brad brace

07/14/2006 09:45 PM | By Kuldip Nayar

Whenever I have visited Bangladesh in the past, I have wondered whether the country would ever make it.

The words like “a failed state” have haunted me and I have often expressed apprehension over the future of 150 million people with practically no natural resources, except gas.

Still I have not lost faith in Bangladeshis as I have followed them in their liberation struggle. How bravely they defied the ruthless Pakistan army to be on their own. There is nothing more difficult than to initiate a new order of things. The Bangladeshis did it.

First, they created an environment of independence and then established the democratic system which even Pakistan envied.

No doubt, the ever-increasing bomb blasts scare you in Bangladesh but back home I found in Mumbai a series of blasts which were no less alarming. Fundamentalists are responsible in Bangladesh and so is my inference in the case of Mumbai.

There were only freedom fighters when I went to Dhaka within a few days of its independence. I heard the slogan Jao Bangla at the airport itself. Passengers looked like people returning to the promised land. They were willing to make any sacrifice to stay free.

When Shaikh Mujib-ur-Rahman, founder and father of Bangladesh, said: “We will have to turn the independence movement into a struggle for building our country,” it sounded more of faith than a programme.”

Dhaka was then an over-grown town. The countryside was poor and the teaming millions had all the aspirations.

Today, Dhaka is an expanding city beaming with confidence and spreading like any world capital. So many offices and restaurants are coming up that I lost count by the time I reached the hotel from the airport.

The country has already recorded an annual growth rate of six per cent. The yearly remittances are $6 billion and the trade with India exceeds $3 billion.

Oblivious

The plus point in Bangladesh is that its people are conscious of their limitations and realise that they have a long distance to go. In contrast, the civil society in India and Pakistan believes that it has already arrived.

They are oblivious to their social obligation and lead a life which has the parameters of class, caste and the region to which they originally belong.

Unlike India and Pakistan, non-government organisations in Bangladesh have done a tremendous job.

The credit given by voluntary bodies has changed the complexion of several parts in the countryside and made people self-sufficient.

They are so confident now that the perennial floods do not drive them to cities as was the case a decade ago.

They manage their own affairs locally, without depending on the government which in any case is far behind the people’s initiative.

The postponement by the Tatas of $3 billion investment till after the elections early next year is unfortunate.

It looks as if Dhaka was not willing to offer the required use of gas lest it should become a poll issue. But the fact is that the impression built over the years is that India’s use of gas, however remunerative, is not in the interest of Bangladeshis.

The ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) is said to be responsible for this. Probably, things will work out after elections. But, in the meanwhile, the Tata deal postponement may become grist to the propaganda mills in India against Bangladesh.

The point to worry about in Bangladesh is that public and political culture appear increasingly premised on playing the religious majority card and marginalising minority groups despite a long history of accommodation and tolerance of diversity.

It is evident that Bangladesh is undergoing a process of Islamisation that has eclipsed a more inclusive and hybrid Bengali national ideology.

The Jamat-e-Islami is after the Ahmediyas these days. The hate politics is being engineered against them. The pressure on the government is so immense and relentless that the Ahmadiyas may be declared non-Muslims as in Pakistan.

Still, a Bangladeshi is offended if you compare him with a Pakistani in any way. I find in Pakistan a sort of nostalgia for the days when East Pakistan (Bangladesh) was part of Pakistan.

Many wish the two countries should become one again. But they are living in a fool’s paradise. The Bangladeshis have not forgiven the Pakistanis for what their army or the Punjabi culture did to them.

Meanwhile, Islamabad would do well to repatriate some 300,000 “Biharis” – the stranded Pakistanis, who have been living in Bangladesh for the past 34 years in deplorable conditions.

Kuldip Nayar is a former Indian High Commissioner to the UK and a former Rajya Sabha MP.