INDO BANGLADESH

 

For the past two years, India has had, and worked at, a major opportunity. Bangladesh has had a government, under the Awami League of Sheikh Hasina, that has the political will and vision to bring the two countries closer. Some of these efforts, however, could be undone by the events of the past few days. When talking to newspaper editors on Wednesday, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is reported to have said that “at least 25 per cent” of Bangladeshis are “anti-Indian.” These remarks were off the record, but, due to shocking lack of care from the prime minister’s office, were actually put on the PM’s website for over 30 hours. Unsurprisingly, the publication of these remarks has caused discontent and confusion in Bangladesh.


The remarks themselves betray a flaw in New Delhi’s thinking about our eastern neighbour. Bangladesh is a large and complex country, riven by disagreements about its foundational principles and differing perspectives on its own, blood-soaked history — and since India plays no small role in that history, domestic views of India are hardly uninfluenced by those clashes in perspective. It is precisely because Bangladesh appears to be striving to move beyond that history that bilateral relations could well be capable of reaching heights they have hitherto been denied. That possibility, however, will never be realised if New Delhi’s foreign policy establishment thinks of a country of 170 million people in sharply reductive terms.




That, however, the remarks were put up and allowed to stay up for so long betrays a worrying lack of seriousness in how the prime minister’s office is managing the flow of information. The handling of this situation has been blatantly amateurish, and as a result a completely unavoidable controversy has been foisted on a crucial bilateral relationship. This is not to say that the episode will call irreversible damage — far from it. Indeed, this spot of damage control should be a reminder to the foreign policy establishment to articulate and lay out the contours of the relationship in holistic terms. Our neighbours are more than just collections of anti- and pro-India forces, or possible markets and competitors. They are complicated countries, and our reachout to them cannot be limited, or small-hearted, or piece-meal.