Opinion Amid Delhi-Dhaka rift, can Bangladesh overcome its dark history with Islamabad?

Indian Express

22-04-2025

Official Bangladeshi records note that as many as three million Bangladeshis were killed and over 2,00,000 women raped by Pakistani soldiers (planned as part of Operation Searchlight) in the lead-up to the Indo-Pak War of 1971. The Bangladeshi purge has been described as a 'genocide'. In his book, The Betrayal of East Pakistan, Lt Gen A A K Niazi records the chilling orders of his predecessor, the infamous Butcher of Bangladesh, General Tikka Khan, 'I want the land and not the people'.
The journalist who brought the slaughter to global notice was ironically a Pakistani from Karachi, Anthony Mascarenhas, who wrote for the UK's Sunday Times. He records the government's policy as spelt out in its Eastern Command Headquarters at Dhaka: 'The government's policy for East Bengal was spelled out to me in the Eastern Command headquarters at Dacca. It had three elements: The Bengalis have proved themselves unreliable and must be ruled by West Pakistanis; the Bengalis will have to be re-educated along proper Islamic lines. The Islamisation of the masses — this is the official jargon — is intended to eliminate secessionist tendencies and provide a strong religious bond with West Pakistan; when the Hindus have been eliminated by death and fight, their property will be used as a golden carrot to win over the under privileged Muslim middle-class. This will provide the base for erecting administrative and political structures in the future.'
The implementation of this scorched-earth approach by the Pakistani military notwithstanding, the daring and lightning strike into Dhaka by India's Lt Gen Sagat Singh-led IV Corps, liberated Bangladesh, but only after the Bangladeshis paid a terrible price.
The two leading political parties in Bangladesh today, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's Awami League (AL) and General Zia-ur-Rahman's Bangladesh National Party (BNP), were once united in their hatred for Pakistan. General Zia-ur-Rahman, who was to later replace Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's Awami League government and ironically thaw relations with Pakistan, had declared during Bangladesh's independence, 'In the name of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, I call upon all Bangalees to rise against the attack by the West Pakistan army. We shall fight to the last to free our motherland. By the grace of Allah, victory would be ours. Joy Bangla.'
Collectively, the Bangladeshis had debunked Pakistan's foundational 'two-nation theory' and disallowed the role of religion to bind a disparate and diverse people. In 1971, it was a complete breakdown of bilateral equations, emotions, and any future possibilities, between the newly formed Bangladesh and its persecuting power, Pakistan.
Cut to 2025, almost 55 years since the pogrom between East Pakistan (Bangladesh) and West Pakistan (Pakistan) — a question of a possible reset in relations (as Dhaka's equation with Delhi gets fractured) looms. As India-Pakistan is a parallel and hyphenated reality with its own wounds, luring Pakistan emerges as a counterpoise to the Bangladeshis on the rebound. Has the divide between Delhi and Dhaka become so deep that the Bangladeshis can overlook and overcome their own dark history with Islamabad?
A sudden flurry of unprecedented exchanges between the diplomats of Bangladesh and Pakistan are raising eyebrows. The Foreign Secretaries met for their first Foreign Office Consultation (FOC) in 15 years — Pakistan's Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Ishaq Dar, is scheduled to visit Bangladesh later this month. Importantly, these exchanges coincide with the decidedly colder and mealy-mouthed equation between Delhi and Dhaka.
Beyond getting back at Delhi (for the supposed past and for giving continued shelter to the ousted prime minister, Sheikh Hasina), what is helping the Muhammad Yunus -led government initiate dialogue is the fact that nearly 86 per cent of the Bangladeshi population is less than 55 years old; they were not privy to the genocidal conduct of Pakistan in 1971, firsthand. Instead, what is igniting passions and dominating the streets of Bangladesh is the extreme polarisation of partisan politics, student discontent and impatience (delays in announcing elections are not helping), socio-economic distress with a sliding economy, spiraling unemployment, and Israel's war in Gaza. The fact that Bangladesh is cozying up to the enemy is not raising enough hackles.
The Yunus-led dispensation has made a provocative outreach to India's other regional nemesis, China. Perhaps in his calculus, stitching up an alternative alliance with China and Pakistan is a way of countering the sovereign path pursued in the past. Engagement with Pakistan also feeds the local and growing imagination of religious majoritarianism. Bangladesh has seen backlash against minorities. Religious parties like the Jamaat would welcome the advent of a Pakistani footprint, whom they had tellingly supported during events leading to 1971. All of this allows Yunus to create a constituency for himself in the cauldron of Bangladesh and posture a newness of approach and outcomes.
Ironically the very reason that delegitimised the majoritarian spirit of 'two-nation theory' to finally split Bangladesh from Pakistan, may actually be the reason for the restorative bind yet again: Religion. It is an aggressive and regressive approach by the Muhammad Yunus dispensation in the short run — but fraught with crippling long-term risks. Pakistan has grave socio-economical and societal issues of its own and is barely surviving. However, given the nature of electoral politics, short-termism will always triumph long-termism, and Yunus would be punting on winning the elections, whatever the means and long term consequences. That history has a cruel way of reasserting itself with even more debilitating effect if ignored and overlooked, is a proven fact, but that inevitability is currently not on the agenda in the Bangladeshi corridors of power.