Chicken Neck and the talk of a Union Territory in the North

 

Chicken Neck and the talk of a Union Territory in the North

Nidhu Bhusan Das

Partition of Bengal and creation of a Union territory in the region from Malda to Cooch-Behar is an emotive issue being talked about emotionally. Bengalis are known for being emotional and can easily be swayed emotionally when it comes to electoral politics. Statecraft is not emotion propelled but dominated by logic. If such a Union Territory is found to be necessary for the security and integrity of Indian Union, no amount of emotion and political rhetoric would be sufficient to prevent its creation. Now, is there any logic in point of security and integrity of India in carving a Union Territory in the north from West Bengal? A Union Territory (UT) is a federal territory, administered by the union government. In UTs, the central government appoints the Lieutenant Governor, who is the administrator and the representative of the President of India.

Say you have a beautiful chicken that lays an egg every day. You are aware that several times your neighbour has tried to catch hold of the chicken by its neck for his lone chanticleer (rooster) with which she stealthily mates. To protect your bird you may consider different options including keeping its neck out of the reach of your covetous neighbour.

India has a narrow stretch of land strategically located in the northern part of West Bengal. This strip of land, about 60 km long and 20 km wide, known as India’s Chicken Neck or Siliguri Corridor, connects her eight northeastern states with the rest of the country. So this corridor, the Achilles’ heel in our defence of almost 2000 kilometres of borders with China and Myanmar, is strategically important and highly sensitive.

An armed peasant revolt broke out in 1967 in Naxalbari within the corridor. Sutirtho Patranobis reported in Hindustan Times from Beijing that on December 13, 1967 a meeting took place in Beijing between Communist Party of China’s Chairman Mao Zedong and a group of Naxal leaders, led by Kanu Sanyal. In the 80-minute meeting Chairman Mao encouraged the Naxal leaders to strive for a “People’s Revolution” in India. This little-known piece of history was shared with Hindustan Times by Shanghai-based historian Li Danhui who accessed archives to find out what happened during the meeting. Why the uprising took place in the Siliguri Corridor is intriguing. It is also a matter of immense curiosity why the founder of modern China, the all-powerful Mao Zedong met the Naxal leaders and made several suggestions to them regarding what should be their revolutionary tactics.

This corridor is wedged between Bangladesh to the south and the west and China to the north. Nepal in the east and Bhutan in the west flank the corridor. The Chinese military (PLA) has to advance just 130 kms to cut off Bhutan, West Bengal and the north-eastern states of India.  It is only a gateway to the northeastern states of India but also to South-East Asia.  That this strategic location of the Chicken Neck has always been in the mind and thought of Beijing is clear from the Chinese maneuvre in Doklam in 2017.  Despite an Agreement in 2003 between India and China, Beijing’s attempts to seize de facto control over the Indo-Bhutan-Chinese region continued. It culminated in the Doklam standoff between India and China during June-August 2017.

   Doklam is located on the tri-junction of Sino-Indian-Bhutan border on the Himalayan Range. It is a disputed territory between China and Bhutan but of great strategic importance for India. It lies between Chumbi Valley, Tibet Autonomous Region of China in the north, our Sikkim State to the west and Bhutan’s Haa valley and Samtse District to the east and south respectively. The approximate distance between Doklam and Siliguri Corridor is only 80 kms.

With China continuing road and airstrip construction activities on its side of the border, the threat to the Chicken Neck is a constant one, as the infrastructure could allow China to mobilise rapidly in the region, say defence analysts. What India needs to worry about is saving its Chicken Neck from China. China claims 90,000 square kilometres of territory in the north-east. This menacing stance of the dreaming neighbour has been a constant threat to the Siliguri Corridor.

Strategically, the Siliguri Corridor is precisely the point where China could hit in case of an escalating conflict. In case of such an eventuality, China could change the entire status quo along the LAC and put India under tremendous pressure.

Now as part of defence preparedness vis-à-vis Beijing’s expansionist stance, New Delhi cannot but focus on the protection of the corridor. Defence analysts are of the view that widening and strengthening this corridor is imperative. The first option for India is to enter into a treaty with Bangladesh permitting not only transit of military equipment during times of conflict but also civilian traffic and trade activities. This would add a layer of strategic depth in the region and alleviate (in some measure) concerns of the possible severance of the north-east from the mainland.

The treaty can cover multi-modal transport including road and rail and a smooth movement of freight and personnel. With the revival of Bimstec India’s relations with Bangladesh have seen a fillip, with seven pacts on important mutual issues signed between Dhaka and New Delhi. India and Bangladesh have already mooted a proposal to facilitate transit with India’s landlocked north-east and PMs of both countries have issued joint statements in this regard in 2010 and 2016.

Currently, there is a joint working group which is examining the possibility of connecting Mahendraganj in Meghalaya to Hili in Bengal through Goraghat, Palashbari and Gaibandha in Bangladesh. This distance of about 100 km could easily be developed into an elevated road and rail corridor through Bangladesh.

Other infrastructure development measures are likely to be in place. Military infrastructure will be developed exponentially and along with it economic and social infrastructures may be overhauled. Overall, the region will see such a flurry of development that the stigma of backwardness will wither away. All such things in such a strategic location can,perhaps, best be made possible under a central administration.

 

 

 

Land Grabbing is the Prime Motive for Persecution of Hindus in Bangladesh

 

Land Grabbing is the Prime Motive for Persecution of Hindus in Bangladesh

Nidhu Bhusan Das

Incidents of persecution of minorities (Hindus) in Bangladesh is on a steep rise. More than 79 Hindus have been killed in the last six months and more than 800 Hindus injured or threatened to be killed. This has made it “extremely” difficult for Hindus to live in that country and Hindu organisations in Bangladesh are asking for help from both India and the Sheikh Hasina government.

“In Bangladesh, what we are witnessing is a silent persecution of the minorities (Hindu) and it is spread across the country, from killings, to death threats to attempt to murder, to forced conversion and land grabbing and even raping of Hindu women, while the government here turns a blind eye. The government here has even instructed the media not to report incidents involving the persecution of Hindus. There is targeted and organised crime against Hindus in this country and sometimes it feels like we must have done something extremely wrong in our past life to have been born a Hindu in Bangladesh,” Pradip Chandra, a Bangladeshi Hindu working for Hindu rights in Bangladesh, told The Sunday Guardian. The statement points to the failure of the government to protect the right to life and property of the Hindus and the secular credential of the country. To consider Bangladesh a secular state is ironical,isn't it?

The Hindu population of Bangladesh fell by 0.59 percentage points to 7.95% in 2022 from 8.54% in 2011, reports Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS).

The 2022 census shows Muslim population increased by 0.60 percentage points to 91% from 90.4% in 2011, while Buddhist population fell marginally by 0.01 percentage points to 0.61% from 0.62% in 2011.

Over the past 50 years, the total population of the country has more than doubled, but the Hindu population in the country has decreased by around 7.5 million (75 lakh) compared to what it should have been based on their percentage at the time of independence of the country. The number of Buddhists, Christian and persons of other religions has remained more or less constant.

The 2022 census report mentioned two factors contributed to the fall of Hindu population: the first and foremost is outward migration of Hindu population meaning that they are leaving the country, and the second is lower fertility rate among Hindus.

The Hindu population in Bangladesh has dwindled progressively since independence in 1971. It is a fact that population of Bangladesh is on the increase and a reverse trend is evident in case of the Hindus. Not that the birth rate has decreased and mortality rate scaled up among the Hindus. Then what could be the reasonable cause for the unnatural / unbiological decline of the second largest population of the country which fought for independence from the Islamic Republic of Pakistan with the avowed pledge to establish a secular state based on a linguistic-cultural nationalism rooted in the Language Movement of 1952?

The plausible answer is Bangladesh could split off from Pakistan but could not forsake the heritage of religious persecution. The heritage may be traced to the Noakhali Genocide of 1946 which made the Hindu persecution so pronounced. British historian Yasmin Khan in her prize winning book The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan  tells us at least 5,000 Hindus were massacred, hundreds of Hindu women raped and thousands forcibly converted to Islam; many more fled to India. Even Mahatma Gandhi’s peace mission to Noakhali failed to quell the atrocities which continued unabated during his stay. Gandhi left Noakhali, urging the Hindus there to “Quit Noakhali or Die” (NY Times. 8 April 1947).The same template of persecution is perpetuated by the Islamists in Bangladesh.

What Gandhi said proved prophetic. Even after the emergence of Bangladesh, the Hindu population dwindled from 13.5% in 1974 to 8.96% in 2011, a nearly 33% decline. This suggests the prevalence of a deeply anti-Hindu environment in the country. Besides, on the eve of the second anniversary of victory in the Bangladesh Liberation War for tenable reasons the general clemency for the Islamist collaborators was announced. This paved the way for their rehabilitation and propagation of Islamist ideology vis-a-vis the nascent secularism in Bangladesh.

True, the Constitution adopted by the Constituent Assembly in 1972 made Bangladesh a secular democratic republic. The fundamental rights enshrined in the third part of the constitution,inter alia, promises equality before law, no discrimination on grounds of religion, right to protection of law, protection of  right to life and personal liberty and freedom of religion. The noble constitutional provisions could not come to the rescue of the Hindus because matching actions were not taken. In contravention of the    non-communal provisions of the new constitution, they retained the anti-Hindu Enemy Property Act of Pakistan and rechristened it as Vested Property Act in 1974.Bangladesh Government thereby vested itself with the “enemy” properties previously seized since the 1965 Indo-Pak War and continued to use the discriminatory law to confiscate the land owned by the Hindus.

Approximately 1.2 million Hindu families, or 44% of all Hindu households, have been affected by Enemy/Vested Property Act. Hindus have been dispossessed of more than 2 million acres of land. Even after the Restoration of Vested Property Act passed in 2001, land encroachment involving Hindu land has continued but mostly during BNP governments. Subsequent amendments of the original constitution made the religious minorities including Hindus second class citizens and encouraged atrocities against the Hindus.

A seminal book by Professor Abul Barkat of  Dhaka University, Inquiry into Causes and Consequences of Deprivation of Hindu Minorities in Bangladesh through the Vested Property Act, published in 2000 shows that the largest beneficiary of Hindu property transfer in the past 35 years of Bangladeshi independence were people belonging to Awami League They grabbed 44.2 per cent of the land. Other grabbers are affiliated with BNP (31.7%), Jatiya Party (5.8 %) Jamat-e-Islami (4.8%) and others (13.5%). The greatest appropriation of Hindu property took place immediately after independence during the first Awami League government (1972–75) and during the first period of rule of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (1976-1980). The confiscation of the land broke the economic backbone of the Hindus. So, migration of the Hindus is the natural consequence.

 

 

Bangladesh: Hindus are Victims of a Well-Orchestrated Conspiracy

 

Bangladesh: Hindus are Victims of a 

      Well-Orchestrated Conspiracy

                                            Nidhu Bhusan Das

It is Iqbal Hossain. Obviously, he is not a Hindu. Iqbal (35) placed a copy of the Quran at Nanua Dighir Par Durga Puja pandal in Comilla district on October 13. And the large scale violence against the Hindus of Bangladesh was unleashed which drew global attention and condemnation. Is it accidental or a well- coordinated conspiracy?

Superintendent of Police, Comilla Farooq Ahmed said the person is a resident of Sujanagar of the district. The police identified the accused depending on CCTV footage. The footage showed that on relevant day, Iqbal took the Islamic holy book Quran from a mosque and placed it on the knee of a statue of the Hindu god Hanuman in the shrine. He was later seen walking away with the Hindu God’s club in his hand.

Police say Iqbal Hossain is a drifter. Iqbal's mother reportedly claimed that Iqbal was a drug addict and had some psychological issues for the last 10 years. Will Iqbal’s being a “drifter”, “drug addict” and having “some psychological issues” have bearing on the case in the relevant laws of Bangladesh? It is an intriguing question.

Police arrested another person Md Foyez Ahmed, 41, on October 13 and got him on remand to interrogate him. He posted a Facebook live from the festival venue on that day that went viral triggering the violence.

When was the video shot, was it after the holy book was retrieved by the police? If it was shot soon after the Quran was placed by the accused, a coordinated action may be presumed. If it was shot in the presence of the police who retrieved it, the innocence of the concerned police may be taken to be questionable.

The CCTV footage at least shows that the Hindus of Bangladesh have been victimized by Islamists with a well-orchestrated conspiracy during their greatest puja festival. Will the culprits be brought to justice and awarded exemplary punishment? Secular people like Bangladesh poet & columnist Sohrab Hassan is outspoken: “In the country where violence is done with impunity, the religious minority can never think they are safe.”

The large scale violence against the Hindus this time again puts to question the intention of Bangladesh dispensation regarding the nature of demography they want to have. Is it that they have the goal to have a religiously homogeneous population with Islam as state religion through ethnic cleansing? A United Nations Commission of Experts described ethnic cleansing as “… a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas.”

Ethnic cleansing, According to Britannica, is the attempt to create ethnically homogeneous geographic areas through the deportation or forcible displacement of persons belonging to particular ethnic groups. Ethnic cleansing sometimes involves the removal of all physical vestiges of the targeted group through the destruction of monuments, cemeteries, and houses of worship.

Even after the emergence of Bangladesh as a secular nation, the migration of Hindus and reduction of Hindu population continue which suggests religious persecution. The votaries of Islamic state are active in Bangladesh with dominance. The secular forces are apparently weak but when they act they do it determinedly. Here lies the hope. However, the decisive action by the government of the country in respect of the violence will indicate what is ahead. If the forces in favour of ethnic cleansing can go berserk with impunity, it may not augur well for  Amar Sonar Bangla.

Bangladesh could not forsake the heritage of religious persecution

 

Bangladesh Could not Forsake the Heritage  of Religious Persecution

Nidhu Bhusan Das

“In the country where violence is done with impunity, the religious minority can never think they are safe.”

                        -Bangladesh poet & columnist Sohrab Hassan

Bangladesh has drifted a long distance along the path of Islamist fundamentalism, communal discourse and violence since the tragedy of 15 August 1975 that saw the resurrection of communal forces in the country.Islamists, it appears, direct and dominate the political discourse of the country. This indicates the weak state of the secular forces in the country which emerged as a secular republic through a glorious Liberation war in 1971.They have so far failed to restore the 1972 Constitution of the country. Bangladesh could split off from Pakistan but could not forsake the heritage of religious persecution.

The religious minority Hindus and their places of worship are often attacked and the community have often fallen victim to communal violence in the country of 169 million. Silent migration from the country is relentless and the Hindu population has dwindled to around 10 percent. This year the Durga Puja was jeopardized following widespread violence by the Islamists. Such incidents are not new. True Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has been uncompromising against Islamism and communalism and her Government was prompt to take action against the culprits.

Community leader Gobinda Chandra Pramanik told the media that at least 150 Hindus were injured across the country and at least 80 makeshift temples had been attacked. Authorities did not confirm the figures. Protests by the Islamists began on 13 October after footage emerged of a Quran being placed on the knee of a Hindu god during Durga Puja celebrations. The Islamists would not let the law to take its course but come out in strength to terrorise the minority community and vandalise their puja pandals and temples. The minority community makes up about 10 per cent of the population.

Two Hindu men have been killed in fresh communal violence in Bangladesh, police officials said Saturday, taking the number of deaths to six from recent unrest in the Muslim-majority country, it is reported. The Anti-Hindu violence spread to more than a dozen districts across Bangladesh.

“One person was killed and 30 others were injured in mob attacks on ISKCON temple in Bangladesh's Noakhali on Friday. The incident unfolded in Chowmuhani area where Section 144 has been imposed to keep the situation under control. It is with great grief that we share the news of an ISKCON member, Partha Das, who was brutally killed yesterday by a mob of over 200 people. His body was found in a pond next to the temple. We call on the Govt. of Bangladesh for immediate action in this regard," the official Twitter handle of the ISKCON said.

 Police said the latest violence occurred in the southern town of Begumganj when hundreds of Muslims formed a street procession after Friday prayers on the final day of the puja. More than 200 protesters attacked a temple (ISKCON) where members of the Hindu community were preparing to perform the last rites of the 10-day festival, local police station Chief Shah Imran told reporters.

The attackers beat and stabbed to death an executive member of the temple committee, he said. On the morning of 16 October, another Hindu man's body was found near a pond next to the temple, district police chief Shahidul Islam told the media. "Two men have died since the attack. We are working to find the culprits," he added.

Earlier, at least four people were killed on the day the violence began when police opened fire on a crowd of around 500 people attacking a Hindu temple in Hajiganj, one of several towns hit by the disturbances.

Local authorities said they have deployed extra security including paramilitary border guards to control any further unrest.On 15 October (Friday) violence broke out in the capital Dhaka and Chittagong, prompting police to fire tear gas and rubber bullets at thousands of brick-throwing Muslim protesters.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina met leaders of the Hindu community on14 October and promised stern action."So far around 90 people have been arrested. We will also hunt down all the masterminds," Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan said.

  The Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was killed in a pre-dawn Army coup on 15 August 1975. Later on 3 November that year his four confidantes and national leaders who led the liberation war of 1971 in his name- former Vice-President Syed Nazrul Islam, former Prime Minister Tajuddin Ahmed, former Home Minister A H M Kamruzzaman and Captain (Rtd) Mansur Ali - were killed in Dhaka Central Jail where they had been incarcerated by the ambitious and misled military leaders.  

The Hindu population in Bangladesh has dwindled progressively since independence in 1971. It is a fact that population of Bangladesh is on the increase and a reverse trend is evident in case of the Hindus. Not that the birth rate has decreased and mortality rate scaled up among the Hindus. Then what could be the reasonable cause for the unnatural / unbiological decline of the second largest population of the country which fought for independence from the Islamic Republic of Pakistan with the avowed pledge to establish a secular state based on a linguistic-cultural nationalism rooted in the Language Movement of 1952?

The plausible answer is Bangladesh could split off from Pakistan but could not forsake the heritage of religious persecution. The heritage may be traced to the Noakhali Genocide of 1946 which made the Hindu persecution so pronounced. British historian Yasmin Khan in her prize winning book The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan  tells us at least 5,000 Hindus were massacred, hundreds of Hindu women raped and thousands forcibly converted to Islam; many more fled to India. Even Mahatma Gandhi’s peace mission to Noakhali failed to quell the atrocities which continued unabated during his stay. Gandhi left Noakhali, urging the Hindus there to “Quit Noakhali or Die” (NY Times. 8 April 1947).The same template of persecution is perpetuated by the Islamists in Bangladesh.

What Gandhi said proved prophetic. Even after the emergence of Bangladesh, the Hindu population dwindled from 13.5% in 1974 to 8.96% in 2011, a nearly 33% decline. This suggests the prevalence of a deeply anti-Hindu environment in the country. Besides, on the eve of the second anniversary of victory in the Bangladesh Liberation War for tenable reasons the general clemency for the Islamist collaborators was announced. This paved the way for their rehabilitation and propagation of Islamist ideology vis-a-vis the nascent secularism in Bangladesh.

True, the Constitution adopted by the Constituent Assembly in 1972 made Bangladesh a secular democratic republic. The fundamental rights enshrined in the third part of the constitution,inter alia, promises equality before law, no discrimination on grounds of religion, right to protection of law, protection of  right to life and personal liberty and freedom of religion. The noble constitutional provisions could not come to the rescue of the Hindus because matching actions were not taken. In contravention of the    non-communal provisions of the new constitution, they retained the anti-Hindu Enemy Property Act of Pakistan and rechristened it as Vested Property Act in 1974.Bangladesh Government thereby vested itself with the “enemy” properties previously seized since the 1965 Indo-Pak War and continued to use the discriminatory law to confiscate the land owned by the Hindus.

 Approximately 1.2 million Hindu families, or 44% of all Hindu households, have been affected by Enemy/Vested Property Act. Hindus have been dispossessed of more than 2 million acres of land. Even after the Restoration of Vested Property Act passed in 2001, land encroachment involving Hindu land has continued but mostly during BNP governments. Subsequent amendments of the original constitution made the religious minorities including Hindus second class citizens and encouraged atrocities against the Hindus.

In the ruling Awami League there had been wolves-in- sheep’s clothing that formed and led the puppet Government installed by the military. So, many avowed programmes and plans could not be implemented in the war ravaged country right away. Vis-à-vis this situation when Bangabandhu took decisive steps, forces defeated in the liberation war both within and outside the ruling party surreptitiously organised the coup and killed the Father of the Nation and torpedoed the dream of nation.

A seminal book by Professor Abul Barkat of Dhaka University, Inquiry into Causes and Consequences of Deprivation of Hindu Minorities in Bangladesh through the Vested Property Act, published in 2000 shows that the largest beneficiary of Hindu property transfer in the past 35 years of Bangladeshi independence were people belonging to Awami League (the wolves-in- sheep’s clothing).They grabbed 44.2 per cent of the land. Other grabbers are affiliated with BNP (31.7%), Jatiya Party (5.8 %), Jamat-e-Islami (4.8%) and others (13.5%). The greatest appropriation of Hindu property took place immediately after independence during the first Awami League government (1972–75) and during the first period of rule of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (1976-1980). The confiscation of the land broke the economic backbone of the Hindus. So, migration of the Hindus is the natural consequence.