Delhi must open a new diplomatic front against Dhaka, seek autonomous territory for beleaguered Hindus

The more things change, the more they remain the same. Reading Anirban Ganguly’s new book, From Partition to Progress: Persecuted Hindus and the Struggle for Citizenship, especially in the context of what’s happening in Bangladesh post-Sheikh Hasina, reminds us how little has changed since what became East Pakistan, after Independence, and Bangladesh, after the 1971 war. The one constant has been the persecution of minorities in this newly carved nation. The other constant has been the absolute, if not criminal, indifference shown by the Indian political class, except for a while in the early 1970s, towards the plight of Hindus.

The Indian failure has been moral, political, and diplomatic. And above all, it’s 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 considerations alone, but by virtue of their sufferings and sacrifices, made cheerfully for generations, not for advancing their own parochial interest, but for laying the foundations of India’s political freedom and intellectual progress. It is the united voice of the leaders that are dead and of the youth that smilingly walked up to the gallows for India’s cause that calls for justice and fair play at the hands of free India of today”.

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The moral dimension too comes into play when one realises how the Congress leadership led an extensive campaign during the Partition “persuading… fellow Hindus to stay in their homes, trying to assuage their fear and confusion”, as author Yasmin Khan writes in The Great Partition, while recounting the work done by Suhasini Das, an East Bengali Gandhian in Sylhet. Then came the Nehru-Liaquat Pact of April 1950—a Pact that Sri Aurobindo saw as “an exceedingly clever move of Liaquat Ali to fish his ‘nation’ out of the desperate situation into which it had run itself and to secure its safe survival”—which created a false hope of normalcy for Hindu minorities, especially in East Pakistan.

From the beginning, the Pact was a non-starter. The failure to see what was written on the wall exposes the political failure of the Indian leadership. Mookerjee writes, “Beginning from 14th June 1950 and ending on 3rd August 1950 … 15,900 Hindus had been interrogated by our workers. Out 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 East Bengal. Of course, not all Muslims were willing to answer the interrogation for obvious reasons. We could get an answer from 4,500 Muslims, and their answer was that about 40 per cent of them were going away to live in East Bengal, but 60 per cent wanted to come back to West Bengal… Now, what do these statistics show? That in the mind of 90 per cent 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, 60 per cent of them feel confident to live in West Bengal and India.”

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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, Interrogating My Chandal Life, remembers not just the prison-like situation in camps but also couldn’t forget, despite decades having passed by, the foul smell that would envelope the entire camp whenever the food, especially rice, was cooked. A significant number among the 10 per cent Hindus who decided to go back to East Pakistan couldn’t take the inhuman condition they faced in these refugee camps; 90 per cent still thought these pathetic standards were better than those awaiting them in what later became Bangladesh.

And they were not 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 30th June 1950, there have been 757 cases of dacoity, robbery, and theft; 219 cases of extortion; 194 cases of trespass; 180 cases of assault, harassment, and threats to leave Pakistan; 129 cases of abduction, rape, and outraging the modesty of females; 70 cases of murder; 70 cases of grievous hurt, stabbing, and looting; 67 cases of arson; 21 cases of wrongful confinement and restraint; 39 cases of defiling Hindu temples and places of worship; and 72 cases of illegal possession… By no means is this an exhaustive list. This is only an illustrative list of occurrences that have happened in East Bengal right up to 30th June 1950 and spread almost throughout the length and breadth of Eastern Bengal. In every one 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 in which Hindus lived has collapsed, and it is impossible for them to live there.”

This didn’t move Nehru, who continued to believe that “everything is alright except some insecurity”. And this largely remained the stand of the Government of India to date. And so had remained the plight of Hindus in Bangladesh: In good times, they are in for slow death. As per 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 last aspect of India’s Bangladesh gaffe: It’s failure of both Indian diplomacy and imagination—often the two combined to create a catastrophic impact. It’s a Nehruvian gift to Indian diplomacy, which unfortunately continues to this day, thankfully in lesser proportions today, to be overly pragmatist, to the extent of being apologetic at times, while putting up demands with another country. We invariably try to be reasonable. The Indian leadership can learn from China on how to push the maximalist position while pursuing diplomacy. It would be ludicrous to assume that the Chinese believe India would give up Arunachal Pradesh, and yet they keep bringing up the issue of this Indian state on the diplomatic table.

This may be the most opportune moment for the Indian leadership to take up the maximalist position vis-à-vis Bangladesh, given the government in Dhaka that doesn’t even pretend to be friendly. And here Delhi can again take a cue from Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and Syama Prasad Mookerjee, who had matter-of-factly suggested the need to “make a demand for one-third of the territory of Eastern Pakistan. We must tell them: if you turn out one-third of the population from Eastern Bengal, pray give us one-third of your territory”.

Today, the Hindu population has dwindled from a third to less than a 10th of the total Bangladeshi population. Will the Indian leadership make amends and ask Dhaka to create a 10th of the territory, autonomous in nature, for settling the beleaguered Hindus of that country? The Citizen Amendment Act (CAA) is a noble move, but then, frankly speaking, the Islamists would see it as a case of having the cake and eating it too!

It’s time for India to show its diplomatic imagination. Occasionally, it won’t be a bad idea for the Elephant to learn a trick or two from the Dragon!

Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.