When affability becomes hegemony

When affability becomes hegemony
By Khairul Kuader
(My Editor mysteriously did not approved to publish the article at the paper, i dont know why)

The young generation’s favourite song is now an Indian one — ‘My Name Is Shila ’, and perhaps it can be picked as the finest example of the Indian cultural aggression in Bangladesh and latest example of political aggression is a cinema entitled ‘Meherjan’. The cinema tries to magnify Indian military helps during Bangladesh’s Liberation War but gave birth to a tri-angle love story out of nowhere only to make the cinema a financially profitable one.

Cultural sector activists have pointed out that Bangladesh may have become independent, but the cultural growth of the country had been randomly hindered. Everything, even culture, had become politicized. Once people who fought against occupational Pakistani force, are now keeping mum about the Indian cultural aggression.

Culture is one of the most significant factors for the development of a country. Submissive cultural practice leads a country to drastic social deviation which sustains for a long time. It’s a common tactic known to all that if someone wants to destroy a nation, first abolish its culture, because culture is the core of a nation. The second step is to provide drugs and weapons to the youths. Politically concerned people may term it as a conspiracy and hegemony towards Bangladesh.

However the descendants of a nation are its future assets. Once they start leading the country towards safeguarding the freedom, sovereignty and integrity of the country. According to the reports from the intelligence, Indian intelligence agencies Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) has devised elaborate plans to influence the minds of the younger generation. RAW wants to wipe out the spirit of the independence and strip off them from their identity and heritage. It believes that if it can manage to eliminate revolutionary thoughts and high moralities from the minds of Bangladeshi youth, they will fell easy preys for its evil scheme.

Promotion of Narcotics in Bangladesh

RAW is flooding Bangladesh with various kinds of narcotics through its agents, traders and smugglers. According to Dr Imtiaz Ahmed, a Professor of International Relation at Dhaka University, smuggled goods more than $ 3.5 billion are traded per year. Visiting extensively alongside the India-Bangladesh border, this reporter found that Indian border authorities have strong ties with smugglers and they help them in trafficking narcotics into Bangladesh. They are even involved in human trafficking. As per the Border Guards Bangladesh headquarters, last year the agency seized drugs including Heroin, Cocaine, Opium, Phensidyl and Marijuana that worth more than Tk 453.8 crores from the India-Bangladesh border area.

Phensidyl is a cough syrup that is banned in Bangladesh for its widespread use as a drug. But the syrup now has become much available and to keep the supply flowing, more than hundreds of mini industries have been set up near Indian side of the border. Phensidyl is also strictly prohibited in Kuchbihar, Assam, Tripura and Meghalaya of India. Physicians are also prohibited to prescribe these drugs and will be will be punished if done otherwise.

According to the Bangladeshi intelligence, its Indian counterpart is converting the Bangladesh youths into drug addicts and they have a blue plan for this. Reliable sources from Indian border side told the reporter that these drugs originate from India and are infiltrated into Bangladesh through porous borders under patronage of RAW Officials.

A senior official of Directorate of Narcotics admitted that the flow of drugs from India can hardly be checked. Despite efforts have been made, only five percent of smuggled could be seized by the Bangladesh border authorities. The rest of the drugs still manage their way in Bangladesh through the holey border using road, rail and water ways.

Disputed border and enclave Issues and border fencing

As mentioned by the India-Bangladesh border experts, there are no other borders in the entire world where innocent people are killed by any border security agencies, except the Indian Border Security Force (BSF). As a result, an 81 page joint report entitled ‘Trigger Happy’ prepared by Human Rights Watch, Odhikar and Manabadhikar Suraksha Mancha (MASUM) says that nearly a thousand Bangladeshi nationals have been killed by the BSF over the last decade.

Experts think that the number of extrajudicial border killings have mounted high just after India initiated to fence its border in 1980 despite strong objections from Bangladesh. The fencing was completed in 1990.
India and Bangladesh signed good number of bilateral deeds to solve the border and enclave issues but India is yet to come forward to execute the deeds despite several moves by the Bangladesh side. The two most noted and valuable deeds to dissolve the border dispute between India and Bangladesh are the Indira-Mujib Agreement of 1974 and the Joint Indo-Bangladesh Guidelines of 1975, are still to be carried out.

According to the India-Bangladesh Enclave Exchange-Adjustment Committee (IBEEAC), there are 129 Indian enclaves inside Bangladesh in four districts while Bangladeshi has 95 such enclaves in Dinhata and Jolpaiguri in India. Dahagram-Angurputa and Berubari enclaves are the largest among the enclaves of India and Bangladesh.

As the IBEEAC data says, there are about 3.5 hundred thousand people residing in the enclaves. The enclave residents are not only the poorest in the country but also disfavored from all basic rights and amenities.

Aggression in National Economy

There are also accusations that India wants to make Bangladesh as countries like Nepal or Bhutan, and one day Bangladeshi currency taka would be call as Rupee like Nepal. Indian products have flooded roadside shops to elite shopping malls. Cosmetics, cloths, vehicles and many commodities are now seen in Bangladeshi markets. Even the illegal Indian medicine market in Old Dhaka has become a noted place for Indian medicine.
‘It is already very late for the civil society of Bangladesh to create extensive pressures upon the governments of the two countries. They can now begin boycotting Indian products in Bangladesh, as the initial steps to pressurise the Indian Government have failed. Extensive force also should be put on the Bangladesh Government to cancel its recently signed agreements on transit and other facilities as long as the BSF permanently stops killing Bangladeshis and Indian authorities take noticeable actions in this concern,’ says Ashrafuzzaman Zaman, Programme Officer of Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC). AHRC is a Hong Kong-based human rights watchdog.
Political Aggression

India, as a strong neighbour, always wants to influence the politics in Bangladesh. Probably this is the reason why pro and anti India concepts are running in Bangladesh’s politics. ‘If we act corresponding to a quote of Jobe Charnock, a founder of Kolkata, India will stop inhuman activities like border killings. The quote goes as ‘Maarle Thakor Na Marle Kokor’ (Strike and be honoured as God, be treated like a dog if you hit not), says ALM Fazlur Rahman, a former Directorate General of Bangladesh Rifles (currently Bangladesh Border Guards).
‘India always regards Bangladesh as a lower-status nation, they treat us like a dog only because we show hospitality, and the consequence is that they consider as weak. We have 16 crores people, of which, at least five crores are strongly devoted to the coutry. If we start fighting back, India will blench, which had been proved in my term’, he adds.
Actually India’s ‘Dada Giri’ (bossy behaviour) in politics will stop if we treat them as enemy friend’, he went on to say.
Armed Outfit Petron in CHT and Islamist Militant

Every year a good amount of arms and weapons comes from India. Intelligence assured that most of the light arms like revolvers and pistols come from India and majority of them are made by and in India. The intelligence also says that the made-in-India arms are very cheap than those made in other countries. A sophisticated light arm can be bought with only taka ten thousand. The intelligence also confirmed that the RAW is involved in smuggling arms, ammunitions and explosives. Newspapers further inform that there are reports that the arms manufacturing factories have also been set up near the Bangladeshi borders being patronised by the RAW.

Existences of such factories are found at 24 Pargana, Bangaon, Ranaghat, Nadia, Aurangabad and Dalian. Situations are not only being created to destabilise the politics in Bangladesh, even the religion-based militants are also residing safely in the Indian side of the border and the Indian intelligence is helping them which were published in media.

The way how India wants to interrupt our national security would be clear if we look towards the political situation in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. India directly and indirectly has backed armed outfit in CHT and still is patronizing one of them and supplying necessary arms and ammunitions.

According to a research entitled ‘Bangladesh-India Relations: Some Recent Trends’ by Mohammad Aminul Karim says that India’s north-eastern states, as reported in the press, are plagued with insurgency. It is believed there are about 175 insurgent groups operating in the states surrounding Bangladesh. Bangladesh itself has been combating against an insurgency for the last few decades in its south-eastern part called Chittagong Hill Tracts, although it has been greatly contained ever since the signing the peace accord with the insurgents in 1997. It is likely that there could be a spillover effect of insurgents taking shelter in each other’s country or using cross-border routes for the transportation of smuggled arms. One Indian source alleges “a new arms market in the no-man’s land near the Bangladesh-Myanmar border town of Naikhangchari, which has become home to Indian insurgent outfits such as the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) and the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB). The Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HuJi), a terrorist outfit in Bangladesh, is known to be imparting training to these outfits.

Water Conspiracy

Water politics, sometimes called hydropolitics, is dependent on the availability of water and water resources, a necessity of all life forms and human development. A noted and influential western media said that Indian plans to divert vast quantities of water from major rivers, including the Ganges and Brahmaputra, threaten the livelihoods of more than 100 million people living in the downstream of Bangladesh, the Bangladeshi government fears. The Bangladeshi ministers are so concerned that they are considering appealing to the United Nations to redraft the international law on water sharing.

The report also said that the ambitious Indian plans to link major rivers flowing from the Himalayas and divert them south to drought-prone areas are still on the drawing board, but Bangladeshi government-financed scientists estimated that even a 10% to 20% reduction in the water flow to the country could dry out great areas for much of the year.

The water flow hampered more than 20 million small farmers of Bangladesh who grow rice and depend mostly on the water that is brought by the rivers flowing through India. This could trigger a long-term disaster in the subcontinent and is hint bloodshed in the region.

Bangladesh is already aware of the consequences of India’s restriction water. The Farakka barrage, built across the Ganges 11 miles from the Bangladeshi border in 1974, had at certain times of the year reduced by half the water that once flowed via the Ganges into Bangladesh.

Water experts are concerned that great parts, once used to be green areas, are now turning into deserts, rivers have lost their navigability, salt water is flooding the farming areas and people can cross the river Gori on foot at some times of the year.

Although the Indian and Bangladeshi governments had signed a water sharing treaty for the Ganges, there are none for the other 53 rivers that cross the border. Bangladeshi water engineers say that Indian barrages, canals, reservoirs and irrigation schemes are slowly strangling Bangladesh and are stopping its development. Bangladesh, which is too flat for major reservoirs, says if India goes ahead with its schemes, it may have to build a network of expensive canals to irrigate large areas now fed naturally by the Brahmaputra.

‘India, China, Turkey and Brazil are conserving water without considering the demands of water of the downstream countries. But, under the international laws, conservation of water from the upstream is not legal without taking the demands of downstream countries into consideration’, Dr Inun Nishat, a river expert told the media.

However, On November 5, 1977 the Ganges Water Agreement was signed, assuring 34,500 cfs for Bangladesh. The current status is that the five-year treaty expired in 1982 and after several shorter extensions, lapsed entirely in 1989. India is now withdrawing 40,000 cfs showing complete disregard of Bangladesh’s fair share.

Now Bangladesh and India agreed on a framework of a 15-year treaty to share water of river Teesta and Feni in dry seasons.

The treaty is awaiting signing sometime either during Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s Bangladesh visit this year or later at a convenient time.