Sushma Swaraj's visit to Dhaka: Mixed signals

Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj's 24-hour-long official visit was undertaken ostensibly for the meeting of the India-Bangladesh Joint Consultative Committee with her counterpart, the Bangladesh Foreign Minister AH Mahmud Ali. That meeting was duly held but interested quarters in Dhaka and the media paid very little attention to what transpired at that meeting. Attention with the visit in Dhaka instead was squarely on the Minister's meetings with the Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and the BNP leader Khaleda Zia.

Sushma Swaraj came to Dhaka at a time when Bangladesh-India relations were not moving forward to the satisfaction of Dhaka and to some extent of New Delhi as well. Although New Delhi had done a great deal on the economic front for Bangladesh providing, during the Prime Minister's state visit to New Delhi in April, a third line of credit (LOC) worth US$ 4.3 billion, on the back of two given earlier, each worth US$ 1.0 billion, those economic concessions by India to Bangladesh were not enough to tide over the irritants, some old and some new, that had come in the way of smooth development of Bangladesh-India bilateral relations.

The Teesta Deal kept pending since September 2011 and promised delivery many times since was still undelivered leading to Sushma Swaraj's visit to Dhaka. New Delhi had kept Dhaka hoping, blaming, instead, Mamata Banerjee as the spoiler.  Anyone with knowledge of Indian federalism knew that if New Delhi was serious, the Teesta deal would have been delivered long ago. Sushma Swaraj did not have any good news on the Teesta Deal and the issue was pushed deeper into the cold storage through her visit.

New Delhi's stand on the Rohingya issue was more disappointing for Bangladesh than the failure to deliver the Teesta deal held back after Dhaka had unilaterally provided New Delhi its security concerns and the land transit. The Rohingya issue leading to the Minister's visit had brought to Bangladesh 600,000 new Rohingya refugees to add to the 400,000 already in the country. They fled to Bangladesh because, as Sheikh Hasina had told the world, genocide by the Myanmar military and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights had said, "a textbook case of ethnic cleansing". New Delhi nevertheless sided with the Myanmar military on the Rohingya issue and not with Bangladesh's dire predicaments.

The Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi went to Myanmar to stand with the Myanmar government for the 4 Myanmar soldiers killed by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), a riff-raff terrorist organisation.  A statement of the Indian External Affairs Ministry issued after the ARSA action read: "India condemned the recent terrorist attacks in northern Rakhine State, wherein several members of the Myanmar security forces lost their lives." Thus, New Delhi, in denial of genocide and ethnic cleansing that forced 1.0 million Rohingyas to take shelter in Bangladesh, unbelievably supported Myanmar.

Therefore, a great deal of expectation was placed on the Indian External Affairs Minister's visit - that she would correct India's unbelievable stand on the Rohingya issue at the least. Unfortunately, the Indian Minister did not have any good news for Bangladesh on the Rohingya issue either. She was careful not even to refer to the Rohingyas as Rohingyas in order not to upset Myanmar. She did not come anywhere close to acknowledging the Bangladesh Prime Minister's claim of the Rohingya "genocide" or the UN Human Right Commissioner's claim of "ethnic cleansing." She merely stated that all the Rohingyas must return to their homeland but did not suggest how; that meant little of hope and support for Bangladesh.

Sushma Swaraj did not provide any good tidings to the ruling Awami League either with the country on the cusp of the next general election. The party desperately needed the Teesta deal to take credit that its decision to play the land transit and security cards were wise and had borne results.  Sushma Swaraj, instead, apparently brought good tidings for the BNP. When she met Begum Khaleda Zia, she said that New Delhi wanted to see the next general election in Bangladesh to be free and fair and participated by all the political parties. She went a step further away from the Awami League when he addressed the media, stating that it was the duty of the government to create the conditions for a participatory, free and fair election. That statement was received immediately by the BNP as good news.

That statement was received immediately by the BNP as  good news. In 2014, New Delhi had sent its Foreign Secretary Sujata Singh with the country expecting that she would say what the Indian Minister had said this time. Instead at that time, Sujata Singh had gone to HM Ershad to influence the Jatiya Party to contest the elections to stop the BNP and its allies from coming to power. The Awami League Secretary-General clarified that the Indian Minister had not suggested a neutral election time government to support the demand of the BNP and its allies. That was indeed the case although the BNP did not claim it as such.

On its part, New Delhi, as the Indian media suggested, had been unhappy with Dhaka for some of its recent decisions. It was particularly unhappy that Bangladesh had decided to join the One Belt One Road (OBOR), a Chinese initiative that 60 countries with 70 per cent of the world population had joined. India opposed OBOR covertly because it would go through what it called the Pakistani occupied Kashmir but seriously for deeper strategic reasons. New Delhi did not like that Bangladesh's decision to join OBOR was communicated to New Delhi through the media by the Bangladesh Foreign Secretary while he had gone there on an official visit. New Delhi was also unhappy with Bangladesh moving much closer to China than it would want. It had been observing with concern China's deep involvement in economic infrastructure building in Bangladesh, some of the strategic nature. And there were Dhaka's deep military ties with China with the recent  submarinepurchases  that angered New Delhi in particular. All these have been reported in the Indian media.

There were speculations leading to Sushma's visit in informed circles in Dhaka and New Delhi that the AL-led government might be playing the China card deliberately to get New Delhi interested in its favour with the next elections in view. If that speculation was correct, New Delhi did not show it was eager to bring Bangladesh from going deeper towards China or else Sushma would have, first not met the BNP leader that she could have avoided on grounds of protocol, and second, not stated a number of things about the next election that went not entirely in favour of the ruling party. And she did not bring more hopeful signs of the Teesta Deal.

Perhaps Sushma Swaraj had come to Dhaka to set a new direction for New Delhi-Dhaka relations; one that would be based on country to country relations rather than between two political parties. New Delhi was aware of the simmering among the people in Bangladesh with the 2014 election. Further New Delhi also calculated that with the BNP committed to participate in the next election, its ability to help repeat another 2014 like election might not be possible. Finally, the BJP's commitment towards the Awami League was unlike that of the Congress underlined by the sharp decline of high-level visits between the two countries since the BJP came to power.

India was also aware leading to Sushma Swaraj's visit that with the 1.0 million Rohingyas in Bangladesh, the country needed a peaceful transfer of power. A non-participatory election would in all likelihood lead to violence and with the Rohingya factor, turn the region into a hotbed of international terrorism that would be quite dangerous to India's interests to which many security analysts have alluded.

Therefore, Sushma Swaraj had visited Dhaka perhaps with lesser interest to discourage Dhaka  moving deeper into the Chinese camp and more to ensure a peaceful transfer of power in Dhaka because, without one, India's regional interests would be seriously endangered. She certainly did not come to help the BNP and New Delhi undoubtedly would be happy to see an AL Government in power in Dhaka. Nevertheless, with the conditions in Bangladesh at present unlike those in 2014, New Delhi may have decided in its interest against putting all its eggs in one basket in Bangladesh with the next general election in view. If that was true, it would be in the interest of both the countries; their peoples and the region.

The writer is a former Ambassador. 

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