Leave Sheikh Hasina alone

Or would India rather do business with Khaleda Zia?

Trussed up like animals, shot at point-blank range, bodies bearing scars of torture. The rage of helplessness against the brutalisation of the BSF jawans that has spilled across the nation, in Parliament and in the streets, has served its cathartic purpose. The people’s anguish against their cross-border tormentors is genuine. But even as we grieve, one billion Indians all, can we stop for one brief moment and ask ourselves, where do we go from here? The cold, brutal fact is that carrying on and on the condemnation of Sheikh Hasina, the prime minister of Bangladesh, will now effectively amount to mere sound and fury, signifying nothing.

The main thing that has been exercising the people is that ‘‘our men’’, sworn to give their lives for Mother India’s protection, have been killed like indifferent animals by people supposed to be our friends. Young rebels without a pause, like Maninderjeet Bitta of the Congress and his ilk, have decided that throwing stones at the Bangladesh high commission makes for a fitting reply. Honourable MPs like Sanjay Nirupam of the Shiv Sena have even called for ‘‘retaliation’’ against Dhaka. It’s a wonder that the BJP and its lunatic fringe haven’t decided that the ‘‘Bangladeshis’’ who dot the capital’s slums — it was in the BJP’s manifesto to send them home — are responsible for this conspiracy against the motherland.

Sanjay Nirupam may well be forgiven for being either unwilling or incapable of understanding the lessons of history. But the Congress? Shame on the Congress for forgetting, for letting emotion bleach the lobes of memory. It was the Congress, Indira Gandhi’s Congress, whose brilliant daring and enterprise in 1971 forever dismembered Pakistan and created, on India’s eastern wing, a brand new nation called Bangladesh.

Bangladesh! Mujibur Rahman’s Bangladesh! Whose people forged the ‘‘Mukti Bahini’’, whose comrades-in-arms were Indian soldiers! Remember the Hamoodur Rahman report, parts of which were finally, recently released by the Pakistan government, and which admitted their shame at the loss of East Pakistan!

Sheikh Hasina is the daughter of the same Mujib. Her father and her mother, her sisters and her nine-year-old brother were brutally massacred one night in August 1975, their collective pool of blood soaking into the earth of Bangladesh. Hasina and her younger sister escaped that night of terror because they were abroad at the time.

So why has the BJP government — elements of which, thankfully, still remember — chosen to let, as the Indian newspapers so colourfully put it, Hasina ‘‘off the hook’’? Not only because she is Mujib’s daughter. Not only because at the Commonwealth conference in late 1999, Vajpayee and others heard her horrific tale of that hot August night. But because, for the last five years since she’s been in power, Hasina’s secular and democratic rule — across 20 years of martial law in Bangladesh — has been most understanding of India.

Condemning Hasina, retaliating against Dhaka, would now mean playing right into the hands of Khaleda Zia, the main opposition leader and wife of former martial law administrator Zia-ur Rahman. She is waiting with bated breath for exactly that to happen. Even right now, she must be silently crowing at the bloody mess on the border. Having successfully brought Bangladesh to a veritable halt these last two years, Khaleda now waits for that election day in October when she hopes to overthrow Hasina.

That would be a black day for India, unleashing a set of forces that could make Boraibari look like a picnic. Last week’s border clashes show Hasina’s not fully in control of her periphery. Nevertheless, her boldest contribution in the last five years has been to initiate a change in the minds of her own people, towards India. She needs another election — another five years — to consolidate that change. So let us hold our tongues for a moment. And let Sheikh Hasina alone.

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