This rhyming, Bangla idiom ( যততো দোষ নন্দ ঘোষ ) loosely means, “Lay it on Nondo Ghosh, if anything goes wrong”. Nondo Ghosh is an imaginary, harmless, quintessential Bengali fall-guy. Following the protest by students in June-2024 and subsequent events, some in Bangladesh, egged on by Pakistan and its operatives, are looking for a Nondo Ghosh in India to lay at its doorsteps most its troubles.
History is not mere collection of events, pleasant and unpleasant, but also a chronicle of the circumstances leading thereto. At the core of history are learnings that guide the future. As someone famously said, “You forget your history; you are destined to repeat it”. Given the geo-political volatility in the world today, compounded by inter-dependency of countries, Bangladesh, like many other countries which have undergone similar trials & tribulations, can ill-afford repetition of its history. Bangladesh is what it has made of itself.
What concerns an Indian is the anti-India agenda underlying political and religious campaigns run by some in Bangladesh in collaboration with a failed nation called Pakistan. Appropriateness (or otherwise) of what is happening in the country is something its citizenry and institutions will decide and face the fallouts thereof. They may also go blaming, full-throttle, individuals, institutions or countries but that should be prompted by the collective wisdom of the country. Not by a motley group with an agenda, led by Muhammad Yunus (Chief Advisor) who has no political legitimacy and otherwise carries some questionable credentials.
It’s time to re-visit some facts from the chequered history of the country and the current state of affairs.
Joining Pakistan was a conscious choice, not a fait accompli.
Bengal was culturally different from other Muslims-dominated provinces of undivided India. So was the part of Bengal which chose a common fate with Pakistan in 1947 on the grounds of a common religiosity, to become East Pakistan and, later, Bangladesh. The polarity, in terms of theological influences, social practices, culture, language, music, literature, food etc., was too prominent to be ignored. Yet, all of that was ignored. Remember Huseyn Suhrawardy (the Chief Minister of Bengal in 1946) who unleashed communal savagery which led to killing of over ten thousand people during the four-day riots in August-1946 ? He tried creating a United Bengal (a clever euphemism for an independent country), distinct from the idea of Pakistan. His game-plan failed for a host of reasons, prominent of which was a strong fascination among some Bengali-Muslims with Jinnah’s promise of a la-la land. Given the backdrop, one wonders, who, other than opinion-leaders among the Bengali-Muslims, could possibly be responsible for Bengal’s division and cession to a geographically dis-contiguous and culturally diverse Pakistan. Pakistan was not forced on Bangladesh as some contend. So, no (Indian) Nondo Ghosh here.
It would pay to draw from the pool of learnings from the post-1947 history.
Pakistanis (like the British) openly designated Bengalis as non-martial race and deliberately kept them out of the military. Despite the East being in majority, West Pakistan had a far greater share in revenue-allocations, industrial development and infrastructure projects. The political and the bureaucratic power always remained with the West, leading to the East being denied resources for growth of individuals, institutions and overall geography.
Speaking of the extreme Islamist elements which are trying to destroy its (till recently) reasonably secular credentials, the country must remember that the largest political party of East Pakistan had snubbed these very elements repeatedly. First by breaking away from Muslim League in 1949 and later, in 1953, by changing the name to Awami League, dropping the word Muslim.
Urdu and Punjabi languages were thrust upon East Pakistanis, neglecting Bangla which even today is considered as a language of the civilized. It was only after relentless protests by masses and killing of many students in Dhaka, Bangla as a language was given an official status in 1956.
It’s the same Pakistan, the new well-wisher, which had summarily rejected the victory of Awami League (167 out of a total of 313 seats) in the elections of 1970 to the National Assembly and denied the electorate its legitimate right to have a Bengali-Muslim Prime Minister of Pakistan. One had hoped that systematic killings of Bengali students, activists and intelligentsia under the Operation Searchlight of Pakistani military would remain deeply etched in the collective memory of the nation. But that doesn’t appear to be the case. Also, one had thought that the role played by India in its liberation in 1971 would be, in the least, acknowledged despite the fact that East Pakistan ran an active campaign against India in the India-Pakistan war of 1965.
Bangladesh is very forgiving; no matter if the citizens were raped, maimed and killed.
Countries move on. But some events in the history of countries cannot be shed off the public memory. Rightly so. One still shudders to think of the Rubber Terror unleashed by King Leopold II of Belgium in the present-day Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) during 1885-1908, killing 1.5- 10 million Congolese. The Congolese have kept the memories of maiming and killings alive and still seek from the world an acknowledgement of the barbarism as a genocide. The holocaust involving mass killing of Jews by Nazis, poisoned by gas, in six extermination camps (particularly Auschwitz) in Germany during 1941-45 can never be forgotten. Jews were unforgiving and, in their pursuit for a closure, relentlessly sought out the Nazis on the run and eliminated many. India too saw brutal violence, mass killings, abductions and rapes targeting Hindus and Sikhs in 1947 during the partition. An estimated one million Hindus and Sikhs were killed and over eight million displaced. The political dispensation of the day was too weak and puppeteer-ed by the British to hold Pakistan accountable. Though during the intervening period of 77 years, India was involved in three wars (not counting 1971 as it was to liberate Bangladesh) with Pakistan, none was to seek retribution. The memories of brutalities against Hindus & Sikhs are still imprinted in the psyche of the nation.
Over three million civilians were massacred. University professors, teachers, students, doctors, artists, litterateurs, intellectuals and commoners were exterminated by Pakistani army and their collaborators (Razakars, Al-Badar and Al-Shams). Thousands of officers, junior officers and soldiers of East Pakistan Rifles and the police were executed. Around half a million women, young and old, were raped and their private parts were mutilated by Pakistani military and Razakars, acts which were nauseatingly explained away as maal-e-ghanimat (booty of war) by Yahya Khan, the then president of Pakistan. Thirty million Bangladeshis were rendered homeless. Though the perpetrators and collaborators were initially tried in the courts but later, following a coup, the trials were stopped. Still later, some of the collaborators were made ministers in the government.
One must admire the magnanimity of Bangladesh for forgiving and shaking hands with killers and rapists of its own citizens. The people helming the affairs in Bangladesh (i.e., the Nondo Ghosh-es from within) don’t appear to have heard of Paulo Coelho’s (the Brazilian writer) advice to forgive one’s enemies but not to mistake them for friends.
Pinpricking India.
About 3,800 brave Indian soldiers died and 9,800 wounded, many of them disabled, during India’s war with Pakistan in 1971 triggered by India’s active support in the liberation war of Bangladesh. India’s intervention was necessary to put an end to the barbarism of Pakistani army and Razakars. The rationale notwithstanding, in my weak moments, I have wondered if it was worth it. Should India have kept away and watched the brutalities from afar, as the rest of the world did. These doubts surface when individuals and groups openly fanning anti-India sentiments do not get even a rap on their knuckles.
It is evident that Yunus doesn’t have the skill sets to run the administration, has limited understanding of geo-politics and is incapable of creating an environment enabling installation of a democratically elected government. In fact, he is just floating along and has no control over the affairs of the country.
Hefazat-e-Islam, Hizb ut Tahrir and Jamat-e-Islami are brazenly destroying the secular credentials of the country by wanting to convert or chase out the minorities. Social media is being extensively misused to spread fake news like India artificially flooding certain areas of Bangladesh. The videos of desecration of the Indian flag in the educational institutions in Dhaka and Noakhali leave a little doubt about the intentions of the miscreants. Those who chanted slogans like “Catch one ISKCON, then slaughter” in Chattogram were not even cautioned by the government. Some political activists and media groups openly advocate creation of United Bangladesh, ominously suggesting a carve out of the territories of West Bengal, Odisha and Bihar, are not even contradicted by the government. Jamaat-e-Islami has practically usurped the role of the country’s Foreign Affairs Ministry, and its representatives meet up (in the guise of non-political meetings) envoys from Pakistan, China, Malaysia and Turkey to create an anti-India narrative which the government does precious little about. Howsoever impractical the proposition may be, the campaigns like “India Out” and “Boycott Indian Products” are met with total silence by Yunus. In expression of his crass juvenility, Yunus himself spoke of, in China, the vulnerability of the Chicken’s Neck, a 22-kilometre-wide stretch connecting the North-Eastern states of India with the rest of the country. In his ill-placed enthusiasm to grow trade, he hilariously called Bangladesh “only guardian of the ocean”, not knowing that India has a coastline running into 6,500 kilometers in the Bay of Bengal.
Ironically, Yunus wants to benefit from Bangladesh’s past relationships with India despite his own anti-India stand. Cross-border rail links, waterways, road connectivity, exports, thermal-power, hydropower, oil pipelines, Lines of Credit for infrastructure development, sympathetic considerations in water-sharing arrangements, healthcare etc.; his India wish-list is long but his bandwidth to manage the relationship is short.
International support; then and now.
India was the first country to officially recognize Bangladesh as a country. All major powers of the world, with the exception of the then Soviet Union, had turned a blind eye to the genocide in Bangladesh and extended support to the Pakistani perpetrators of crimes. China trained over 200 Pakistani soldiers in guerilla warfare to counter Mukti-Bahini and vetoed two proposals on Bangladesh from Soviet Union in UN, in addition to a letter of support from Zhou Enlai (the then Chinese Premier) to Yahya Khan. Siding with Pakistan, USA moved its Seventh Fleet, led by the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, which, though, couldn’t enter the Bay of Bengal. Despite being fully aware of the extent of genocide in Bangladesh, the UN Security Council too proved ineffective. During the deliberations in 1971, USA and China sided with Pakistan. France and Britain did not vote.
Yes, there were serious issues with the way Sheikh Hasina ran Bangladesh. I could sense some undercurrents years back during my interactions with the industry bodies, private & public insurers and government officials in February-2018 at Dhaka where I had gone to deliver a lecture on tax-funded, public insurance programs in the financial inclusion space. Besides not being generally happy with the way things were, they were quite sceptical of any honest welfare initiative by the government. No gainsaying the fact that there was a growing discontentment among various sections of the citizenry leading to her ouster. But one seriously wonders if the students’ protest against reservation for the families of freedom-fighters was actually the trigger. Was this not a handiwork of the savior of the worlds’ democracies, also called the USA, which decided to spring an Arab Spring on Hasina, one of the causes being denial of Saint Martin island to set up a military base. Wanting to see Sheikh Hasina go, former President Biden (Clinton and Obama too) and his team has been quietly working on many constituents of Bangladeshi society to stir up sentiments against Hasina. That worked. Hasina exits and Yunus enters. Thereafter, one saw a lot of bonhomie between America and Yunus. Warm welcomes. Public hugs. Financial aid. A host of other promises. But no talks about elections. Quite a heady cocktail for Yunus, a political greenhorn, who thought he had mended ties with the same America which sided with Pakistan and militarily opposed liberation of Bangladesh.
The world knows that America doesn’t give, it barters. Here comes the maverick, Donald Trump. First, he stopped all financial aid to Bangladesh. Later, he heavily tariffed Bangladesh’s exports, nearly destroying the country’s (cost-arbitrage driven) economy in one stroke. It’s the same Trump, who barely three months before he became the president for the second time this year, had written on X (Twitter) that “ I strongly condemn the barbaric violence against Hindus, Christians, and other minorities who are getting attacked and looted by mobs in Bangladesh, which remains in a total state of chaos”. Given the negative vibes from Trump’s America, Yunus, like Bhasmāsura (the demon in the Hindu mythology who was granted the power to turn into ashes anyone whose head he touched and who eventually touched his own head) is now encouraging domestic protests against America’s involvement in Gaza, Yemen and Iran. Recent attacks on American businesses in Bangladesh speak volumes.
Yunus thinks he can reset ties with America whilst flirting with China. Or, he can continue to draw from India whilst romancing Pakistan. It’s his political naivety. In the absence of any long-term mandate, he needs to quickly take a few steps. Re-build the secular credentials of Bangladesh. Restore law & order. Conduct free elections. Revisit his list of friends & foes. Do away with his vendetta-driven construct that enemy of an enemy is a friend. His conduct so far has not inspired any confidence. If he finds the task too daunting, he would be well-advised to pass the baton to Bangladeshi military which has demonstrated great restraint, poise and profounder appreciation of the ground realities.
There is no Nondo Ghosh, in the final analysis. One has to shoulder the responsibility for one’s errors of omissions & commissions.