SLOW AND STEADY SUPPORT - The presidential visit will secure India’s interests in Bangladesh Diplomacy: K.P. Nayar

SLOW AND STEADY SUPPORT - The presidential visit will secure India's interests in Bangladesh

Diplomacy: K.P. Nayar

Pranab Mukherjee's visit to Bangladesh pivoted around a single word. The one word which made the president's travel to Bangladesh different from any other foreign trip that he will make from Rashtrapati Bhavan was Bengali: dwiragaman. It was bandied about throughout Mukherjee's stay in Dhaka in the context of his lightning helicopter trip to visit relatives of the first lady, Suvra Mukherjee, in Bhadrabila. The president himself spoke about the custom of dwiragaman when a bride returns to her parental home, accompanied by her newly-wed husband. It has become rare since the end of the Cold War for bilateral engagements to profit from words, catchphrases or slogans. The last time that happened in South Asia was probably when Indians and East Pakistanis, who wanted to see the birth of Bangladesh, worked together. Joy Bangla became a battle cry which both sides could relate to. It is unlikely that there has been another dwiragaman in the annals of Indian high-level diplomatic trips abroad. It did not matter that accuracy was a casualty in this context. Mukherjee had not visited his wife's ancestral home in the first place, but he was willing to be swept up by the custom after 56 years in his marriage. So were the members of his entourage and the president's official hosts in Bangladesh. So much so that Sheikh Hasina Wajed, the prime minister of Bangladesh, joked that since Mukherjee had finally visited his wife's ancestral home, it will have to be followed up by another custom, Jamai Sasthi. Hasina even told the president in jest that she is willing to substitute the family of his in-laws and send him the gifts on the sixth day of Jyestha, the month when sons-in-law get a treat from their wives' families. There are not many foreign prime ministers any more who can take the liberty of such conversations with an Indian president or head of government. By a curious coincidence, Mukherjee has just completed his second overseas visit to another country which could boast of a similar relationship with Indian leaders. The prime minister of Mauritius, Navinchandra Ramgoolam, and his wife, Veena, ventured such liberties with Atal Bihari Vajpayee, but that is another story. Hasina's personal bond with Mukherjee was forged when she and her sister, Sheikh Rehana, lived in exile in India after the assassination of their father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. The full story of the support that he extended to the only two children of Sheikh Mujib who were to survive the night of the long knives in Dhaka on August 14-15, 1975, will only be told when Mukherjee writes his memoirs. There is no way the president could have abandoned his visit to Dhaka last week even though Bangladesh was in the midst of domestic turmoil. If he did not go at this time, there is no way he could have gone to Dhaka any time soon. A presidential visit to Bangladesh in the coming months, closer to elections there, would have been seen as an Indian effort to mollycoddle Hasina in her efforts to return to power. That would have been doing the prime minister a disservice. Besides, if the combination of Hasina's political foes, all of whom seek to benefit from anti-India posturing, did not have a hartal planned for a later date, they would have certainly called for one, albeit citing other reasons, whenever an Indian presidential visit was scheduled. The Islamist turmoil, the Shahbag movement and the cancellation by the Opposition leader, Begum Khaleda Zia, of her appointment with the president are all a reminder of how little the fundamentals have changed in Bangladesh since the events leading to its birth. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto used to say way back at that time that East Pakistanis must make a choice. If they wanted to preserve their Islamic identity, they should remain a part of Pakistan. But if they wanted to assert their Bengali character, then they should unite with West Bengal and India. At the root of some of the ongoing turmoil in Bangladesh is still this dilemma. Few people now remember the methodical, compartmentalized, need-to-know style in which Indira Gandhi went about dealing with the fallout of West Pakistani suppression of the aspirations of East Pakistan. Among the ministers, Jagjivan Ram, Swaran Singh and Y.B. Chavan made up the core group that advised the prime minister. She relied heavily on a group of officials to get the work done: P.N. Dhar, her trusted secretary in the Prime Minister's Office, foreign secretary T.N. Kaul, the prime minister's favourite spymaster, R.N. Kao, who had founded the Research and Analysis Wing a little over two years earlier, and P.N. Haksar, principal secretary to the prime minister. Presiding over this group was D.P. Dhar, the chairman of the Policy Planning Committee in South Block. Brought into the centre of activity by Indira Gandhi as India got increasingly involved in the crisis in East Pakistan were two young men, both 36 at that time. One was Pranab Mukherjee, then a fresh-man member of the Rajya Sabha who had come to her attention for his impatience in passionately arguing that India was not moving fast enough on Bangladesh. The other was J.N. Dixit, whom Indira Gandhi eventually picked to open the Indian embassy in Dhaka although he had merely 13 years of experience at that time. Mukherjee was a first-term member of parliament, but he was entrusted with the task of moving the landmark resolution in the Rajya Sabha for recognition of the Mujibnagar-based government-in-exile. A fortnight later, by the end of June 1971, Dixit was asked to create a new South Block division to deal exclusively with developments in East Pakistan. The prime minister then sent Mukherjee to lobby the case for Bangladesh with MPs worldwide at a conference of the Inter-Parliamentary Union. She also sent him on a similar mission to Europe, which was more responsive to human rights violations by West Pakistan than Washington. Mukherjee's long association with diplomacy, like that of the late US senator, Edward Kennedy, began with Bangladesh. His visit to Dhaka is the best guarantee that the investments India made in Bangladesh since Hasina returned to power will not be frittered away. It was for this reason that Hasina told Mukherjee in a private conversation that his decision to persist with the visit, ignoring Bangladesh's domestic turmoil, was "courageous". At a time when political correctness tends to get the better of core interests, Bangladesh represents a rare example of Indian diplomacy having the courage to support someone abroad who will stand with New Delhi instead of with ceremony and protocol. Because the Northeastern states are remote, much of India has failed to grasp the importance of Bangladesh — and of Bhutan — for India's security. If peace talks are now taking place between the Union government and United Liberation Front of Asom, it is because of what Hasina's government did to cooperate with India despite New Delhi's inability to deliver on Teesta river water sharing. But the president is by no means alone in putting his best foot forward and reaching out to Bangladesh at this juncture. In a simplistic preoccupation with a crude bomb that was set off outside Mukherjee's hotel in Dhaka and Khaleda Zia's political calculations, it has been lost in the public mind that in the last six months 38 major Indian private sector investment proposals have made headway in Bangladesh. The Tatas may have been ahead of their time when their plans for huge investments in Bangladesh fell through some time ago, but the new proposals read like a "who is who" in India's corporate world. Additionally, CEAT, the tyre manufacturer, two-wheeler producers, the Aditya Birla Group, and Bombay Rayon Fashions, a major garment exporter, are among those considering investments in Bangladesh, taking advantage of Indian government incentives for the promotion of bilateral commercial relations. If businessmen are showing confidence in Bangladesh, that is surely a sign that Dhaka' future is brighter than it has been assumed. http://www.telegraphindia.com/1130313/jsp/opinion/story_16662869.jsp#.UUCIFqJQl4I