cleansed even during Sheikh Hasina’s rule. Hindus in Bangladesh, therefore, are caught between an open foe and a pretended friend.
India cannot be indifferent to the plight of Bangladeshi Hindus, who were left in the lurch at the time of Partition because Nehru felt that the transfer of population from West Pakistan was already more than he could handle. Notwithstanding the Indian fiction that Muslims in East Pakistan were more ‘civilized’ on account of the common Bengali language (willfully ignoring the reality of the Great Calcutta Killing in 1946 and Noakhali a year later), the fact is that Hindus felt sufficiently uncomfortable to cross over continuously. Indeed this is the reason why as early as 1950, Sardar Patel, with his legendary clear sightedness, wanted to annex thirty percent of East Pakistan so that the insecure minorities could be settled in a few key border districts.
But if Nehru could not find the courage to back such a daring action plan then, it seems hardly likely that the present government will be so proactive. Yet the emerging correlation of forces in the Islamic world – with Bangladesh serving as a client state of Pakistan’s notorious ISI – will sooner or later deny us the luxury of prevarication. This means that although Bangladesh’s Hindu population has fallen from approximately thirty percent at the time of Partition to less than ten percent now (due to forced migrations), there are still an impressive fifteen million Hindus and other minorities in that country. India has a legal and moral responsibility towards them; certainly evacuating Hindus makes better sense than legalizing illegal Muslim immigrants who vote for secular (sic) parties and serve as foot soldiers of the ISI.
India is caught in a pincer by Islamic fundamentalist forces on both borders, and evading this realization can prove a costly affair. The threat comes not so much from rabble-rousing mullahs like Imam Bukhari as from Leftist-secularists determined to keep the nation intellectually disarmed. Fortunately, the fast-moving events have caught them speaking from both sides of their mouths.
These worthies deploy their secular instincts only to deflect perceived threats to their community or themselves. Currently they are keen to fight the international targeting of Islamic fundamentalism on account of the activities of Osama bin Laden and his Taliban-Pakistan allies. Hence, we are told by a noted actress, “the pan-Islamic ummah is a myth. Islam is not a monolith. It is spread over 50 countries and takes on the colour and the culture of the country in which it resides.” Unfortunately, fellow traveler Mushirul Hasan had already gone on record to say “the Muslim rage is real… It is directed…towards the inconsistency and injustice displayed by the US administration…. in dealing with Arab sentiments and popular aspirations.…the anger cuts across territorial boundaries and the ideological divide….” (Indian Express, 18 October 2001).
Needless to add, the concern spans only pan-Islam. Certainly, it does not stretch itself to encompass the beleaguered Hindus of Bangladesh. Certainly not when they are largely ignored by the Hindus of Hindustan.
The Pioneer, 6 November 2001