Desicritics Category: Politics: Bangladesh

BBB Inc. - With Bare Hands If Necessary

temporal — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 07:33:38 EST

Rehan Ansari's lament is passionately articulated. It exposes the growing sub-continental fault line. He writes about the subversive elements, the interest groups, the politicians, leaders and government honchos who may not be in collusion but who certainly appear to favour lack of detente:

Partition has resulted in nationalism, borders, and visa regimes that make sure that people know even less about each other. As a result, they are more likely to be taken for a ride by the agendas of lashkars , fascists, and the realpolitik of Islamabad and New Delhi. A United India – or even an India and Pakistan that were friendly states, much like contemporary France and Germany – would never have been vulnerable to an American agenda of jihad in Afghanistan and Pakistan against the Soviets. Better relations would also have negated this ‘problem’ of Kashmir.

On those (now increasingly rare) occasions, when individuals and groups from one country visit the other, they invariably follow up with glowing praises. They discover the commonness ignored by the government and media in their respective countries. They instinctively discover the common ground and find the warmth and friendliness in the other not revealed and expressed openly in their home country.

And this causes dismay and consternation in the groups and lobbies in both India and Pakistan who want the enmity, suspicion and hostility maintained. That such efforts are nudged and aided from other powers in the region and the world can be argued another time.

While the extremist fringes in India and Pakistan can be identified, there are many others that are harder to identify. But their maneuverings are easily discernible. It is good for business - their business. Hatred, intolerance and suspicion must be kept brewing. Peace and amity must be kept at bay.

BBB

These three have a common interest to ferment and instigate the chasm between India and Pakistan:

Big Business: They see profit big ticket defense expenditure. Peace is bad business. If only they realise that peace has its own dividends, and can add more to their bottom line than selling instruments of death and destruction.

Big Beards: The religious fringe do not want amity and friendship between people. Bad for their business - these Babas in green and saffron revel in hatred and enmity.

Bureaucratic Babus: The bureaucrats have lost their sheen and magic and are now in cahoots with big business and MNCs.

The irony is each one of these three think of the other two as their puppets.

Each time the two countries try to come close by, a force generated by the BBB Inc. pulls them away. The past sixty years are rife with such examples. Three generations have grown apart. The unstated goal of nourishing and maintaining a wall of suspicion, enmity and intolerance towards each other is growing taller, wider and deeper.

In India, amidst a plethora of cable TV channels available, there is no Pakistani channel available for subscribers. Likewise, in Pakistan there is a ban on Indian channels, naach-gaana channels are surreptitiously allowed though.

What is good for BBB Inc. is bad business for the majority of middle classes on both sides of the divide. And it is not only middle class that suffers as Rehan argues, but the common person is victimised too.

Barring past six decades, for centuries they drank the water from the same well, participated in each others religious and cultural celebrations, fought against the colonizers and invaders.

This wall is an artificial construct that needs to be brought down - with bare hands if necessary - one brick at a time.

Is Terrorism a Vice born out of Patriotic Virtues?

Suresh Naig — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 13:36:20 EST

Patriotism, as per the dictionary, conveys a person’s loyalty, devotion and readiness to defend and guard a country, to which one belongs. From time immemorial patriotism is extolled, as a supreme virtue. Since patriotism is more emotional than rational, the benignity of patriotism could easily be converted into malignant terrorism, by stoking emotions.

A nation or a country has different dimensions, other than its geographical boundaries. It has its economic, social, and cultural dimensions too. A country is united by its cohesive cultural identity, which supersedes every other factor – geographical, economical or political. When this cultural identity is uprooted, mere geographical intact-ness of a country loses its relevance. Or to put it the other way, a country cobbled up on apparent lines of similarity, other than cultural cohesiveness, cannot stay intact in the longer run.

Break-up of USSR into different fragments, could be attributed to different reasons and the major being cultural disconnect. The same cultural bondage saw unification of Germany, on the 3rd of October, 1990. Break-up of USSR into fragments and re-unification of East Germany and West Germany, were almost simultaneous. Communism as a philosophy lacked the cultural cohesiveness in neither uniting nor dividing countries.

In spite of different kingdoms existed in our mother land, due to geographical convenience, economic viability, territorial advantage and individual avarice, Bharat was united culturally. Adi Shankara in 5th Century BC (those of you who want to dispute the period of Adi Shankara to 6th Century AD, pl wait) could not have established his mutts in different directions, North, East, West and South, but for the cultural connectivity existed in our land.

This cultural connectivity of our great nation was beyond religions, for our cultural uniqueness, accepted every religion into its fold, without antagonising any religion or sect. In addition to Hinduism; Buddhism, Islam, Sikhism and Christianity continues to co-exist in our great land, since our culture is basically polytheist in nature. But for the cultural cohesiveness of our land, British would have failed to create a single political entity as India. Without understanding our basic strength, many attribute our sovereignty to English, whereas British were more known for their dividing capabilities than unifying credentials.

Many a time, religion and culture are misunderstood, to be overlapping to each other; experiments in that direction also failed; sterling example is the split of Pakistan into two. Pakistan was born out of apparent similarity of religion, but bereft of cultural cohesiveness and hence it was not able to stay as one political unit. Without proper understanding of this phenomenon, disgruntled elements in Pakistan are seeing a demon in India, which had engineered the split.

Patriotism is apparently misunderstood in Pakistan, by encompassing religion into its patriotic firmament, since the country originated on religious grounds. Because of this confused logic, select few inside Pakistan want to avenge India on religious lines, attributing assumed reasons of religious suppression in Kashmir and for causing the split of Bangladesh. However much diabolic or manic the design might be, because of its sanctification from the religious patriots, the feeble voices of reasonable persons in Pakistan have been dinned by the noises of radicals.

The radicals, however miniscule in number, wield enormous political and religious clout; they have absolute power of destruction. Political power centre in Pakistan had lost its control over these rogue elements since long and hence they continue to deny the presence of terror elements in their land.

Overt operations such as war or economic sanctions would hurt only the section in Pakistan which does not have anything to do with these terror elements and it is better for India to think of covert actions, aimed at hitting these modules beyond recovery.

Terrorism - The Communist Perception

Suresh Naig — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 11:08:20 EST

Sitaram Yechury declared in the Rajya Sabha, that the Indo-US nuclear deal had exposed our country to new threats of terrorism. As per the News paper reports he said

"What brought the terrorist outfits to our shores, with the Indo-US nuclear deal you are seen as an ally of the US, a strategic partner. There seems to be a total lack of appreciation of this thought from the government's side"

In the same breath he said "we need to avoid the compartmentalised approach in combating terrorism in the country. Witch-hunting of a particular community would further breed terror".

After compartmentalising the terror attack of Mumbai to Indo-US nuclear deal, Sitaram Yechury, advises the government to shed compartmentalised approach in combating terrorism.

The two points he had raised in the Rajya Sabha are unfathomable for me.

1. Instead of coming out with a comprehensive suggestion to combat the menace of terrorism, he has concocted a new reason for the terrorists and terrorism to exist. We have not sent them to the Parliament to act as the spin doctors, spinning reasons for the existence of terrorism. If not the nuclear deal, exported terrorism from Pakistan would be for Godhra carnage, or Babri Masjid, or Kashmir or Bangladesh, or just for the fun of it. When we know the real source which is Pakistan, why waste our time in looking for additional and apparent reasons for terrorism. He should have come with his solution to weed out terrorism from its source.

2. His next advice to the government is to refrain from witch-hunting of a particular community. He knows pretty well that in India, witch-hunting is done only for electoral gains, and not for fighting terror. We cannot expect Sitaram Yechury to be so pragmatic, in his advice to the government to stop "witch-hunting of a particular community for electoral gains."

Leftists never seem to come out of their self spun cocoons; they may as well call their party as CPM "Cocoons Party of India (Marxists)"

The South Asian Water That Is Indian

Diganta — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 01:15:14 EDT

It's been long since I have written about Farakka - the barrage on the Ganges just before it enters Bangladesh. There has been no permanent treaties between India and Bangladesh on the water sharing at Farakka. However, there is a 30 year agreement between India and Bangladesh that ends after 2020. As per the agreement, India ensures 35000 cusec water for Bangladesh at even the driest possible season. The dam was supposedly for supplying more water to the dying Kolkata port, which has already died its' natural death and handed over its responsibilities to Haldia port - a new and better one.

If you Google the term Farakka, you will encounter a lot of documents and articles about Indian unilateral water withdrawal. Some of them are written on a factual basis but some of them are not. So far, I have found an excellent paper written by Mikiyasu Nakayama from Utsunomia University, Japan. This is an excellent analysis of the entire proposal and its history.

I was delighted to find that both the proposals I raised in my previous article were indeed discussed between India and Bangladesh. It was my pleasure to know that the proposal that I stressed on, was indeed put forward by the Robert McNamara, the President of World Bank in 1976. He proposed that dams and water reservoirs should be built in Nepal to solve the long term water crisis in the Ganges. The dams could be on the tributaries of the Ganges (map), preferably on Kosi and Gandak. It was supposed to release water during dry season and to store during monsoon. Canada and World Bank both agreed to fund the project. It was not only for the storage, it would have created huge amount of hydro-electricity for both Nepal and India. Bangladesh also agreed to the proposal. But India did not.

India rejected the idea since it was going to 'internationalize' the issue and will involve a third party (Nepal). Indian policymakers stuck to the point that they'd help Bangladesh to construct a canal from Brahamaputra to the Ganges. Bangladesh opposed with the claim that it would involve displacement of a huge population in a densely populated country and also the Brahamaputra river might not have enough water during dry season. And I don't see Bangladesh was wrong in that. Brahamaputra water is also diminishing (though better than the Ganges).

The other point India cited was the possible earthquake in Nepal could destroy thousands of life if the water breaks out of the dam. The same hold true for counter-Indian proposal to build a water-reservoir in upstream Arunachal to augment the lower supply in Brahamaputra. Either of these two is a probably bitter truth - a dam in either place can carry destructive effects downstream should there be an Earthquake. However, how else can we get extra water?

Nakayama noted that since India was not hungry for World Bank loans in 1970s, they actually did not even bother to care about the proposal. In 1950s, the situation was different when India and Pakistan signed the Indus Water treaty. The other notable observation was India basically stuck to the same pattern that it was successful with Pakistan - get total ownership of a few rivers and ask others to interlink (with compensation of cost of canals ) - something that Pakistan did after the Indus Water treaty. But, it is clear to me that Indian policymakers lacked 'out-of-the-box' thinking and were more committed to stick to their position and never thought in terms of development of the whole region.

What would have possibly happened if Nepal was made a party to Ganges agreement? Indian policymakers could have thought from both political and technical point of view. They viewed it as an agreement where Nepal would come to the driver's seat having the storage capacity. Also, they might think that it would be difficult to tackle both the countries instead of one at a time. The other point could be serious. A possible earthquake in Nepal would devastate high populated Indian areas including Uttar Pradesh. Well, that's always a possibility with a water reservoir and we already have a lot of them all though out the country.

Instead of adding extra water to the supply, India and Bangladesh are still vying for water, from Teesta (another Indian river that enters Bangladesh) and the Ganges. It is noted that India gets 39% of water from Teesta and more than 50% of the Ganges. However, the upper-riparian withdrawal is generally restricted to 20-25% in all resolved water disputes till date including Indus water treaty and the Nile river water sharing treaty between Sudan and Egypt.

The paper also noted the unwillingness of lower-riparian states to gain popularity. I was personally very critical of that in case of Bangladesh where political parties do make politics out of this issue but showed little commitment towards solving it. He ended his opinion with a few possible reasons of failure including the mediation of an effective and neutral third party. ICJ interfered in only a single case on record - with Hungary and Slovenia on river Danube. That seems to me the last place for arbitration.

It is said that "better late than never". Even if after 30+ years of bad policies towards Indians and Bangladeshis, some of Indian policymakers get rid of casual attitude towards development - it will be a bonus for the majority of Indians. It should be noted that the extra water could not only solve the dry season water crisis, but also could fix the diminishing ground water levels and the lower growth in agriculture for last couple of decades. In an era when the food prices are doubling every year, it's worth taking a fresh look at the age-old problem. After all, what's wrong if we have a few dams in Nepal?

Access To Credit Should Be Recognised As Human Right

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 02:46:49 EDT

This post made me think. Nobel laureate Dr Muhammad Yunus of microcredit fame has said that access to credit should be recognised as a human right. Now, there are two aspects to this argument

1. That the state has a right or a duty to provide credit to its citizens which is something that I do not agree with. This habit of looking to the Government for everything and handouts is wrong. This is at par with the argument that there is a fundamental human right to employment. No, there is no human right to employment. Nobody owes you anything for employment, that is your own responsibility. That is not to say that people who are clearly unable to work should not be helped (such as physically disabled...) but generally, there is no right to work. Similarly, there is no right to credit or even access to credit. But the flip side is true and more on that at the bottom

2. That credit is the only thing which is stopping people from leading economically productive lives which is again debatable. Just having the credit available does not mean that people will take the credit and suddenly become entrepreneurs. That is not necessary, to be economically active, you can rely on somebody else having credit, or loaning out credit or relying on your own energy and being self sufficient.

But overall, it does make sense not because of the call for the right but because what I know that poor people are poor because of governments and not despite them. Governments actively connive in removing access to credit to their citizens. That is actually true. Let us look at the ways it is done. First by giving subsidies and deficit financing, they soak up funds in the market which can be given as credit to needy people.

Second by having inefficient means (such as corruption, bureaucracy, etc. ) even well meaning ways of passing on credit are bad (such as rural work schemes or forcing state owned banks to make loans cheaply such as in Iran). Third is by not having good land and other asset registries (like patent systems) or good land based infrastructure (such as rural markets, good deep secondary patent and land markets, good legal systems where land and asset rights can be protected, exchange and markets where these can be traded..... (see for example, work done by Hernando de Soto)

But, food for thought indeed! Giving people credit is a laudable aim and Governments can do worse than do that. Specially for countries like Iran, Bangladesh and India, the dead hand of the state has to be removed or at least made efficient in asset discovery and credit generation.

But then, remember that you CAN go too far. For example, see this. Well, you have a very simple way of getting credit, just send a text message and in 15 minutes, about $500 will land in your account. And when credit is that easy, it creates problems on the other side. I quote, "Swedish authorities, who are so concerned about the out-of-control debt build-up among some young and low-income Swedes that they in January banned interest payments superior to the cost of the initial loan.The main danger of the new lending system is that it gives people "the possibility to get money very, very quickly, which is stimulating impulsive actions without thinking," Also lets not forget the sub prime crisis where funds were lent to people who were clearly unable to repay the loans

So yes, credit should be available but not too easily.

Technorati Tags: India,Iran,Bangladesh,Financial Markets,Financial Products

Using Refugees for Strategic Purposes

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Sun, 9 Mar 2008 11:55:00 EDT

I have already written about refugees before but this time I want to look at what do the Bangladeshi, Kashmiri, Tamil, Hindu, Muslim, Sikh Refugees in India, Kosovo Albanian Refugees, Palestinian Refugees in various Arab countries, Afghan refugees in Pakistan and Iran, Hutu refugees in Zaire, Cambodian refugees in Thailand, Cuban refugees in USA and all the other refugees all over the world have in common? Well, they have all been used by “other people” for their own needs and agendas. And these “other people” use these refugees as part of an explicit strategy, not for purely humanitarian objectives. I was quite surprised when I worked through the argument.

Using refugees for strategic purposes seems to have a very long history, especially in the post World War II period. And generally, if managed properly, it works. See the examples which we have? While the 1971 Indo-Pakistani war is considered by many as perhaps the best example of the “Just War” theory, the fact remains that India did use the Bangladeshi refugees as a reason to poke Pakistan in the eye. As a matter of fact, that entire episode of Partition with millions and millions of refugees is still being played out by strategic use of the refugees in Kashmir, Pakistan and India.

The Mohajirs in Pakistan are used as a strategic bloc by their own leaders, as well as so many other political and religious leaders in Pakistan. The ethnically cleansed Kashmiri Pundits are used in the greater strategic Hindutva discourse and are ignored strategically by the Indian government for the overall secular discourse. The Sri Lankan Tamil refugees were used strategically by the Indian central and State governments, as well as political parties to push their varied agendas just like the Singhalese and Sri Lankan Muslim refugees were themselves used by Singhalese politicians to push for a nationalist objective.

Pakistan, USA and Saudi Arabia used the Afghan refugees to push for their various nationalistic, ideological, autocratic and religious strategic objectives. It is quite well known how the refugees were armed and pushed into Afghanistan to fight against the Communist Godless Russians. So Pakistan wanted to do it to get its strategic depth and play to USA; and USA wanted to contain USSR, while Saudi Arabia didn’t want the godless communists anywhere near them. Thailand used the Cambodian refugees as a buffer to the poxy gits in Cambodia, while the Hutu refugees (who were in turn responsible for the Tutsi genocide) were armed by Zairian President Mobutu Sese Seko to fight an insurgency in Eastern Zaire! And all these cases generally worked for the strategy.

The entire Yugoslavia, Bosnia, Kosovo mess was and is heaving with refugees. The refugees have been pulled and pushed from and to all sides, and have been used disgracefully and hypocritically by almost all parties starting from the head honcho himself, Slobodan Milosevic. That was one spectacular example of ethnic cleansing and strategic use of refugees that went bad. The other two most hypocritical uses of refugees are the use of the Cuban refugees and second is the use of the Palestinian refugees. The Cuban refugees have been fleeing the totalitarian and authoritarian communist regime for the past few decades to the USA. And for purely ideological reasons, the USA has been using them to hit back at Fidel Castro and his regime.

Not that it worked. Fidel is fine and has retired with his Havana cigars. He is a happy man, and all those American presidents and other grand poo bah’s who used the refugees have also gone. So I am not very sure now about what was the result of using those refugees and sending them to their deaths. Similarly, the Palestinian refugees. I have spoken about them and the actual whine to pain ratio is perhaps the highest with them compared to all refugees. But that is not the point. The point is that almost every other government has used them for their strategic needs. Your own citizens being restive about jobs or cost of bread? Use the refugees as a reason to rattle your sabre's at the Jews / Israel? Do not give them citizenship, treat them as bargaining counters, keep them in camps, use their people as propaganda, use their situation in the United Nations, etc. etc. And it is just not the government, but also the common people ranging from Journalist Associations in the UK to the USSR wanting to tweak the noses of the Americans to Saudi Arabian Islamic Charities to Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

Economic refugees and migrants also get it in the neck, whether you are talking about the BNP talking about the Asian refugees or the Conservative Party talking about the Eastern European migrants. How about that Raj Thakarey fellow, who was recently fulminating about internal economic migration inside India?, Or the huge debates around the East German migrants into Western Germany and using them for political purposes?

But this essay is more about the political refugees who cross borders. Unfortunately, our international security and political institutions do not have anything functional to fight these nasty hypocritical folks who use the refugees for their own ends. At some point in time, it is but natural that the legal and political framework will extend to cover the use or rather the abuse of these poor displaced refugees. And it is at that time that decisions taken today will come back to haunt them. If you do not believe me, just see Slobodan Milosevic or Saddam Hussein, who tried to use population transfers as a weapon of war and politics… So whenever you hear anybody fulminating about refugees, do not take them at face value, there is almost always an ulterior motive.

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!

Bird Flu in West Bengal

Ashish — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 12:31:26 EST

Over the course of the past 2 years, there has been an immense amount of literature and news over the dangers of bird flu, especially the H5N1 variety that is extremely destructive, and has caused human losses elsewhere. There is a lot of worry over the fact that a pandemic has not happened for a long time now, and with the current movement of humans all over the world, any spread of a human version will be a much higher killer than previous pandemics. What can cause such a thing to happen ? Well, the bird flu is mostly restricted to avian creatures, and spreads to humans very rarely. In addition, even if humans are affected due to contact with infected birds, the disease does not jump from person to person. It is feared that if the virus comes into close contact with the human influenza virus, and exchanges genetic material with the virus, it is possible that this may cause the bird flu virus may be capable of becoming capable of getting transferred from humans to other humans. This is one of the most feared scenarios for health care personnel, especially because while humans do not take human flu seriously, the bird flu variety is a much bigger killer.

In such a scenario, it is even more necessary that any case of bird flu may be handled with the utmost seriousness. However, seeing the spread of bird flu in West Bengal makes one believe that the West Bengal government has been in a serious case of dereliction of duty. After all, it has been known for some time that many districts of Bangladesh have been affected by bird flu, and given the close interaction between districts of Bangladesh and West Bengal, there should have been a much better contingency plan. Given the close interaction between man and fowl in many areas of West Bengal, the districts and panchayats should have been sensitized about the seriousness of the issue and about the steps that they should take in this regard.

Instead, the disease was allowed to fester, with initial reports of birds dying being hushed up, culling operations being not adequately backed up by security and authority (even in a case where it seems clear that this is a health emergency), inadequate provision of compensation to people whose birds have been culled (leading them to try and hide their birds), and a general lack of seriousness among the state's politicians and leaders. This was to the extent that the Central health minister criticized the efforts of the state (although she was hushed up later, no doubt with the Big Brother CPM putting pressure on the Congress leadership).

Now the disease has spread to 13 districts, and is on the doorstep of Kolkata, and one wonders whether the inept State Government will be able to do something at all.

Birdflu on Sunday spread to two more districts of West Bengal taking the number of affected districts to 13 out of a total 19 even as the state government said it was fully prepared to face any kind of adversity if any human being is found afflicted by the dreaded disease.
Kolkata Municipal Corporation has formed eight teams to to keep the metropolis insulated from birdflu. The teams were moving in different parts of the city to monitor the situation. The fear that the disease might hit Kolkata has aggravated since the spread to South 24 Parganas, part of which form the city's suburbs.

One can only hope that the Government is serious. It has also been reported that part of the reason that the Government is abstaining from taking the strict (and also seemingly harsh measures) is the fear of offending voters; if such an attitude characterizes the Government response, then god helps up. Instead, panchayats are an ideal medium to spread the message about the harmful affect of the disease, and how cooperation will help all. Couple this with a strong media campaign and adequate compensation, and things would be much better.

Oskar Spate and the Partition of India

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 03:33:27 EST

I came across this paper and the following discussion on the Partition of India. It is a fascinating paper, written by a famous professional geographer, Oskar Spate. He served on the Punjab Boundary Commission and there are quite a lot of interesting points which I found in his paper. (I learnt quite a lot about how canals, water ways, irrigation works, train lines, etc. form frontiers and how geography drives the country's frontiers!)

1. Khulna: I never knew that there was such a problem with respect to Khulna district. This is where my grandma comes from actually. But very interesting debate and discussion over which bits will go to which Dominion. I always knew that there was a problem and there was big issues on the west of the country, but never knew the challenges to the East. Apparently, the situations were reversed. The Sikhs and Congress wanted the division in the West to be done on the basis of economic, religious places and historical land ownership basis and the Muslims on the basis of population, while it was rather reversed in Bengal. Also, the chicken neck connecting Assam/rest of NE India to India is questionable to Oskar.

2. Gurdaspur: This district seems to be deep in the psyche of Pakistanis. I have to admit I never knew about this problem before. The problem was simple, it was majority Muslim and was still granted to India, the reverse to that of Khulna. To top it all, this was the heartland of the Qadiani's in the town of Qadian in the district of Gurdaspur. The link of this district to the retention of Jammu and Kashmir is also interesting (see the Wikipedia article on Gurdaspur.)

3. Ahmadi/Qaidani's: These chaps seriously wanted to be part of Pakistan and wanted their "hometown" to be part of Pakistan. What I found ironic is that despite their piety and wanting to be part of Pakistan, 60 years on, they are shunned in Pakistan. Reminds me of the stranded Pakistani's or Bihari's.

4. Assam. The problem with Assam's Muslim migrants (although that is debatable if they can be called as migrants inside one country at that time) goes way back, even before Independence). Spate himself mentions this and says, "Most of the migrants were Muslim family squatters, and the value of this potential lebensraum is shown by its inclusion in preliminary Pakistan propaganda"

5. Problems with the Chittagong Hill Tracts. Hindu's were 2.0%, Muslims were 2.8%, rest were aboriginals. So while geographically it was uncontested, politically and religiously, it was quite a difficult issue because I still cannot see any difference between tribals (aboriginal) religion and Hindu religion (if there is any such thing!).

Technorati Tags: Pakistan,India,Bangladesh,History,Religion

The Forgotten Bangladeshi Genocide

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 14:34:22 EST

I am always curious about one historical anomaly. Why is the Bangladeshi Genocide never considered in the same light as that of Rwanda, Darfur, Southern Sudan, Congo, Cambodia or other genocides? Why does it not even get a fraction of the attention paid to the Palestinian Question, the Kosovo Question, the Lebanese Question or a host of other minority based problems? I can only point to four reasons why this never hit the headlines. First is that the genocide was carried out by an American Ally. Second, the country never was part of the American Interest. Third, it was carried out by Muslims on other fellow Muslims. Fourth, both Bangladesh and Pakistan did not really show much interest in pushing for this to be resolved. Between these four issues, nobody cared or even still cares about the Bangladeshi genocide.

I am biased and I have to admit that right off the bat. I am a Hindu, and my roots are from Bangladesh (my father was a refugee from erstwhile East Pakistan many moons ago). So while Hindus were targeted solely for being Hindus, Muslims were targeted for being intellectuals or just wanting their rights, so I am connected to Bangladesh by virtue of language, cuisine, family, history, culture, geography, religion and a whole lot more. I know fully well that Hindus have been significantly and seriously ethnically cleansed from Bangladesh (and from Pakistan and from Kashmir) but they do not matter in the greater scheme of things of the international and the national grand Poo-Bahs. Nobody cares much for them. One of my childhood memories is about the 1971 Bangladeshi refugees fighting over left over food thrown into garbage bins but let us not go there for now. So this is a topic which is dear to my heart and I might be a bit more emotional than normal and I really don’t want to do an Alex Haley here.

Having said that, the history of the 1971 war and genocide is pretty well known and I do not want to reiterate it here. I quote from the report by the International Commission of Jurists here: “a campaign of genocide involved. . . the indiscriminate killing of civilians, including women and children and the poorest and weakest members of the community; the attempt to exterminate or drive out of the country a large part of the Hindu population; the arrest, torture and killing of Awami League activists and students, professionals, business men and other potential leaders among the Bengalis; the raping of women; the destruction of villages and towns.”

According to an excellent and thought provoking recent paper by Donald Beacher ('The politics of genocide scholarship : the case of Bangladesh', Patterns of Prejudice, 2007, 41:5, 467 – 492)many scholars bluntly even denied that any genocide took place. He says that compared to the Cambodian Genocide where a similar number of people were killed, "no ideological or partisan faction in the United States has stood to gain much from the study of the Bangladesh genocide." Think about it, Pakistan, that rogue country responsible for this genocide is an ally of USA!

It is still ruled by the same Pakistani Army, which is very much supporting the so-called “War on Terror”. Pakistan is still the primary base of most of the terrorists, they were either trained, educated, born in or have links to Pakistan. This “land of the pure” (an ironical name for Pakistan) was responsible. It has lost effective control over large swathes over its public and real life space to the fundamentalists. It has carried out massacres (some say it's also genocide, but that’s a bit debatable) in Baluchistan and Karachi. And this is a USA ally! So why on earth would American politicians, media or academics be interested in investigating it any further (specially compared to the Cambodian Genocide)?

Mind you, it seems like most of those guilty are easily travelling in and out of USA, their children are living in USA and some have even settled in the USA. A few of the guilty have been punished, but nowhere close to the number that should be! The presence of the ICC, Nuremberg tribunals, Rwanda Tribunals, the various tribunals in 'The Hague' is basically a slap on the face on all Bangladeshis. So what’s the big deal about Bangladesh? It does not have oil or gas, it is next to a nice polite big democratic state, it is full of very poor people and as an aside just produces lots of cheap clothing. So there is no American interest what-so-ever in Bangladesh, which basically tells one that the American interest is highly selective. What do you call somebody who says: "do as I tell you and not as I do? " Or what is a person called who says one thing and does another? Or what about somebody who is extremely moralistic say about prostitution, but turns around and is caught kerb crawling?

Remember this was Muslims killing other fellow Muslim brothers. Take the matter of this little Bangladeshi Genocide. Do you hear anything from the OIC? Or the Arab League? Which OIC country has raised this in the UN General Assembly or in the UN Human Rights Council? If it has been raised or sponsored by one of these members, then well, I am quite surprised and I would most certainly apologise, but I couldn’t find any such instance. Egypt can do chemical warfare on Yemen and not a peep is heard. (See here for another example) Iran and Iraq can kill millions of each others people and innocent whistles while fingers are pointed to USA. Iran kills literally millions in the Islamic revolution and it’s an internal matter. Sudan kills hundreds of thousands of Muslims and it is a Zionist plot. Indonesia kills thousands of its own citizens and it is wondered about of it actually happened? Syria tops thirty thousand of its own citizens and hey, they deserved it, they were bad boys. Egypt ran concentration camps for the Muslim Brothers and other opposition members and they are actually holiday camps. Al Qaeda and Iraqis kill thousands of their own people and it is not really that important and anyway is the fault of the west. If somebody else had done so, then the sky would have fallen down (just compare the resolutions in the OIC for Kashmir, Palestine, Thailand, Iraq, Lebanon, Bosnia, Albania etc. and the above).

Bangladesh is not interested as the Army and a very large proportion of Bangladeshi society have bought into the argument that the liberation of Bangladesh was wrong, it was all a Hindu Bania plot, it was all the fault of the secular Awami League, the west was involved as it’s a war against Islam, we were not religious enough, let bygones be bygones, and it was a mistake which will be rectified eventually. Not only that, quite a lot of the political, social and defence folks are elbow deep in blood, and what remains is generally corrupt left, right and centre. There is a small, brave and vocal minority which is trying to keep the flame and the memory alive, but they are vanishingly small. They are pushing for the current military caretaker government to punish some of the really visible culprits, but I am afraid I am a bit too cynical. Mind you, the first amendment to the 1973 Constitution in Article 47 provides the Government with unlimited powers to prosecute the war criminals. The fact that nobody has used it leads me to the cynicism. Still, best of luck to them!!

Pakistan, on the other hand, has a very tiny constituency for punishing the guilty. Remember it was a civil war but in a separate geography - far away. So it wasn’t a South Africa or even a Spanish type of situation. The schism runs deep, the Army is not particularly from outer space or another world or even another country. The Army is Pakistan and Pakistan is its Army. Hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis participated in the genocide. The rot spread deep. If you had gone after the culprits, the heart of the country would have been held up to trial and it would have imploded. Even now it would implode, but then the propensity of Pakistanis to be kicked around by their Army is legendary - the army steals from them, murders them, rules over them, tells them that they are useless and incapable of ruling themselves and so on and so forth. So to actually expect any form of Pakistani agency or group to push for punishment is frankly laughable. So just join the majority and close your eyes and hope it did not really occur.

Remember, when you treat your own people so cheaply, others will also treat YOU equally cheaply and you dare not say anything when you are silent in the face of your own genocide. For all those big fat mustachioed blokes who are busy blowing hard about it being a Hindu, Zionist, Western, Crusader, Buddhist, or what have you plot against Islam, remember what you did to your own people. I was thinking about a good quote to end this but then thought, the situation is like the wolf in the cry wolf fable crying wolf when it is wolfed down by a tiger. How many will listen to that wolf and come to its rescue?

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!

Technorati Tags: Pakistan,Bangladesh,India,Muslims,Islam,Hinduism,Genocide,USA

Taslima Nasreen: Where Does She Go From Here?

GV Krishnan — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 10:37:45 EST

Where does she go from here? I refer not merely to her ‘homeless’ status, but also her literary works in progress, if any. I am not familiar with her writings; Taslima Nasreen is less widely read than written about, not always for the right reason. Leading a life, unsettled and under constant threat of violence takes courage. But can Taslima, or anyone else in her nomadic situation get any writing done at all?

I wonder if she ever regrets having written something, so long back, that was to pose a life-long challenge to her life; to brand her infidel and be banished from Bangladesh. Not that an apology would now alter her life. I am all for freedom of expression. But those who assert their right to write their personal truth on socially sensitive issues ought to realize that such freedom comes with social constraints, and consequences.

Arguably, the city she came to adopt as ‘home’, and the local authorities there have an obligation to protect Taslima. This hasn’t happened, which is why she is ‘on the run’, for her safety, from her beloved Kolkata. Her current situation is fluid, and sticky. And Taslima hasn’t helped matters by talking to the media from her ‘undisclosed location’.

She told The Hindu that the external affairs ministry has conveyed that she wouldn’t be able to return to Kolkata anytime soon; and wherever else she chose to stay in India, she would have to lead a life in captivity.

‘Captivity’ isn’t quite the word I would use to describe ‘security cover’ extended to the high profile writer. “Why do I have to lead a life in captivity?”, Taslima is quoted in her telephonic interview with The Hindu’s Marcus Dam, “all I’m asking for is to be able to lead a normal life”.

Isn’t she asking for a bit too much? Celebrities don’t have the luxury of ‘normal life’, as you and I understand it. Snag is Kolkata isn't the only city that isn’t happy to welcome her back. Authorities in Hyderabad and Jaipur have demonstrated their disinclination. However, Mr Narendra Modi of Gujarat, during his poll campaign, is reported to have invited her to his state. I don’t know if Taslima reacted to Mr Modi’s offer, which could well be public posturing.

Meanwhile, our media tracks Taslima wherever she goes, even in an ‘undisclosed location’. What’s more, she appears more than willing to oblige them, with quotable story. This, at a time when those concerned with her security would want to keep her location a secret. Wouldn’t it help if Taslima were to maintain a low profile, by staying off headlines, till such time the authorities finalize arrangements to settle her somewhere safe and secure?

The Bangladesh writer has, on more then one occasion, expressed her gratitude to the media. Their presence have been a life-saver, at times, for her, when Taslima came under attack from a bunch of intruders at the Hyderabad Press Club not long ago. But media exposure could also work against her; and it doesn’t always win her public sympathy. As she herself put it, “I have become, it appears, an embarrassment to all…”. And media interviews at this time don’t help matters, do they.