Following the recent drubbing the Indians received by the Bangladeshi’s in their short border skirmish, and the general animosity that most Bangla’s feel towards India, it is becoming clear that the Indians are ruing the events of 1971.
For all that negative talk about Pakistan, it is quite clear that Pakistan is now much more miltarily and strategically stronger than in 1971.
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http://www.atimes.com/ind-pak/CD05Df02.html
Tangled roots in India’s border conflicts
By Sultan Shahin
In the wake of the recent border skirmishes with Bangladesh, many Indians are hurt, disappointed and angry.
Outraged at the way Bangladeshi villagers, aided by the paramilitary forces, killed and then reportedly mutilated the bodies of 16 soldiers of India’s Border Security Force (BSF), Indians feel betrayed by the people whom they helped liberate from Pakistan 27 years ago.
What the world regards as New Delhi’s “maturity and sobriety” in its response to the incident is for many Indians just cowardice.
While the smaller allies in the coalition government, as well as the opposition, have been mild and understanding in their criticism, members of Parliament from Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) party have been scathing in their remarks at the “impotence of the government”. In their view, India failed to teach Pakistan a lesson a couple of years ago in the wake of the Pakistani intrusion into Indian territory in Kargil, and now it has failed to take advantage of the present situation to teach Bangladesh a lesson.
Angry at the turn of events in which their own government has failed to respond in kind to the death of its soldiers, the Hindutva parivar (the family of organizations that believe in Hindu domination of the sub-continent) have come up with some strange explanations. In an article entitled, “Bangla Conflict Civilizational, Mr PM,” the hardline pro-Hindutva columnist of the Daily Pioneer, Sandhya Jain, praises China, and offers an explanation for the mild Indian response.
“No nation compromises its self-respect in dealing with others, especially in times of crisis. China could command international awe in dealing with America [over the spy plane incident] because the communist government projected itself as the legitimate rulers of the Han people - in contrast, the Vajpayee government has cut a sorry figure, making excuses for Sheikh Hasina’s [Bangladeshi prime minister] government, instead of expressing the resentment and anguish of the Indian people. Major political parties, including the ruling BJP, are mum, no doubt because of the impact this may have on Muslim votes in the forthcoming elections in some states.”
What Hindutva ideologues do not seem to realize, as an editorial in India’s online newspaper, The Newspaper Today, points out, is that problems with Bangladesh are not new, nor has the government’s ideology anything to do with it.
In October 1962, when then prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru asked the army to clear the Chinese occupation of territories claimed by India, he was operating on a Delhi-centric paradigm. Simply put, this meant a world view where friends and foes, countries big and small, individuals and groups, functioned as New Delhi wanted.
The Chinese were not tuned into this perceived wisdom, and promptly cleared India out of the territory it claimed. There was a repeat of sorts in 1987. New Delhi believed that Sri Lanka’s opposition forces, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), were its allies and would surrender their arms to the mighty Indian army. Lamentably, as it turned out, the Tigers had other ideas and the error cost Sri Lanka more than a thousand dead and twice that number wounded.
Today, if we are gripped by an overpowering sense of having seen it all, it is perhaps because of the disparity between what was actually happening on the Indo-Bangladesh border and what New Delhi imagined was happening.
Meanwhile, the sequence of events that led to the tragic event is becoming clearer. Bangladeshi officials told India’s largest-circulated newspaper, The Times of India, they are bewildered that India allowed “a routine boundary dispute” on the Meghalaya border, that could have been settled at the local level, to degenerate into a bloody battle some 300 kilometers away. “Indian soldiers crossed the Bangladesh border and were killed at least one kilometer inside territory that even India does not dispute is Bangladeshi,” said Bangladesh Foreign Secretary, Syed Muazzem Ali.
Bangladesh forcibly occupied a small strip of land called Pyrdiwah on the evening of April 15, though they claim this was because the BSF was trying to build a road in contravention of policies that govern the problem of “enclaves in adverse possession” (Bangladeshi villages in Indian occupation and vice versa).
Instead of seeking to resolve the issue diplomatically, or at the level of paramilitary forces, some time on April 17, the BSF was asked to throw the Bangladeshis out of an Indian enclave in Boraibari, which was in their “adverse possession”. This was resisted by the Bangladeshi villagers, and with the help of the Bangladesh Rifles, they scattered the Indian force and killed 16 soldiers who were trapped in the wet paddy fields around the village. The Bangladeshis lost one soldier.
Commentators in India are almost unanimous that the clearance for “the misconceived operation” must have come from the highest level, given the fact that the paramilitary forces were asked to go on a cross-border action. According to Indian newspaper reports, the 16 soldiers killed were part of a four-company strong force of 400 men sent into Bangladesh territory on “an ill-conceived mission that had been cleared, according to BSF sources, at the highest political level”.
But information about the BSF operation was leaked to the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR), which soon mobilized the local villagers. Ambushed by the waiting BDR and a thousand villagers, the 400 (according to some reports 300) BSF men lost their nerve and fled, abandoning 18 of their comrades who were mired in the mud of a paddy field.
Whoever or whatever caused the present problem, the chief culprit is the passive attitude on the part of both Indian and Bangladeshi bureaucrats that seeks to postpone problems rather than solve them quickly.
The Bangladesh foreign secretary explains the problem. He told the Times of India, "Look, our border is more than 4,000 kilometers long. It is a complex, messy border, with enclaves, undemarcated stretches, changing river courses, adverse possessions. In any given week, there are loads of small local disputes that come up, most of which we don’t even get to hear of at the ministry because they are settled at various levels by the two border forces.
“Don’t forget that even Pyrduwah was settled in that way. We ended our gherao (siege) and the BSF agreed to demolish the road. It is only the Indian intrusion at Roumari which blew the whole matter up and led to the violence.”
As these claims and denials continue from both sides, analysts are beginning to wonder whether the problems India is facing both with Bangladesh and Pakistan are the result of its original misconceived policy of helping in the creation of Bangladesh in the first place, which has earned it permanent hostility from Pakistan and not much gratitude from Bangladesh.
Several commentators have tried to explain all that has happened in the context of forthcoming elections in Bangladesh in which Sheikh Hasina Wajed’s government has to prove that it is no stooge of India, while the opposition needs to prove otherwise. Even if this explanation is accepted, it apparently means that the common people in Bangladesh are not very well-disposed towards India and that you have to show hostility towards India to win elections there.
On the other hand, as one of India’s foremost strategic thinkers, Brahma Chellaney points out, Bangladesh’s secession from Pakistan in 1971 made the latter more compact and helped it emerge as a credible force to rival India. He asks what India achieved by dismembering Pakistan. "It only made Pakistan politically, economically and militarily more compact. Had East Pakistan not become Bangladesh, Pakistan would have remained highly vulnerable to Indian military pressure, with the east wing an enduring drain on Pakistan’s economy and defense. With those vulnerabilities, Pakistan would have had little strategic room to methodically wage the kind of unconventional warfare it has done against India.
"No other country in modern history has systematically worked to undermine its neighbor’s security through subversion and clandestine war for so long without the victim state, India, imposing any retaliatory costs. Militarily, Pakistan - with the world’s eighth largest army - is now a stronger entity than it was in 1971 despite its serious political and economic problems at home.
"The secession of East Pakistan actually made Pakistan militarily and economically more compact and fit. As a result of the consolidation of defense assets from two widely separated wings into one entity, Pakistan has considerably narrowed the military gap with India - the strategic reasons for intervention were compelling at that point. But with the benefit of retrospection, it can be said that India’s long-term interests would have been better served had the conflict between the majority East Pakistan and the dominant West Pakistan been allowed to fester indefinitely. This discord and conflict would have kept Pakistan preoccupied in internal war, leaving it little room for waging a proxy or Kargil-type war against India."
Reflecting a widely growing view in India, Chellaney takes his argument further. Pakistan, he says, is often described as a failing state. There is no certainty, however, that it will eventually fail. Many in Pakistan genuinely believe that India, with its internal contradictions, is more likely to unravel. But had East Pakistan not seceded, it is plausible that by now Pakistan would have become a failed state. India’s interests lay not in enabling East Pakistan to secede but in keeping it at loggerheads with the West wing, including by arming Bengali resistance. India should have looked at scenarios short of independence for East Pakistan.
Such thinking does not auger well for Indian-Bangladesh relations. Whatever the initial follies, both Vajpayee and Sheikh Hasina have shown maturity in turning back from the brink and not allowing the conflict to become wider. Sheikh Hasina, in particular, faced as she is with a tough re-election challenge, has shown great courage in virtually apologizing for the killings. It now devolves on them to start finding permanent solutions to the vexed border disputes immediately, without waiting for election results either in Bangladesh or in the state Assembly elections in India.
Whatever the vested interests of politicking may demand, the common interests of peoples in both countries demand long-term peace and security - and the voters know it.