The more things change, the more they stay the same. Reading Anirban Ganguly’s new book, From Partition to Progress: Persecuted Hindus and the Struggle for Citizenshipespecially in the context of what is happening in post-Sheikh Hasina Bangladesh, reminds us how little has changed since what became East Pakistan, after independence, and Bangladesh, after the 1971 war. The only constant has been the persecution of minorities in this newly carved out nation . The other constant has been the utter, if not criminal, indifference shown by the Indian political class, except for a period in the early 1970s, to the plight of the Hindus.
The Indian failure has been moral, political and diplomatic. And above all, it is a failure of Indian imagination. The moral failure, as Syama Prasad Mookerjee had said in one of his speeches, is because “the Hindus of East Bengal are entitled to the protection of India, not on humanitarian grounds alone, but on account of their sufferings and sacrifices, cheerfully made for generations , not to advance their own ecclesiastical interest, but to lay the foundation of India’s political freedom and intellectual progress It is the united voice of the leaders who are dead and the youth who smile went up to the gallows for the cause of India which demands justice and fair play at the hands of the free India of today”.
The moral dimension also comes into play when one realizes how the Congress leadership led a massive campaign during the Partition to “persuade…other Hindus to stay in their homes and try to alleviate their fear and confusion”, as author Yasmin Khan writes in The Great Partition, while recounts the work done by Suhasini Das, an East Bengal Gandhian in Sylhet. Then came the Nehru-Liaquat Pact of April 1950 – a pact which Sri Aurobindo saw as “one extraordinarily smart move by Liaquat Ali to fish his ‘nation’ out of the desperate situation it had found itself in and to ensure its safe survival.” – creating a false hope of normalcy for Hindu minorities, especially in East Pakistan.
From the start, the Pact was a non-starter. The failure to see what was written on the wall reveals the political failure of the Indian leadership. Mookerjee writes, “Beginning from 14th June 1950 and ending 3rd August 1950 … 15,900 Hindus had been interrogated by our workers. Of these 15,900 Hindus who were going back to East Bengal, about 90 per cent of them declared that they had no intention whatsoever to go and stay in East Bengal… In the same way I had advised my workers to interrogate the Muslims who were going to the East Bengal. Of course, not all Muslims were willing to answer the question for obvious reasons. We could get answers from 4,500 Muslims, and their answer was that about 40 percent of them would go away to live in East Bengal, but 60 percent wanted to come. back to West Bengal… Now, what do these statistics show? That in the minds of 90 percent of the Hindus who were going back to East Bengal, there is no return of confidence at all. On the other hand, in the minds of the Muslims consciousness, 60 percent of them feel safe living in West Bengal and India.”
Manoranjan Byapari, a well-known Bengali writer who had lived a traumatic life as a child in the refugee camps of West Bengal and Dandakaranya, in his memoirs, Interrogate my Chandal lifenot only remember the prison-like situation in the camps but also could not forget, even though decades had passed, the foul smell that would envelop the entire camp when the food, especially rice, was cooked. A significant number among the 10 percent Hindus who decided to go back to East Pakistan could not take the inhumane conditions they faced in these refugee camps; 90 percent still thought these pathetic standards were better than what awaited them in what later became Bangladesh.
And they weren’t wrong. Mookerjee, in his speech in Parliament, as quoted by Anirban Ganguly, made a detailed mention of the fate of Hindus in East Pakistan. He said: “Between the date of the (Nehru-Liaquat) Pact (signed on April 8, 1950) and June 30, 1950, there have been 757 cases of dacoity, robbery and theft; 219 cases of extortion; 194 cases of trespass; 180 cases of abuse, harassment and threats to leave Pakistan; 129 cases of abduction, rape and outrage of women; 70 cases of aggravated stabbing; 21 cases of unlawful confinement and detention; and 72 cases of unlawfully holdings… This is by no means an exhaustive list This is just an illustrative list of events that have happened in East Bengal since to June 30, 1950 and spread almost over the length and breadth of East Bengal. In each of these cases I should add that the minority, the Hindus, is the victim, and the oppressor is a member of the majority community. The entire social and economic structure as Hindus lived in has collapsed, and it is impossible for them to live there.”
This did not move Nehru, who continued to believe that “everything is all right except for some uncertainty”. And this largely remained the stand of the Government of India until now. And so the plight of the Hindus in Bangladesh had remained: In good times they await slow death. According to a 2021 human rights report, Bangladesh saw more than 3,600 attacks on Hindus in Bangladesh since 2013. Sheikh Hasina had been in power since 2009. And in bad times, as they are currently witnessing after the 2024 coup against Sheikh Hasina, Hindu persecution and killings become state sponsored.
This brings us to the final aspect of India’s row in Bangladesh: It is a failure of both Indian diplomacy and imagination – often the two combine to create disastrous effect. It is a Nehruvian gift to Indian diplomacy, which unfortunately continues to this day, thankfully in smaller proportions today, to be overly pragmatic, to the point of being apologetic at times, while making demands with another country. We always try to be reasonable. The Indian leadership can learn from China how to pursue the maximalist position while pursuing diplomacy. It would be ridiculous to assume that the Chinese believe that India would give up Arunachal Pradesh, and yet they are bringing the issue of this Indian state to the diplomatic table.
This may be the most opportune moment for the Indian leadership to adopt the maximalist position vis-à-vis Bangladesh, given the government in Dhaka that does not even pretend to be friendly. And here again Delhi can take a cue from Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and Syama Prasad Mookerjee, who had matter-of-factly suggested the need to “claim one-third of the territory of East Pakistan. We must say to them: if you are going to get a third of the population from East Bengal, please give us a third of your territory”.
Today, the Hindu population has declined from one-third to less than one-tenth of the total Bangladeshi population. Will the Indian leadership reciprocate and ask Dhaka to create a tenth of the territory, autonomous in nature, to settle the beleaguered Hindus in that country? The Citizen Amendment Act (CAA) is a noble move, but then, frankly, the Islamists would see it as a case of having their cake and eating it too!
It is time for India to show its diplomatic imagination. Sometimes it’s not a bad idea for the elephant to learn a trick or two from the dragon!
Opinions expressed in the paragraph above are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the views of Firstpost.
