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Explosions
in the subcontinent
When
the Indian “heart” is “wounded”, the South Asian
neighbourhood faces instability
From
Pyrduwah in Meghalaya, south of the capital Shillong, if you move
westwards you will pass Lynkhat, Siddipur along the border with
Bangladesh. On the border, (including the one with Assam) which
is about 4,000 km, there are at least 3,000 posts in what officers
in Shillong and Guwahati describe as “adverse possession.”
This means that Indian posts are in Bangladeshi possession and the
other way round. The 1974 Indira Gandhi - Mujib-ur Rehman agreement
in 1974 was to have sorted out these details. There were to be no
concrete bunkers or structures within 300 metres of the border.
But there has been no progress on these fronts.
What
exactly happened on the Indo-Bangladeshi border between April 12
to 20. The narrative vacillates from “valiant martyrs”
to jawans caught in a smuggler’s trap. The story begins with
gossip. Villages on the Indian side just off Pyrduwah alerted authorities
of troop buildup on the other side. Apparently a concrete structure
was coming up. It is difficult to know whether this alleged buildup
was along Indian posts currently in “adverse possession”
or along Bangladeshi posts, usually in Indian possession but at
the moment unguarded.
What
is clear is that not a shot was fired when BSF jawans walked into
Bangladesh territory off Boraibari, not far from Mankachar. The
jawans were clearly trapped. All sounds of firing, by accounts in
Shillong, were subsequent to the cold-blooded killing of the jawans.
Light will be shed on the affair when the two escaped BSF jawans,
currently recovering from trauma at the hospital in Tura, are able
to give their version. Until then it is far from clear whether the
Director General of Bangladesh Rifles Lt. Gen. Fazlur Rehman hatched
the plot in Dhaka or it was a border skirmish contrived by smugglers.
The
reverberation from the gruesome incident are, of course, being felt
in Bangladesh in the course of their election season, and, on our
side, in Assam, where campaigning is in full swing. Conspiracy theories
on this count are easy to conjure up.
Meanwhile
Nepal is undergoing its own set of trauma with Marxists taking full
advantage of G.P. Koirala’s limp rule. For years the infighting
within Nepali Congress (and not only between Koirala and Bhattarai)
has provided opportunities to the Marxists who have killed at least
72 policeman after attacking armed police posts in Central Nepal.
This against the backdrop of the Indian Airlines hijack to Kandahar,
the mayhem over Hrithik Roshan and so on. It must be New Delhi’s
short-sightedness that in every crisis “Girija Babu” is
resurrected as the panacea. There seems to be some move at long
last that both Koirala and Bhattarai take up new positions on some
high perch of retirement, leaving the turf to younger leaders.
The
Marxists have extensive plans of what they call “compact revolutionary
zone” which extends across West Bengal and Bihar, almost creating
a contiguous belt through Orissa and Andhra Pradesh.
We
have got used to Pakistan as a source of instability in perpetuity,
but our other neighbours give us no respite. As it happens, the
Marxist wave in Nepal coincides with elections in the West Bengal.
I do not believe there is any linkage but it would be unwise to
ignore the coincidence.
Bhutan
cannot handle the ULFA and the Bodos but is loath to seek Indian
help. The 90,000 refugees in Nepal remain a source of instability.
Just
when the ceasefire in Sri Lanka seemed to be stabilizing, the LTTE
has broken it once again. The external Tamil issue must play in
some minimal way on the vicious campaign under way in Tamil Nadu.
The
archipelago of the Maldives, kept together deftly under President
Gayoom’s able rule looks a haven of tranquillity. And even
this haven of calm has under the surface disquiet of another order.
Walk around Male and you will see by the waterfront young people
slumbering on drugs. The menace of drugs is not typically a Maldives
problem but being a tiny nation the problem can overwhelm it sooner.
“If
the heart is wounded” says Mir Taqi Mir, “every part of
the body is in pain, listless and weak”. Apply this image to
South Asia. The “heart”, meaning India, is “wounded”
and “weak”, the periphery is unsettled too, the neighbourhood
faces frightening instability.
While
there are dark clouds all around the periphery of India, the internal
political picture is defined by a huge irony. Tehelka has shaken
the government, election results will shake it further. Then it
will be time for the UP elections. Do you see any hope for the BJP,
the engine of the NDA, there? And yet no danger to the Central government.
It will weaken but not go thanks to the shrewdness of those who
contrived Sonia Gandhi as the strategic bottleneck in Indian politics.
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