The Quagmire

By Sabria Chowdhury Balland | February 2020

Recent political developments in India have opened a Pandora’s Box. The developments are overtly targeting the country’s largest minority, the Muslims. With an increase in hate crimes, particularly against the Muslims in recent years, there is fear that India, long known as the world’s largest democracy, has become dangerously intolerant and rather undemocratic, under the Bharatya Janata Party (BJP).

For the Awami League government in Bangladesh, which shares a border with India on three sides, India’s National Register of Citizens (NRC) and the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) were regarded as “internal matters”, or so it was declared to the people of Bangladesh. However, this nonchalant stance has become a denial that is too immense to ignore by the Awami League.

In October 2019, the Bangladesh Prime MInister Sheikh Hasina returned from India after having signed seven bilateral treaties with her counterpart, Narendra Modi, an act which proved to the vast majority of disappointed and infuriated Bangladeshis that they could not expect their leadership to look out for the interests of the country. Each treaty was seen as benefiting Bangladesh’s larger neighbour against its own interests and well being. Commenting on Facebook regarding this issue even resulted in the murder of engineering student Abrar Fahad by the Chattra League, the student wing of Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League. If there was ever any doubt that Bangladesh had lost its sovereignty due to the pro-Indian priorities of its ruling party, these treaties sealed the conviction in the minds of the Bangladeshis that sovereignty and independence were merely words in their Constitution.

At a time when anti-India sentiments are profoundly present amongst Bangladeshis, India has assured Bangladesh that the NRC and CAA will not affect it. However, there are genuine concerns and apprehensions in Bangladesh that the NRC and CAA might unleash an exodus of Bengali-speaking people from Assam and Muslims attempting to escape persecution in India. After taking in nearly one million Rohingya refugees fleeing persecution in Myanmar, Bangladesh cannot take in any more people. An influx of refugees from India would be just the tip of the iceberg.

Many analysts feel, and rightfully so, that the denial of Indian citizenship to tens of thousands of Muslims from Assam and most certainly elsewhere in India will trigger strong reactions from Islamist parties in Bangladesh, which would present serious challenges to the secular Awami League. Although Sheikh Hasina has a proven track record of complete intolerance to any form of dissent and freedom of speech and expression, an uprising of Islamist parties would most certainly cause friction in the Awami League’s relatonship with the Hindu right wing BJP, a predicament that the Bangladeshi PM tries at all costs to avoid.

The BJP in India has utilized the predictable strategy of claiming that Hindus in Bangladesh are persecuted and tortured, resulting in a mass anti-Bangladesh smear campaign on social media, a tit for tat strategy which has rubbed Bangladesh the wrong way. It sees these accusations are baseless and unwarranted and although the Awami League attempts at all costs to bend over backwards to cater to India’s desires, these recent exchanges and concerns based on the CAA and NRC are ones that even the leadership in Bangladesh cannot digest. India’s attempts to equate Bangladesh to fundamentally theocratical Muslim nations, such as Pakistan and Afghanistan, is something that is unacceptable to Bangladeshis, where religious and racial harmony have always been a priority, unlike in many of its neighbouring countries.

This is not to say that there has never been any religious persecution in Bangladesh. However, whenever isolated incidents have occurred, the secular government has taken action promptly.

The Bangladeshi government has declared that it will allow people to enter from India only if it can be proven that they are citizens of Bangladesh.

Sheikh Hasina has a proven track record of complete intolerance to any form of dissent and freedom of speech.

This is a nebulous condition which most people realize is futile. Many of the Muslim immigrants in India who are being told they do not qualify for citizenship (whereas Chrstians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Jains do) probably do not have any documents to prove citizenship in either country. Therefore, on what basis does Bangladesh expect India to present proof of their Bangladeshi nationality apart from religion? This is a clear manifestation of xenophobia that under any other government in Bangladesh would perhaps not be entertained, in the least, as the country cannot be used as a dumping ground for bigoted, abominable regimes such as those in Myanmar and India.

It is a veritable pity that India’s claim of being known as “the world’s largest democracy” has been infected by the Modi regime, giving rise to the fundamental question: what is the future of Muslims in India? Furthermore, how will the xenophobic, ant-Islamic reign of terror in India affect Bangladesh?

The answers to these questions and more have yet to unfold. However, to paraphrase the quote by Lord Byron, those who dare not stand up against bigotry succumb to slavery. The freedom fighters of the Bangladesh Liberation War most certainly did not fight to defend a future of slavery. Or did they?

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