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Text: Zhang Runchen
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introduction
Prior to the partition of India and Pakistan, there were three major Muslim settlements in British India, one in present-day Pakistan and the other in present-day central India. Although it decided to stand on its own at the time of the partition of India and Pakistan, it was eventually forced to be incorporated into India under military coercion. The other is the "birthplace" of British India - Bengal.
Because of its special geographical location, it successfully joined the Muslim country of Pakistan during the partition of India and Pakistan. But today, Bangladesh has become an independent country. The reason why Bangladesh was able to become independent was naturally indispensable to India's "help".
(India & Bangladesh)
1. The battle for Bangladesh
On March 25, 1969, Pakistani dictator Ayub was overthrown by the Pakistani military, and Yahya, one of the masterminds of the military coup, became the new leader of Pakistan. Yahya then began a year-long military junta, but Yahya made two promises at the same time.
The first is the restoration of an elected government and national elections, and the second is the realization of autonomy in East Pakistan, which is now Bangladesh. In fact, at that time, East Pakistan and West Pakistan were on the verge of breaking up because of language problems, economic problems and political status issues. The reason for this situation is, to some extent, Pakistan's own making.
For a long time, Xiba has been oppressing Dongba from multiple angles such as politics, culture, and economy, so that Dongba, which originally accounted for the majority of the population, has no political status in the country, and although it controls the parliament, it has no access to government institutions. Although the majority of the population lives in the poorest life in the country, Bengali is the most widely spoken, but it is not one of the official languages of the country.
(Bangladesh Independence)
Yahya is well aware of this, and he is also the last person in Pakistan to try to bridge the divide between East and West, and during the junta he promised to bring more East Pakistanis into the army, and to increase the number of East Pakistanis in the central secretariat from one to six, and in the civilian government appointed by Yahya, the number of East Pakistani ministers has also increased significantly.
But Yahya's attempt ultimately failed, as the Bangladeshi independence faction, which was backed by India, refused to budge in the negotiations and insisted on making Bangladesh independent. This eventually led to Yahya's decision to launch Operation Searchlight, in which the Pakistani military quickly captured independence leader Mujib and killed a large number of independence.
The remaining members of the Bangladeshi independence party, the Awami League, fled to India, where they formed the "Bangladeshi Freedom Fighters" armed forces. At the same time, after the start of the operation, the Pakistani military slaughtered local residents in the capital Dhaka, as well as major cities such as Chittagong and Jessore, killing 50,000 people in just three days.
The Pakistani civil war lasted for several months, until December 3, 1971, when Indian troops entered Bangladesh directly and the Indo-Pakistani war broke out again. However, the Pakistani army in East Pakistan at this time was only 10,000 men, which eventually led to the complete victory of the Indian army on December 17, and Bangladesh officially became independent on January 1, 1972.
(Bangladesh Independence)
Although the number of Bangladeshi freedom fighters is as high as 150,000, they are still ineffective against the 10,000 regular Pakistani troops. In fact, it was the help of the Indian army that finally allowed Bangladesh to become independent, so to speak, if it were not for India, Bangladesh would not have had any chance of independence.
However, after independence, Bangladesh did not become India's "little brother". On the contrary, Bangladesh today is perhaps the country that is causing India the most headache outside of Pakistan.
2. India-Bangladesh water dispute
Bangladesh's dependence on external water resources is as high as 91.44%, which means that although Bangladesh often experiences floods, the country's water resources are mainly dependent on the inflow of water from India. This dependence does not mean that India is the supplier of Bangladesh's water resources, but that Bangladesh is in a passive position when it comes to sharing water resources with India.
(Bangladesh Independence)
The main sources of water in Bangladesh are the Padma, Kamuna and Meghna rivers, all of which flow into Bangladesh from India. The Padma River is simply the lower reaches of the Ganges, which means that the Indians can cut off Bangladesh at any time if they want to, and Bangladesh has nothing to do.
The water dispute between India and Bangladesh has been going on for a long time, in fact, when Bangladesh was still part of Pakistan. In the fifties of the last century, the Indian government considered building a dam in the Faraka region of the lower reaches of the Ganges near Bangladesh, also known as the Faraka Dam.
The Indian government claims that it is trying to improve the silt problem at the port of Kolkata, but international experts and even India's own experts believe that the improvement of the port of Kolkata may be limited. Both the international community and Pakistan believe that India's move is actually aimed at restraining Pakistan.
(Henghe)
Despite strong opposition from Pakistan, the Indian government insisted on starting construction of the Falaka dam. But when Bangladesh became independent in 1972, the India-Pakistan water dispute suddenly became an India-Bangladesh water dispute. In the early years of independence, Bangladesh and India were still very close, so India could not turn a blind eye to Bangladesh's demands.
Negotiations began quickly, culminating in a joint statement in 1974, in which the Indian government stated that the dam would not be put into use until a suitable agreement had been negotiated between the two sides, especially during the period when the Ganges River was at its lowest. The Bangladeshi government was generally satisfied with India's statement, and the issue was not resolved, but at least shelved.
However, just a few months later, the Indian government announced that it would use the Ganges water to "test the operation of the dam" during the peak of the Ganges' water shortage. When the Bangladeshi government learned the news, it was extremely shocked and dissatisfied. The Bangladeshi side immediately demanded that the two sides hold ministerial-level talks, and the two sides immediately held a meeting in Dhaka.
(Henghe)
Bangladesh criticized India for violating the joint statement, but the Indian side said that India was only "testing the operation of the dam" and not officially putting it into operation, so it did not violate the joint statement between the two sides. India's attitude is that it does not negotiate and focuses on hegemony.
The Bangladeshi government had no choice but to submit the issue to the international community for resolution, and it submitted relevant bills at the Islamic Foreign Ministers' Conference, the Non-Aligned Summit Conference and the 31st session of the United Nations General Assembly, which received widespread sympathy from the international community.
Under intense pressure from the international community, the Indian government finally restarted the Dhaka talks. The Indian government proposed to divide the water equally, but Bangladesh rejected it. Bangladesh has been using the lower reaches of the Ganges for thousands of years without restrictions, and it does not accept India's overbearing terms.
(Henghe)
Bangladesh is demanding 70 to 80 per cent of the lower reaches of the Ganges during the dry season, which is unacceptable to India. It was only in 1996 that the two sides finally reached an agreement, and the final agreement was to divide the amount of water in the dry season equally, but to allow for a certain amount of fluctuation. To this day, however, Bangladesh still believes that India has not strictly enforced the agreement.
In addition to the Ganges, there are also many water disputes between India and Bangladesh over other rivers. India's "Inland Waterway Network Plan" proposed in recent years includes 51 of the 52 rivers that would otherwise flow through Bangladesh, posing a huge threat to Bangladesh's water security.
Bangladesh said that if Bangladesh's water security is threatened, tens of millions of Bangladeshi refugees will enter India to avoid it. Such a threat is very effective, which is what India fears. The water dispute between the two sides has continued to this day in this kind of game and cooperation.
(Bangladesh)
Third, border security
Bangladesh has only two land neighbors, one is India and the other is Myanmar. Its land border with India is 4,096 kilometers long, and it shares direct borders with five Indian states. Moreover, the border areas between the two sides are all densely populated areas, which also makes border security an important issue between the two sides.
Due to historical reasons, the population movement on the India-Bangladesh border is quite frequent, mainly Bangladeshis to India, and many people need to travel to India frequently for family visits and livelihood reasons. This has also created huge security risks and illegal border crossings, and the Bangladeshi side has a negative attitude towards solving the problem for various reasons.
However, the Indian government does not want a large number of illegal refugees to flow into India, so it has set up a special Indian border security force. In order to deter illegal immigrants, the Indian Border Security Forces will shoot and kill illegal immigrants. Between 2001 and 2010, a total of 1,000 Bangladeshis were shot and killed by India's border security forces, an average of at least 100 per year.
(Bangladesh)
This issue has caused long-term tensions along the India-Bangladesh border, but the Indian military has maintained a "kill on sight" attitude, which has also caused widespread discontent in Bangladesh. This problem is even deliberately created by the Bangladeshi government, which nominally maintains a policy of religious neutrality, but the poverty rate of non-Muslim groups is much higher than that of Muslims.
These non-Muslim citizens, who have been squeezed out of their living space by Muslims for a long time, eventually had to come to the Indo-Bangladesh border area. And because of forced reasons such as livelihood, they have to illegally cross the border into India to survive. Many of these people are Hindus, but most of the people living on the opposite border with India are not Hindus.
Therefore, Indian citizens living on the border do not sympathize with these Bengali Hindus in the slightest, but instead believe that these illegal immigrants have stolen their jobs, and they call these illegal immigrants "termites". To this day, the Bangladeshi government continues to deport these non-Muslims to the border through soft means and then kill them with the knife of India...
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Resources
LIU Lei. India-Bangladesh relations under the Modi government's neighboring country priority foreign policy[J].Indian Ocean Economic Research[2024-05-08].
GAO Zhuhua. An analysis of the water dispute between India and Bangladesh from the perspective of evolutionary game theory[D].China Foreign Affairs University[2024-05-08].
ZENG Xiangyu[1],ZHU Yufan[2].India's water-related international dispute and its strategic impact[J].International Research Reference, 2016(11):10.