Violence in Bangladesh exposes flaws in India’s Foreign policy
Current unabated senseless violence wracking Bangladesh by fundamentalist hoodlums exposes a fundamental flaw in India’s foreign policy. That India could not even send a stern message, let alone raise a small finger of admonition and threat, speaks volumes for our pusillanimous attitude. Examine the standard response, dished out to the media, “Monitoring situation with regard to minorities in Bangladesh”, “border forces on alert”, “Minorities, temples attacked in Bangladesh, closely monitoring situation” etc. Why is it that India lacks a robust foreign policy? We lack the guts of Israel, the sinister crookedness of the Americans, the steely resolve of the Chinese, the hardness of the Russians, and absolutely no self-respect whatsoever.
Happenings in Bangladesh were too fast-paced, but India being the only neighbour should have been on the lookout for tell-tale symptoms. Recently, the Prime Minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina made a revealing statement about international interests that wanted to carve out a “Christian country” from parts of Bangladesh and Myanmar. She said that a “white man” who met her before the Bangladesh elections in January this year had assured her of facing “no problems” during the elections if she allowed them to build an airbase on Bangladesh’s territory. Sheikh Hasina also compared it to East Timor and said that “they will carve out a Christian country, taking parts of Bangladesh and Myanmar with a base in the Bay of Bengal”. Though she did not explicitly mention India, but the ongoing strife in Manipur is also linked to this esoteric plan to carve out a new Christian country. The conflict exacerbated by the events in Myanmar has seen the idea of Zalengam, or the “land of freedom” in the Thadou-Kuki dialect, slowly creep into the narrative of many anti-India groups, that are also into drug trafficking in a big way. The exact territorial claim, though not explicitly spelled out, has ambitions to include parts of Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland, and the Karbi Anglong District of Assam, from India; in Myanmar, parts of Sagaing Division and Chin State; and in Bangladesh, the Chittagong Hill Tracts. Today, Zalengam is perceived as an ideologically based territory that is inhabited by the fundamentalist Christian Kuki-Chin-Zo clans that also have trans-border ethnic relations and drug trafficking arrangements across India, Myanmar, and Bangladesh. Since 2022, Bangladesh authorities have been initiating action against the militant group, Kuki-Chin National Army (KNA) by driving them into Mizoram, India. The Bangladeshi government also recently suspended peace talks with the KNF.
The situation is reminiscent of the dampened Naga insurgency that was engaged in a quest for a “Greater Nagalim for Christ”. The Naga concept wanted to create a confederation of bringing together over 16 main tribal groups with their own distinct names and languages, with a sense of unity that was forged with the advent of the British administration and Christianity. Therefore, when Sheikh Hasina went public with the proposed dismemberment plan, which was also echoed by Awami League’s finance and planning affairs sub-committee member Squadron Leader (Retd) Sadrul Ahmed Khan in a global news agency called ‘Sputnik India’, India should have throttled the Kuki drug trade vehemently. No doubt, the Home Ministry was handling the situation very deftly, despite pressure from the formidable Kerala Christian lobby. Khan while evaluating the strength of the Kukis, had observed, “The Kuki-Chin rebels in Myanmar are majority Christian; they appear relatively prone to manipulations by foreign actors.” He also pointed out that America’s tacit backing of Kuki-Chin rebels has security implications for not only Bangladesh and Myanmar but also India, which also has a large Christian population of the ethnic group in Manipur.
The alleged Christian state is in an embryonic state, being manoeuvred to benefit Christian aggrandizement, by aligning with militant groups and Western interests, leaving minority Hindus to bear the backlash.
Sheikh Hasina paid the price for her outspokenness. What started as protests against a reservation bill ended up in an orchestrated thrust by fundamentalists and vested interests within the government including the judiciary. Despite, having a mandate from the people in a democratic election, disgruntled elements by creating mayhem and violence, ensured that Hasina had no other option but to flee.
There are important lessons for India in the happenings that have crippled Bangladesh. Estimates suggested that around 18 million young Bangladeshis were looking for jobs and university graduates faced higher rates of unemployment than their less-educated peers. As India is on a spree creating universities and medical colleges, far in excess of the genuine requirement, there is no answer of what these students will do for a living. Migration to Western countries is going to be impossible, as developments there, point out, to hostile conditions emerging very soon. India is doing nothing about population control, which is a ticking time bomb. Nothing is being done to halt religious conversions, which are backed by Western and Arabian funding. Bangladesh is a standing testimony that whatever the size of the mandate, dislodging an elected government is child’s play. All Indian politicians should understand, imbibe, and digest this unpalatable truth. It is immaterial whether you have 400 or 200 seats in the Parliament, foreign intelligence agencies can shuffle, displace, or remove at will. This is what happens when a nation’s foreign policy is impotent.
No doubt, the present government is faced with a herculean task of redefining foreign policy and empowering it to handle foreign interventions, manipulations, and dictations. The foreign policy and foreign service officers were incapacitated for decades by being compelled to follow Nehru’s inane and asinine policies like non-alignment and Panch Sheel. Practically, it meant doing nothing. This writer recalls, back in 1978, while undergoing training as a probationer, an IAS faculty member used to mock the foreign service officers by saying, “You guys will have no work except attending diplomatic parties and drinking alcohol!” Though crudely put, he was echoing the ground reality. Succinctly put, India did not have a genuine foreign policy, pleasing everybody by inaction, is not feasible. But that is deeply embedded as a fault line in India’s foreign policy. Unsolicited and uninvited there is a tendency to go with aid shipments, even to countries, which openly make their hostility known. Operation Dost (Operation Friend) was the search and rescue operation initiated by the Government of India to aid Syria and Turkey after the 2023 Turkey–Syria earthquake devastated both countries on 6 February 2023. In return, the Turkish government imposed a comprehensive ban on exporting military equipment to India, one of the biggest arms importers in the world! Turkey has maintained a steadfastly anti-India stance, particularly concerning Kashmir, and is strongly pro-Pakistan due to religious affinity. In return, Indian tourist flow to Turkey grew 18 percent in 2023 to 2,74,000 compared to 2,30,000 in 2022. India is an emerging market for Turkey, and tourists from India will be among the top 10 in the next three years.
Maldives, an Islamic country was another nation, that made derogatory remarks against India and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on social media by three Maldivian ministers, despite their heavy dependence on India for tourism, and for the free training programs given to many Maldivian government departments.
India’s hidden strength lies in the immense tourist traffic flowing to Western countries, as well as the lakhs of students thronging to Western countries just to acquire a foreign degree. If properly twisted, manipulated, and directed, these can become twin weapons, capable of blunting any foreign intelligence agency’s spooky ventures.
Events in Bangladesh have opened a new dimension for all democracies, the mandate is a chimera, that can be made to go haywire by fundamentalists and ruffians. A full mandate is no longer a strength or guarantee of a smooth tenure, a massive young population is not an asset, secularism is not a virtue, aid is to be bartered not given as charity, tourists and students are revenue givers, don’t disperse them freely, decide where to send and to which institution to send, sizeable numbers means, nations and institutions can be compelled to come and supplicate at your doorstep.
Democracies need to become Smart Democracies.
1. Text in Blue points to additional data on the topic.
2. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of PGurus.
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