Clashes erupt at Sukhdebpur border, highlighting escalating tensions between India and Bangladesh | Representational Image
India-Bangladesh relations are in freefall with neither Dhaka nor New Delhi seemingly interested in coming to grips with the deteriorating situation. We are witnessing one escalation after another with no respite in sight. If one day, Dhaka summons India’s High Commissioner in Bangladesh, Pranay Verma, to its Foreign Office, the very next day, New Delhi summons the Bangladeshi Acting High Commissioner to India, Nurul Islam, to South Block.
The tit-for-tat summons hark back to highly surcharged periods of India-Pakistan interface and were unheard of in India-Bangladesh bilateral relations until now. Yet, that’s exactly what’s happening today.
Unless better sense prevails and both sides quickly rectify the situation, it won’t be surprising if the Chief Advisor Muhammad Yunus-led interim regime and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government start expelling each other’s diplomats to settle real or imaginary scores – that’s the direction we are unfortunately headed to.
An extremely worrisome and dangerous development took place just three days ago. On January 18, there were unprecedented clashes between Bangladeshi and Indian farmers at the Sukhdebpur border in Malda district, adjoining Chapai-Nawabgunj on the other side. The bone of contention was the standing crops of maize, mustard and wheat in around 10 bighas near the international border.
According to newspaper reports, locals, both sides of the border, assembled in big numbers and started abusing and pelting stones at each other. There were reports of bombs being hurled. As local television channels showed videos of the face-off, the Border Security Force (BSF) and Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) stepped in; tear gas shells were used to defuse the situation and prevent the violence from spreading.
Ominously enough, the clashes took place at the same Sukhdebpur outpost where the BSF and the BGB recently had differences over fencing of the border by India. When Verma was summoned on January 12, Dhaka had bitterly complained that the construction of barbed wire fences on five locations, including Sukhdebpur, along the India-Bangladesh border violated bilateral agreements and were causing tensions and disturbances.
The unprecedented and ugly face-off between Bangladeshis and Indians at Sukhdebpur proves that tensions are becoming not only unmanageable but spilling over. After Verma and Islam were summoned, India underlined that it observed all protocols and agreements between the two governments, and between the BSF and the BGB, with regard to security measures at the border, including fencing. But the post August 5, 2024, regime in Dhaka dismissively says that all those agreements are “unequal”, particularly the Land Boundary Agreement of 2015 that was signed between Modi and then pro-India Sheikh Hasina. It has also flagged fatal shootings by the BSF resulting in civilian casualties. The upshot is that Bangladeshi objections has stalled the fencing.
The summoning of India’s envoy is significant because it is unparalleled and mirrors the widening cracks in the bilateral relationship, which was lauded as “golden” and ä “model” by both countries until Hasina was suddenly swept out of power. For 15 long years, Dhaka never criticized or lifted a finger at New Delhi. Hasina’s submission was, of course, out of self-preservation; she prioritized her own and Awami Leagues’s interests above the nation’s. Bangladesh was so subservient that it did not summon India’s envoy even after Nupur Sharma’s despicable remarks about Prophet Muhammad in 2022, whereas all other Muslim countries sent for India’s Ambassadors and High Commissioners to lodge strong protests. But power-hungry Hasina did not dare to ruffle New Delhi’s feathers, lest it toppled her. Those “golden” days are now gone forever.
It’s imperative to repair our tattered ties with Bangladesh because it’s much more than just a neighbor. Unlike China, Pakistan, Myanmar, Bhutan, Nepal, Maldives and Sri Lanka, geographically Bangladesh is embedded “inside” India. Save for a short boundary with Myanmar and the waters of the Bay of Bengal in the south, Bangladesh is surrounded by as many as five Indian states – West Bengal, Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram – on all sides. In that sense, Bangladesh is indeed “inside” India, so to speak.
Conversely, it can be said that India encircles Bangladesh territorially. Both ways, Bangladesh’s domestic politics and governance impacts India more than any other country in the world – certainly much more than the United States, which is continents and oceans away but still has its finger in the Bangladeshi pie.
It’s another matter that resident power India has been traditionally miles ahead of the US in Bangladesh. Thanks to Hasina, India, in fact, wielded more influence in Bangladesh than the Security Council’s five members put together during her rule 2009 onwards. But that “golden” chapter ended in August. The crisis that stares New Delhi in the face in Bangladesh is of its own making, though. However loyal and obliging Hasina might have been, we should have pulled the plug after she rigged the 2024 general elections. Had we done that, we would have earned the gratitude of ordinary Bangladeshis and the Opposition. As things stand today, we are so badly marginalized that only a miracle can help India find its feet in the new Bangladesh.
