HATE THY NEIGHBOUR
Some of the more promising election-time pitches in the SAARC countries are linked to the matter of 'bad neighbour' rather than domestic issues. In India, the Bharatiya Janata Party´s constant harping on the Bangladeshi migrants issue proved very campaign friendly. In Pakistan, the Kashmir factor and alleged Indian designs form a sound poll platform.
The India Factor figured as well in the runup to Bangladesh´s national elections in mid-June. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (bnp), led by the former prime minister Begum Khaleda Zia told a massive crowd the day after she resigned in March-end that people should vote her back to power to prevent 'Indian servitude'. She called for a nationalist alliance against 'Indian hegemonism', and declared that, if elected, she would not renew the Indo-Bangla Friendship Treaty.
All this rhetoric was meant to make the Awami League, Begum Zia´s arch rival, squirm. It was the League which signed the treaty with India in 1972 after the liberation war, and which has had to constantly face criticism of having 'sold out to India', not an unfamiliar bogey in some other neighbours of India. During the election campaign, the Awami League retaliated by asking why the BNP, which had after all been in power longer than Awami League, never scrapped the treaty. But keeping public sentiments in mind, the League has declared that it, too, would not renew the treaty if voted to power. The instrument is due to expire in 1997.
Very few people have any idea what the treaty actually says. Anti-treaty feelings are whetted by speculation that it probably has a clause saying that in case of external threat Bangladesh may call upon India to intervene. The closest Bangladesh got to that point was back in 197 5 when Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was killed in a military putsch and his Awami League lost power. Reportedly, India considered, and then ruled out, an intervention at that time. Says a political analyst from Dhaka University, 'New Delhi opted instead to continuously make life miserable for the new set of rulers, which was a cheaper and more effective method of coercion than a military intervention.'
It might not be able to trumpet the fact, but Sheikh Hasina Wajed´s Awami League sees an ally in the Congress Party in India, which, under Indira Gandhi, lent it crucial support during the liberation war in 1971. As a result, the League has been hampered in domestic Bangla politics by its inability to go after the Congress Party, which has been in power in New Delhi for much of the last quarter century. Even on the critical issue of Ganga water sharing, the League has been timid in its criticism, which has cost the party politically. To correct this perception of an India tilt, the League has been sounding decidedly less 'pro-Indian' lately, the stance on the friendship treaty being a case in point.
However, all this is possibly quite unnecessary because given the choice the people would vote for a party which fills the belly better, rather than the one which renews or does not renew treaties. To most Bangladeshis, the next-door Indian economy has been a fact of life longer than either politics or diplomacy. Most consumer goods are cheaper if imported from India. The same goes for capital goods.
For all its anti-Indian bluster, it is a fact that Begum Zia´s BNP has been rather Delhi-friendly when it was in power till forced to bow out in favour of a caretaker government. It is also true that Indian business boomed during the last few years of BNP rule. There has been little protest. People want cheap eggs and don´t care which side of the border the chicken lays.
No matter how much one screams about the about-to-expire treaty, Bangladesh will have to play against a diplomatic pace which is set by India. Treaty or no treaty, says Dhaka intellectuals, Indians will intervene if they want to and as a major market for the developed world, will get away with it. Indians goods too will enter Bangladesh, legally or otherwise, they say. Indian satellites have already conquered the skies, can the rest be far behind?