Untold Facts

No to Shankar’s Great Game

Shankar’s Great Game theory
That Shankar has brought in the issue of GREAT GAME (GG) in late March 2009 (published on the 24 March in the London edition of the Indian English daily Asian Age) following the February 25-26 brutal massacre at the BDR campus is really a fishy matter. Why should he wish to drag Bangladesh into the India and Pakistan Great Game he perceived at this moment?

Two Nukes war
Should that war he perceived at all break out, it should remain an engagement between the two nuclear powers in the subcontinent. Bangladesh is not a nuclear power, not anything in priority for there are many other priorities like poverty alleviation, provide employment to millions of unemployed hands, ensure food security for all vulnerable groups of millions rather than to engage fruitlessly in military fights with any country in the region unless forced by adventures of some enemy in defending the country and uphold its sovereignty.

RAW, Sunita, Ishaal and Shankar
That General Shankar signaled the war issue following the BDR tragedy is significant in the sense that they had fishes in the matter. There are many reports here and there that Delhi made the acid test in the BDR game for their part of the GG. That the Indian central intelligence agency, R&AW (Research and Analysis Wing) was directly involved for Indian hand in the matter as among many Indian born scholar Sunita Paul and Ishaal Zehra had in their internet dispatches made respectively abundantly clear on the 29th March and 6th April 2009.

Sutar, Baidya and Shankar
Press reports from across the border following the misfortune of the BDR mayhem stated that the so-called Bangabhumi movement started new offensives against Bangladesh. The Banglabhumi movement is a brainchild of the Bengalis based in Kolkata, not necessarily of all Bengalis of West Bengal (Pashim Bango) but some like former Awami League M.P. Chitta Ranjan Sutar, Kalidas Bidya etc of Bangladesh born, as well. Whether Shankar has any direct contact with the Bangabhumiwalas (claimants of Bangabhumi) is a matter of anybody’s guess.

Bangabhumi as second option
It may be worthwhile to briefly state about few facts about the Bangabhumi movement. The sole and present aim of the movement is to secure about one fourth of the Bangladesh territory comprising 17 administrative districts in the south west and west of Bangladesh land mass seceded from Bangladesh and made an independent country wherein only the Hindus would live. The Hindus to be settled there, they claim, were those whose ancestors migrated from Bangladesh to West Bengal etc following the aftermath of the 1971 war and also those who are still in Bangladesh but feel unease to live in Bangladesh for the larger neighbor Muslims are not fair in their social dealings with them. The movement started in late 1970s following two major incidents. One that Awami League M.P. Sutar’s plea with the then Indian P.M. Indira Gandhi failed (she said, in verbatim, AVI MUMKIN NEHI) as he wished her to act decisively to annex Bangladesh into India following the independence of Bangladesh. The other was that when the Bangladesh President Sheikh Mujib was toppled in a military coup in 1975 that dashed completely their hope for annexation of Bangladesh into India, they went on to establish instead the Bangobhumi as an independent country. They have already raised their army, one as the Bangosena or the army of the State of Bangobhumi. It was amazing to know that General Shankar viewed the 1971 victory in the war as the victory for India in the GG and 1975 August coup and removal of the great Sheikh as the defeat in the GG for India and win for Pakistan! For Bangladesh, however, the facts remained that on both cases of 1971 and 1975 August coup Bangladesh had had won.

15th August 1977 Bangbhumi Founding
There was a report published and I came across that on the second death anniversary of Mujib, Hasina’s father, on he 15th August 1977, the Bangabhumi movement was launched in Kolkata in a function that was attended by Sheikh Hasina who then had been living in self-exile in India, specifically, in Delhi’s South Block or the head quarter of the Indian intelligence agency, the R&AW (Research and Analysis Wing). That seemed quite likely, because, that was an emotional occasion for her.

Bangabhumi’s Psychological pressure
Bangabhumi movement may not be anything to do with the GG, because, it is a matter between Bangladesh and India. It cannot be anything of nuclear but could just only be a limited conventional war between Bangladesh and India. But the psychological pressure of Delhi on Dhaka remains for all time in perpetuity. That certainly goes in favor of Delhi that they could accrue other gains and force Dhaka remain amenable to bigger India. Shankar’s GG bogey has certainly added to pressures on Dhaka that Delhi has constantly been maintaining.

Non-Bengali Shankor Menon’s brief visit
One may make an intelligent guess if the Indian Foreign Secretary Shib Shankar Menon’s dashing to Dhaka for hours on the 13 April without any formal prior notice just as the Western leaders did in Afghanistan on number of occasions was directed to put another psychological pressure on Dhaka in the BDR matter.

Reprisal
Bengali Shankar may have, it may be recalled, another psychological gain in the score of pre-1947 hatred of the Kolkata based elite attitudes for reprisal against the entity of the then seceded East Bengal/ East Pakistan/Bangladesh.

GG not of Bangladesh
Anyway the GG matter General Shakar Roy Chowdhury has referred to is, in no way, as I see it, anything relevant to Bangladesh, much less its involvement in the so-called Great Game.

Author: M.T. Hussain