This article penned by veteran Bangladeshi diplomat and presents detail account of indian interference - how india prevented free election in Bangladesh.
Article also described during 1988 flood, how india used its helicopters for relief program in Bangladesh to spy and gather Bangladesh defense and security information.
Indian high commissioner’s good tidings for Bangladesh elections
by M Serajul Islam | Published: 00:05, Jun 08,2017
THE Indian high commissioner Harsh Vardhan Sringhla, in a recent address to the Diplomatic Correspondents Association of Bangladesh, said something extremely significant. He stated that India has no intention of getting involved in the next general elections in Bangladesh that was music to the ears of the majority of the people of the country. The reason is quite a simple one. Bangladeshis in the overwhelming majority who have been disenfranchised by the way the last elections were held believe that one of the major ways to hold free and fair elections in Bangladesh is for India to keep out of it.
One must wonder what prompted the high commissioner to make such a statement. He was neither asked nor provoked. Perhaps, the high commissioner was reflecting on what had happened in Bangladesh leading to the controversial January 5, 2014 elections while addressing the journalists. Or perhaps he was thinking of the past, in particular of the visit of then Indian foreign secretary Sujata Singh to Bangladesh just days before the elections and her extremely controversial meeting with the former president HM Ershad while preparing his speech for the occasion.
The former president’s Jatiya Party was unwilling to participate in the 2014 elections that would have made it impossible for the ruling Awami League government to hold any elections at all, not even the one it eventually held. The Indian foreign secretary met HM Ershad in his residence and without mincing words and unbelievably undiplomatically told him that the Jatiya Party must take part in the elections in order to keep the BNP/Jamaat from coming to power!
That was the most blatant example of any country interfering in another country’s internal affairs. Ershad exposed the attempted interference by the Indian foreign secretary in a dramatic way. No sooner had she left his residence, he held an impromptu press briefing and reproduced almost verbatim what transpired at the meeting. That meeting will remain as the blackest day when the history of Bangladesh-India relations is written truthfully.
It was not just that. The meeting also reflected a deterioration of India’s widely acknowledged high standard in the conduct of diplomacy. It was common knowledge in Bangladesh and to the Indian High Commission in Dhaka at the time of the meeting of the Indian foreign secretary and HM Ershad that the latter was the least trustworthy politician in Bangladesh.
They had a past experience about Ershad’s unreliability and dubiousness as well as his anti-India bias that dated back to the 1988 floods in Bangladesh that were the most devastating in its history.
Bangladesh had accepted four helicopters from India for dealing with the devastations and those helicopters had rendered extraordinary service in dealing with the post-flood disaster management. However, HM Ershad’s military felt that as the Indian pilots were flying their helicopters freely over the country’s skies, they were having access to country’s security as well. Under pressure from the military, the foreign ministry was asked to call the Indian high commissioner to the foreign ministry, thank India for the helicopters and request that the helicopters be taken back because Bangladesh had managed to deal with the post-flood disaster management.
The Bangladesh side had unfortunately overlooked what the Indian high commissioner curtly pointed out when he was called to the foreign ministry. He reminded the additional foreign secretary, who had received him, that the previous night, president HM Ershad had said on the national television that Bangladesh had requested China for helicopters and, therefore, that Bangladesh did not need the Indian helicopters was not true. The Chinese helicopters had arrived soon after the Indian helicopters were returned.
Therefore, New Delhi knew better than the people of Bangladesh that HM Ershad was not trustworthy. Hence, the last thing that the Indian foreign secretary should have done was to have met him and asked him something that if revealed would have been seen, as New Delhi’s uncalled for interference in Bangladesh’s internal politics. In fact, a great many people in Bangladesh had expected New Delhi to encourage the Awami League through its foreign secretary’s visit to make efforts so that the elections would be held with all the parties. Instead, the Indian foreign secretary left no doubt to anyone in Bangladesh that New Delhi was interested only in bringing the Awami League back at any cost.
Thus for good reasons, there is a very deep-rooted perception in Bangladesh that as long as New Delhi backs the Awami League as it did in the 2014 elections, there is no way for any other party to come to power in Bangladesh. There is also many other perceptions about India arising from what people believe are its intentions to see the Awami League in power that are neither good for Bangladesh-India relations nor for India itself and its rightful ambitions to emerge as a respected regional and world power.
These perceptions, real or otherwise, also come in the way of two extremely important dimensions in Bangladesh-India relations. First, it stands in the way of the people of Bangladesh from expressing their indebtedness to India for its help in looking after 10 million Bangladeshis who had fled to India to save themselves from the Pakistani genocide in 1971 and, more importantly, for assisting Bangladesh to win the war of independence against the Pakistani military.
Therefore, for a variety of important reasons critical to Bangladesh and Bangladesh-India relations and, in fact, for India too, the statement of the Indian high commissioner augurs well for the people of Bangladesh because less than 10 per cent of them were able to vote in the last elections. Thus they are looking at the next elections to let them regain their right to vote and in that context, the high commissioner’s statement is the best news in politics that they have heard for a very long time.
The high commissioner’s statement left some to wonder why the Indian high commissioner had to assure Bangladesh about its intentions if it had no worries about its interference in past elections, particularly the January 5, 2014 one. It was like the priest suspecting someone was inside the temple eating the sweetmeat and the fruit shouting from the outside if anyone was inside and the thief inside answering loudly that he was not eating the sweetmeat or the fruit!
Nevertheless, the high commissioner’s assurance has created hope in Bangladesh that the next elections could perhaps not be a repeat of January 2014 elections for if India were not to interfere, the chances of free and fair elections in Bangladesh would be immensely bright. In addition, if New Delhi acts as the high commissioner has said it would, the two countries could expect a new direction in their bilateral relations where not just their governments but also their peoples would become the stakeholders and the beneficiaries.
Postscript: Prime minister Narendra Modi sacked Sujata Singh in January 2015, the first foreign secretary to be removed unceremoniously following that of AP Venkatswaran in 1987 by then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi.
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http://www.newagebd.net/article/172...for-bangladesh-elections#sthash.88aGZr4j.dpuf
