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Bangladesh Pakistan relations amid Bangladesh India tensions: Bangladesh is expected to receive the Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar in the last week of April. Ahead of Dhar's trip, Pakistan Foreign Secretary Amina Baloch is visiting Bangladesh on Wednesday (Apr 16), for the first such bilateral engagement in 15 years.
Since the ousting of Sheikh Hasina's Awami League government in 2024 and her exile in India, much has changed between Pakistan and Bangladesh. Muhammad Yunus, the de facto leader of Bangladesh and its chief adviser, met Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif twice: in New York and Cairo.
Dhaka may be trying to reset history, but it is a good time to look at how Bangladesh was born. And more specifically, how India helped Bangladesh come into existence.
Bangladeshi nationalism: Islam vs Bangla language
As the British exited the Indian subcontinent after its disastrous Partition, Pakistan was created as two geographical regions: West Pakistan and East Pakistan.
They were separated by some 1,600 kilometres of Indian territory. This made the new nation prima facie unviable, as the administration from Islamabad was both difficult and detested by the Bangladeshis.
The nation of Pakistan was created on the basis of the common religion of Islam. But the reality of East Pakistan was that it was culturally part of the larger, undivided Bengal region of the pre-colonial era.
And at the core of that culture was the Bangla language. The imposition of Urdu from West Pakistan was among the various causes that led to the Bangladeshi freedom movement. From soldiers to clerks, Urdu-speaking people from the west dominated the life of East Pakistan.
Rise of Bangladeshi nationalism
Bangla speakers were sidelined from East Pakisan's economy and wallowed in poverty in the largely agrarian nation. While East Pakistan forces fought against India in the 1967 war, its Bangla-speaking officers were ignored. It's one such officer who created a rebel force, Mukti Bahini.
Aided and encouraged by the Bangla language student movement against Urdu dominance, shepherded by the political backing of the Awami League of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and strengthened by the Muki Bahini militias, a movement for independence took root in Bangladesh.
India made a difficult choice in helping the birth of Bangladesh
After its wars with Pakistan, India has realised the danger of being hit from both the north-west and east. It was a strategic challenge that then prime minister Indira Gandhi clearly understood. The persecution and economic sidelining of Bengalis in East Pakistan at the hands of the West Pakistani administration led to a mass exodus of migrants into India via the virtually open borders. At one point, there were at least 10 million refugees from Bangladesh living in India's West Bengal, with tens of thousands more pouring in daily. India was faced with the dilemma of feeding and housing them, for which millions of rupees had to be spent.
Mukti Bahini's war against West Pakistan aided by India
These difficult choices eventually led India to intervene militarily. It helped the Mukti Bahini rebels with arms and training. Initial guerilla warfare, which involved Mukti Bahini attacking several East Pakistani institutions, including an explosion at its propaganda office, soon gave way to an open war. Several disgruntled Bengali officers joined the efforts of Mukti Bahini against West Pakistan.
After several months of impasse, India took decisive action in December 1971. An offensive involving the Indian Army and Air Force, helped by its navy, was quick and decisive. Pakistan's Lieutenant General A.A.K. Niazi, who initially put up a brave front and ignored an ultimatum from India, eventually surrendered on 16 December 1971.
How India treated Pakistani prisoners of war after the 1971 Bangladesh liberation war
Some 93,000 prisoners of war were taken, including soldiers, civilian officers and collaborators. That was the largest number of Prisoners of War (PoWs) since the World War II.
India treated them with respect and in accordance with the Geneva Convention. In the PoW camps in Bangladesh, Indian soldiers protected Pakistani soldiers from the wrath of Bengalis, and safely transported them to Indian mainland. Most of them were eventually sent back to Pakistan through the Wagah border and the Line of Control.
But everyone inside Bangladesh was not happy with 'Liberation'
All Bengalis were not aligned with the liberation movement. Those who believed in the identity of the nation based on Islam still supported the West Pakistani Army. Overnight, they became traitors in the eyes of the new dispensation. They were jailed en masse and in many cases, tortured and killed. Many of the collaborators of the West Pakistani government were Islamists, and belonged to the Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan, the predecessor of Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami. They provided full support to the Pakistani Army in their efforts against the Bangladeshi freedom fighters.
This differing loyalties are at the heart of many of Bangladesh's subsequent political turmoil.
Once in power, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman banned Jamaat-e-Islami, along with all other religion-based parties. His ideology was a combination of Bangladeshi nationalism, socialism and secularism, and that was in contrast with the basic principles under which East Pakistan was formed. In spite of all his efforts against communalism, such forces remained powerful in Bangladesh.
Awami League's dominance of Bangladeshi politics, with Mujibur's efforts of bringing in a single-party rule, laid the foundation for disgruntlement against him. Eventually, military officers and former colleagues in Awami League would assassinate him and 18 others, including close family members and personal staff, on August 15, 1975.
How Sheikh Hasina brought Bangladesh back from instability to economic growth
The rest of Bangladesh's history is one of military coups, army rule and eventually the political rivalry between a wife and a daughter: Begum Khaleda Zia, the wife of Ziaur Rahman who served as the sixth president of Bangladesh from 1977 until his assassination in 1981, was the leader of Bangladesh Nationalist Party.
Khaleda Zia served as the prime minister in 1991-1996 and 2001-2006.
Bangladesh’s fault lines: The cost of deepening defence reliance on China
Sheikh Hasina, the daughter of Mujibur Rahman who escaped assassination in 1971 because she was away in Germany, rose up in Bangladesh politics and served as prime minister in 1996-2001 and from 2009 until her ouster in August 2024.
Khaleda Zia often courted Islamists to stay in power, whereas Sheikh Hasina cracked down on Jihadist terrorism and put Bangladesh on a course of economic growth.
All this while, in spite of diplomatic tensions and irrespective of who was in power, India continued to support Bangladesh through lines of credit, connectivity initiatives and cultural cooperation.
Yunus government's wooing of India's regional rivals Pakistan and China
But the new, unelected regime of Bangladesh seems to have a totally different take on the country's history. It is placing itself as a strategic rival of India, by inviting China into its economy and military affairs.
It is re-establishing its relationship with Pakistan, the very nation from which India helped its liberation.
Bangladesh-China relations are growing, too. Chinese President Xi Jinping offered a red carpet welcome to Yunus in Beijing recently, in return for which Chinese warships are likely to dock on the Bangladeshi ports.
They say history is cyclical. It would be interesting to watch how much external influence Bangladesh allows in its affairs, with a red carpet welcome to Pakistani and Chinese officials.