Victory Day 2019 will be structurally different from the previous forty-seven occasions. In the first, Bangladesh and India shared the principles of secularism, socialism, nationalism, and democracy. Today they do not, if indeed serve as a dynamic. Divergence did not begin today, this year, or in the recent past: though the widening gaps can be traced back to the late-1970s, at no previous time have they not been impossible to bridge. What makes 2019 so different is that the distorted forms of the opposite of those original principles have not only surfaced, but also threaten to become institutionalised. Fundamentalism threatens a secular underlay, socialism has been displaced, not by capitalism, but cut-throat neo-liberalism, while both the purer qualities of nationalism and democracy so boldly preached and passionately prayed for have yielded to populism.
These forces have not strengthened simultaneously across common borders, but the threats lie in the windows of vulnerability they open, both for the nearly 1.5 billion people living in the two countries and 'outsiders' to prey upon. Both Rohingya refugees and the global humanitarian supports they have elicited exemplify some of those windows, inviting, as they already have drug-traffickers, human smugglers, and potential terrorists. Perhaps less onerous a burden for India than Bangladesh, they expose the spillover effect inherent in the discussions thus far, permitting, for instance, India to further tighten already tightened border controls, that too at a time of such expanded trade possibilities, constraining the economic growth-rate the two countries desperately need to keep on growing to appease the mobilised public.
Sliding Indian economic performances have been raising grassroots ire, with political propositions or religious rectification as pre-election remedies. After that election, given the more massive Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) mandate, rational policy choices in India continue to be simply dwarfed by emotional and irrational alternatives. Such is the force that the India that managed somehow to stand as a post-World War II Rock of Gibraltar (leading the non-aligned less developed countries, partnering the Soviet Union, and eventually grasping US hands), now quivers against these forces just as those forces openly assault India's neighbours.
Bangladesh also looks more vulnerable, that too at a moment of its highest growth-rate, itself so much a fixture that middle-income group-entry seemed inevitable. It is not just the Rohingya influxes from August 2017, but since growth requires industrialisation, diversification, energy, infrastructures, and markets immediately, the expected collaboration and complementary action from the country's first partner, its neighbour, India, might also be in jeopardy.
Note how in each country's case the stalled diplomatic negotiations over river-flows and trade imbalances did not directly nudge the equations; but under a charged atmosphere, they can now wreak more havoc than the stalemate we have gotten so accustomed to. Clearly that stage is either just around the corner, or already upon us, when a senior Bangladesh diplomat is jostled in Guwahati, and two Bangladesh ministers cancel their Indian visits, all within the same week, more succinctly, the week just ending, eyes open up.
The foremost threat to both countries, which should bind them even closer together for necessary counteraction, is fundamentalism. Bangladesh's shift away from a secular foothold in the late 1970s did not, as yet, spark any fundamentalist fire, and indeed, any jihadi spark flashing across the country has had external triggers. Quite contrarily, India's fundamentalist turn has been both domestic and instigative. First, it rocked the boat in selected provinces, such as Gujarat when Narendra Modi was chief minister there, then broadened out when he shifted his office to New Delhi as prime minister; then for the four years of his first term, it began to rock the Indian boat. Given Modi's more outright recent re-election victory, this fundamentalist dynamic now sits either behind the country's policy-making steering wheel, or too close to it. All this has happened amid a social rupture riddled with rape and other kinds of assaults upon women. It is not hard to align the wicked mindset behind this escalating crisis with the battle-cry against others on the defensive, mostly minorities. Christians, but particularly Muslims, have been desperately praying and actually running for their lives as the BJP fringe hope to restore the original India, from the springboard of its name, the River Indus, to the very east, in one stretch.
How this culminated in the Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB), and what the CAB initiative has done to splinter India cannot be captured in one breath: at least 5 (five) provinces have rejected it, from Punjab in the west, to Kerala in the south, to West Bengal in the east, with Chattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh right smack in the middle thrown in, as of this moment. If that is not enough, the Assamese CAB origin, the National Registrar of Citizens (NRC), sought to cleanse the province of Bangalee traces under BJP stewardship. Even more flagrant has been the abrogation of Article 370 and full integration of Jammu and Kashmir with India, exposing the fundamentalist genie being released from the bottle of Indian secularism, and now poised to inflict long-term, multifarious damage before it can be reined in. Reining it in, at this stage, cannot be done without seriously impairing democracy irreversibly. Just to return to its secular roots, which Amartya Sen's Argumentative Indian traces back thousands of years, may be the straw to break the backbone of the Indian camel, and with it, its very claim to world leadership.
Already the United Nations has castigated it, and India's most cordial friend, the Donald Trump administration within the United States, dubs it discriminatory. Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's Indian visit has also been cancelled. Other ripples will follow, yet the most disturbing feature of blind-sighted populism is its sheer ignorance of anything else other than its purpose.
Gregory Stanton, who created a 10-stage genocide etiology during the Rwandan cleansing spate of the mid-1990s, believes Assamese and Kashmiri Muslims remain one-step away from genocide with the concurrent persecution. Those 10 stages emphasise, in ascending order, classifying an 'us' versus 'them' template, followed by symbolisation, discrimination, dehumanisation, organising, the genocide vehicle, polarisation, preparation, persecution, extermination, and denial. Both Assamese and Kashmiri Muslims, according to the professor, were at the eighth stage, of persecution.
Such a campaign cannot be understood without invoking the third threat, populism (briefly bypassing the second of cut-throat neo-liberalism). It is a slippery term, since it slides from some genuine and pure starting points, like nationalism or democracy, but culminates with so many excesses and perversion, desecrating both nationalism and democracy. Typically a threat is identified and directed, not against a country per se, but a civilisation. As such Trump's 'America is great' reacts against a Chinese invasion of inexpensive merchandise goods or the illegal Mexican/Hispanic immigrants in the initial stage, before spreading to other immigrant groups. Boris Johnson's break from the European Union (EU) may also be against East Europeans, but seems poised to spread to more visible immigrants from elsewhere.
Here is where the international context matters. Every country turning populist reinforces populism elsewhere, even by papering over routine policy differences. They have had a tendency of beginning with a democratic election victory before degenerating into populism. The world's largest democratic hope since World War II was India, but remains today the greatest playground of democracy destruction.
Bangladesh's strenuous efforts to further institutionalise its own democracy could be seriously threatened. Even without the seeds of populism, Bangladesh might find itself a different unity against the twin pressures of Rohingya refugees and dreaded Assamese influxes. Negotiating outstanding routine issues under those circumstances becomes pointless. First, finding a partner would be harder; second, credibility over any outcome would never become irreversible; and third, none of the above would assuage public sentiments, which, even in the most advanced and democratic country, never runs with the kind of deliberation, exchanges, and deference possible on the negotiation table. The resultant Manichaean mindset converts the 'us' versus 'them' battle-line mindset from pure competition.
How the second threat, of cut-throat competition, follows is but a long story of imperfectly institutionalising everything democracy stands for, or the exploitation of other countries in a similar dilemma. It is happening in many countries, not at all excluding Bangladesh and India: we have thousands more billionaires now than at the start; and the Gini Coefficient of inequality has been deteriorating rapidly under neo-liberalism: in Bangladesh from 0.38, when a neo-liberal framework was adopted, to 0.48 recently, with the corresponding Indian figures being 0.33 and 0.51.
At stake is not the globally experimented socialist form of government, which is hard to sustain in technologically-driven, twitter-smart individualism, in turn posing a long-term threat to democracy, but some social welfare infrastructures to meet the demands of senior citizens in just about every country needing pensions, or the growing proportion of citizens at the margin demanding health-care costs or educational supports. Introversion in one segment of the country mismatches the external context - conveniently opens up to find markets, vacation sites, and store the massive income squeezed out the country.
Farmers across India have long been hurting, just as RMG (ready-made garment) workers across Bangladesh also cringe at their stalled pay reforms. Somehow the country's upward mobility bypasses them, or they simply could not adjust to constantly changing technologies. These prevent India, for example, from accepting our more efficient RMG exports, just as the only energy we can quickly access is the environmentally destructive coal fossil-fuel from India, that too, as India begins to gradually eke them out of domestic usages.
Without even touching the Rohingya, river-water sharing, and trade differences, the two countries have apparently opened vulnerability windows that may exacerbate matters more.
What can be done, especially as the approaching 50th birth anniversary of Bangladesh demands some semblance of the 1971 Bangla-India rapport, is simply difficult to find today on the 48th anniversary? This issue demands urgent attention of the leadership on both sides of the border.
Returning to the negotiating table is a sine qua non, even if a solution might appear impossible, ecliptic, or half-hearted. Already stalemated routine issues, must continue to be hammered out. More quid pro quo trade-offs need to be identified and elevated, and perhaps Delhi-based parleys could be paralleled with province-level explorations, which is where populism brews. As India's CAB obsession grows, so too must our province-level dialogues across India.
Cultivating relations with Tripura and West Bengal could help pry more concessions from New Delhi; but many New Delhi expectations could also be inter-connected to resolving dissent elsewhere. Even at home, distinguishing stadia patriotism from street-side expressions would help even an agitated population from pushing too hard or going too far. More grassroots-level cross-border exchanges would also help break the ice: border haats, a pragmatic but informal start to stirring up cross-border mindsets, is a start worth expanding; while the number of medical tourists or even domestic importers of Indian products could be mobilised to send two messages, first and foremost the promises of what Indian exchanges can do to boost economic growth in both countries, then how this could propel a broader regional network for even more mutual benefit.
Sen's Argumentative Indian underscores how, so many times, India resurrected its secular traditions/roots from the fray or against ferocious attacks, as at present. Tapping this reservoir and swallowing CAB-like pushes and instincts could bring more productive long-term outcomes against the persistent clouds constraining bilateral relations.
