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| Dhaka no longer sees itself as a mofussil town compared to Kolkata. | | A complex identity | | Sunanda k datta-ray | 9/9/2011 8:38:26 PM |
| There are many reasons why India and Bangladesh matter to each other. There are also many reasons why West Bengal and Bangladesh matter to each other. But beyond the logic of these equations, anything to do with West Bengal has repercussions in Bangladesh. Had Ms Mamata Banerjee attended the Dhaka summit, she would have stolen the thunder of both Prime Ministers. Her absence was a slap in the face that Bangladesh’s Foreign Secretary, Mr Mijarul Qayes, described as “not acceptable”.
If roles were reversed, West Bengal’s reaction would probably have been more muted because Kolkata is less sensitive about Dhaka. The only uncut umbilical chord this side of the border is among a diminishing tribe of elderly refugees. But when upper class Bangladeshis are dismissive of Kolkata’s traffic or West Bengal’s economics, they are responding, perhaps unconsciously, to an era when Dhaka was a mofussil township and the districts that now comprise Bangladesh Kolkata’s agricultural hinterland. Kolkata, the metropole, was the cynosure of all Bengali eyes.
Efforts to match it were evident even in East Pakistan. Visitors were told that the Shahbag Hotel, then the only one in Dhaka with some international pretensions, was “like Calcutta’s Grand”. The Dacca Club in Ramna was compared to the Calcutta Club. The modest Eden Building was held up as the equivalent of Writers’ Buildings until the architectural glory of Dhaka’s ‘Second Capital’. As Mr Kamal Hossain, the only surviving member of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s Cabinet, said in his Sarat Chandra Bose Memorial lecture in Kolkata recently, East Pakistan saw the emergence of an incipient middle class in those years.
That middle class is now a self-confident elite. Bangladesh boasts a seven per cent growth rate. As a major exporter of readymades (accounting for more than $18 billion or over 80 per cent of total exports of $23 billion), it is plugged into the high end of Western markets. With the 1971 diaspora prospering, Dhaka feels it competes with the metropole.
Ms Banerjee’s petulant last-minute refusal to go rankles all the more with Bangladeshis because Sheikh Hasina Wajed had taken the trouble to call and congratulate her as soon as the West Bengal Assembly election results were announced. The Dhaka daily, New Age, accused the Prime Minister of “undermin(ing) her status and office” by telephoning the “Chief Minister-elect of an Indian State”.
Official chagrin — expressed by Mr Qayes who summoned India’s High Commissioner to the Foreign Ministry and told him that cancellation of the Teesta treaty “at the last minute” was “very frustrating” — is understandable. It can’t be explained only by Bangladesh’s need for the river’s water. Nor are Bangladeshis unmindful of West Bengal’s legitimite requirements. But as Mahfuz Anam, editor of the respected Daily Star, pointed out, the Teesta treaty has been on the anvil since Sheikh Hasina Wajed visited New Delhi in January 2010. There was ample time for Indians to sort out their differences. The failure to do so suggests incompetence in New Delhi and Kolkata. Even if Bangladeshis blame New Delhi more for the bungling, they can’t help feeling publicly snubbed by the Chief Minister of a State with which they claim a special affinity. Ms Banerjee’s recalcitrance has made Sheikha Hasina Wajed even more vulnerable to Opposition attacks. Thanks to our “drama queen” — as the paper, Prothom Alo, calls Ms Banerjee — Begum Khaleda Zia is already on the warpath.
Taslima Nasreen, and her book, Lajja, supposedly a true account of Hindu life in Bangladesh, may not have become such a bone of contention if it hadn’t been for this close connection involving history, communalism, economics and politics. Substantive reasons for the linkage include West Bengal’s 2,216-km border with Bangladesh accounting for more than half the entire 4,095-km India-Bangladesh border. Moreover, 45 per cent of the total bilateral trade of $4 billion passes through the Petrapole-Benapole crossing 175 km north-west of Kolkata. It’s only through West Bengal that Bangladesh can trade with Nepal and Bhutan, as it wants to.
Even the local term (chitmahal) for the nearly 200 enclaves in each other’s territory, which have been a source of controversy since independence, recalls the common past. The rajas of Cooch Behar (now in West Bengal) and Rangpur (now in Bangladesh) — reckless gamblers both — discharged their debts when playing cards or chess for high stakes with chits signing away scraps of territory. Nothing came of the 1974 treaty on exchanging these chitmahals or at least providing easy access to their inhabitants because of West Bengal’s possessiveness.
Mr Hossain claimed in his lecture that people on either side of the Bengal border are held together by a common thread of ideals and courage that is ingrained in the Bengali psyche. “The world may change” he declared, “but Bengal won’t as long as the ideals of Netaji, Sheikh Mujib and Sarat Chandra Bose survive”. An Internet account of his lecture in honour of the man who fought to prevent Bengal being partitioned in 1947 prompted the acerbic comment, “Both Bengals are united by the many millions of illegal Bangladeshis who have infiltrated India, and made a Bangladesh out of major parts of West Bengal.” Bearing him out, the Bengali historian, Dr Amalendu De, says, “There is a virtual East Bengal in West Bengal.”
A United Nations review agrees that Bangladeshis are flooding West Bengal. Concern Universal, an international NGO working in 12 countries, including Bangladesh, estimates that 50 Bangladeshis cross into India every day. Migration has reduced the Hindu population there from 22 per cent in 1951 to today’s seven per cent. But today’s migrants are Muslim, accounting for population growth in the border districts of Malda, Murshidabad, Nadia, North and South 24-Parganas in excess of the State’s overall rate. Bangladeshis also trickle into Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram (whose Chief Ministers accompanied Mr Manmohan Singh) but language and lifestyle make West Bengal the first choice.
A Bangladeshi tycoon was fond of recalling how driving to Kolkata for the weekend, he gave his driver a thousand rupees to spend before himself checking into the Oberoi Grand. About to start the return journey, his driver returned the money with the explanation, “Sir, there’s nothing worth buying in Kolkata!”
The mofussil had overtaken the metropole. It’s a pity no one advised Ms Banerjee of this complex and the need, therefore, to be extra careful with the soaring pride of achievement.
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