By Ranjit Devraj
NEW DELHI, Apr 20 2001 (IPS)

India has played down the massacre of 16 of its border troops by Bangladeshi soldiers this week to avoid straining ties with the friendly government in Dhaka, say analysts.

New Delhi believes that the incident was engineered by religious fundamentalist forces inimical to Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, on the eve of national elections in that country.

At least 16 personnel of India’s para-military Border Security Force (BSF) were killed Wednesday in exchanges of fire, following incursions by Bangladesh border troops into India’s eastern border Meghalaya and Assam states.

By Thursday, the Bangladesh Rifles ended a four-day siege of the village of Pyrdiwah. The Indian foreign ministry spokesman said the “status quo ante” had been restored.

This is the first time that the two countries, which share a 4,000 km boundary, have seen a border clash of this severity.

India’s Foreign Minister, Jaswant Singh parried charges by opposition leaders in parliament that the incidents were the result of intelligence failure.

Officially, Dhaka has attributed the incidents to “local adventurism”.

However, the view in New Delhi is that the incidents were engineered to mar major diplomatic gains in bilateral relationship ever since Hasina’s Awami League took office five years ago.

India had intervened militarily to help the Awami League lead Bangladesh to independence from Pakistan in December 1971 and install Hasina’s father, Sheikh Mujibur Rehman as the new country’s first prime minister.

But after Rahman was killed along with most of his family members in a bloody army coup in 1975, bilateral relations quickly soured. Disputes emerged over border issues, large-scale cross-border migration and the sharing of the waters of the Himalayan Ganges river.

Soon after taking office in mid-1996, Hasina signed a 30-year treaty with India on the sharing of the Ganges waters. But her arch political rival and immediate predecessor, Begum Khaleda Zia described it as a “sell-out” to India.

Zia’s main opposition Bangladesh National Party has agitated to get the treaty scrapped.

Two years ago, Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee inaugurated a direct bus service between Calcutta, now known as Kolkata, the capital of India’s West Bengal state, which borders Bangladesh, and Dhaka.

The declared aim of the bus service is to restore links between people with close cultural affinities and who share the Bengali language.

Wednesday’s incidents over a piece of disputed territory were uncharacteristically violent considering that various other bilateral disputes have been resolved by negotiation.

Political analysts here note that Bangladesh’s main opposition party, which was set up mainly by Zia’s assassinated husband and former military dictator Zia Ur Rehman, has a pronounced anti-India stance. It is openly backed by Islamic fundamentalist groups in Bangladesh, they say.

Zia’s party has also organised street protests to stall plans for export of Bangladesh’s abundant natural gas reserves to energy-hungry India.

According to former top Indian foreign policy official S.K. Singh, Hasina’s government is well placed in the coming election. It has been successful in improving the country’s economy through exports, rural banking and population control, he says.

“The fundamentalist forces which have been traditionally close to Pakistan and to that country’s Inter Services Intelligence, are now feeling restless,” adds Singh, now a leading media commentator.

Singh, who is known to have close contacts with key government figures in Bangladesh, thinks that the governments of both countries have “seen through the spoilers’ game and handled the situation well.”

An editorial published in the respected Statesman newspaper Friday commented: “Sheikh Hasina knows that such a border flare up would do irreparable damage to her image in India where she is looked upon as a close friend and ally.”

Hasina’s arch-rival Zia was quoted by newspapers as saying that the “subservient government” (of Bangladesh) had regularly failed to counter frequent attacks on Bangladesh border troops and civilians.

The Statesman newspaper, published from Calcutta, also carried an article, which attributed the incidents to internal politics in Bangladesh.

It noted that the timing of the incidents immediately before the general elections in that country, was significant.

“Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina will be hard put to call off any action against India without inviting further criticism from her political opponents,” the article said.

“Laying siege on Pyrdiwah sends out a strong message to the electorate that while being friends with India, Bangladesh won’t sacrifice the country’s interests,” it commented.

The incidents have embarrassed Vajpayee’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which leads the federal ruling coalition. The BJP faces crucial provincial elections in Assam in June.

BJP spokesman Vijay Kumar Malhotra demanded that the government take the “strongest possible action and tell Bangladesh that such incidents would not be tolerated.”

“Bangladesh should understand that New Delhi wants good neighbourly relations but would not take such incidents lying down,” Malhotra said.

Bangladesh is completely surrounded by the Indian states of West Bengal, Assam, Meghalaya and Tripura. These provinces have long complained about the mass influx of impoverished Bangladeshi labourers.

The regional Assam Gana Parishad party, which rules Assam was set up two decades ago over the “foreigners” issue. Local people have long accused the Indian government of deliberately ignoring the mass influx of settlers from Bangladesh.

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