Step Towards Peace

Air Cmde T.K Chatterjee (retd)

Winter is a good time to return to India from wherever one stays for the rest of the year. The pleasant weather and the year-end festivities are irresistible. It is with this intention to surrender to the season’s magical charm that this year’s winter trip was planned to our hometown, Kolkata. The city had just gone through a few tumultuous months following the brutal rape and murder of a lady doctor on duty at a city hospital. Things had just about subsided; the government had survived the social uprising against it, the doctors had returned to their profession, the police force had gone back to their precincts to redeem their lost reputation, and the cool winter breeze calmed the ruffled feathers of the city when a new phenomenon took over the local media. This time, it was the events of a bordering country, Bangladesh, where civil unrest against the government had degenerated into allegedly organised persecution of minorities, viz., Hindus. Bengali Hindus.

Though post-1947 West Bengal is a part of India, and post-1971 Bangladesh is a sovereign country, the whole region was one Bengal before India’s Partition. So, even though the two entities are presently connected only through Delhi and Dhaka, perhaps an unspoken, invisible, platonic link remains between the people through language, culture, ethnicity, and history. Hindus or Muslims, they are all Bengalis. They all identify with hilsa, mishti doi, and Rabindra Sangeet. So, understandably, there were extremely angry and agitated news and feature anchors on all Bengali TV channels vociferously condemning the interim government of Bangladesh of incompetence, complicity, and perjury. I was horrified to see one rather belligerent anchor lay out a quixotic plan to carve out independent territories for minorities within Bangladesh!

An intriguing part of this fiasco in Bangladesh is how an anti-government student protest turned into an anti-India agitation, with an Islamic flavour. Flipping through the Bengali TV channels I came across the following claims that were being made in Bangladesh:

• Hindus must go to Hindustan
• Bangladesh will no longer tolerate Indian domination
• Indian goods are to be boycotted
• Kolkata can be captured in four days by Bangladesh armed forces
• Bengal, Bihar, Orissa and the entire Northeast will become part of Bangladesh
• Bangladesh will borrow nuclear devices from a ‘friendly’ country and use them against India
• Young generation were being called to rise in jihad against India

Some of these claims are being supported with video clips, which probably have no location or identity verified by the channels. For a country whose land border is totally encircled by India, these military objectives of changing the map of Bangladesh seem like a fantasy dream of a drug addict on steroids. But all the same, repeatedly seeing the vandalised Iskon temples, desecration of other Hindu places of worship, disturbances at Durg