Delhi-Dhaka ties have entered a new golden age
The robust India-Bangladesh ties has helped India to claim its links with East and Southeast Asia and ensure its role as a key interlocutor in the Indo-Pacific strategic architecture. Dhaka should be willing to go the extra mile to help Bangladesh achieve its true potential
The visit of Bangladesh Prime Minister (PM) Sheikh Hasina to India this week underscored the real bond between two neighbours as well as two peoples in a region that remains highly fragmented. The ease with which Hasina and PM Narendra Modi engaged with each other — lauding each other’s contribution but also warning about the impending challenges — is a tribute to the investment that the two leaders have made in this vital relationship. Hasina remains confident that with PM Modi at the helm, India and Bangladesh can resolve all existing problems. PM Modi underlined Bangladesh’s special place in the Indian foreign policy matrix as its biggest development and trade partner in the region.
This can rightfully be described as the golden age in Delhi-Dhaka ties. During this visit, seven Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) were signed across a wide-ranging set of issues that include connectivity, trade, commerce, security, border management, and lines of credit. Bilateral ties are doing well and are on a strong footing. But beyond MoUs and pacts, there is genuine warmth for Hasina in India across segments and that was reflected in her outreach engagements. Her investment in India has been significant and paid off despite some in her country deriding her as a “proxy of India”. And, PM Modi has reciprocated by making Bangladesh the centrepiece of his government’s Neighbourhood First policy.
Bangladesh’s success as a growing economy is celebrated in India. With Sri Lanka, Nepal and Pakistan facing negative headwinds, Dhaka is viewed as a vital actor in the region. Hasina’s steady leadership has given India greater confidence in pursuing a more robust neighbourhood policy. When Hasina mentions the challenges of Teesta water-sharing or Rohingyas, it is in the manner of two friends trying to sort out their most intractable problems.
But beyond the bilateral, there is something more significant that this historic upsurge in Delhi-Dhaka ties underlines. Ever since Independence, India was stuck with the legacy of Partition and the India-Pakistan binary became the prism through which the world viewed India. As Pakistan’s adversarial outlook vis-à-vis India got entrenched because of normative, institutional and geopolitical reasons, New Delhi found it difficult to get out of the confines of South Asia. Despite being a nation with larger global and regional ambitions, India’s inability to sort out its problems with Pakistan became a drag on its leadership credentials. The question went — if New Delhi could not manage its neighbourhood, how could it expect the world to take it seriously as a global player? Indian foreign policy and South Asian politics became hostage to Pakistan’s never-ending hostility and Indian policymakers’ obsession with trying to manage Pakistan.
Even when India started surpassing Pakistan in terms of material capabilities, the India-Pakistan binary continued to be the defining one. Today, however, there is a change in the air. The Modi government’s singular contribution to foreign policy has been to make Pakistan marginal to Indian strategic discourse. PMModi tried, in his initial years to make an effort to engage Pakistan but when it didn’t work, he changed gears and pushed the bureaucracy into reimagining India’s strategic periphery in ways that Pakistan is now viewed merely as an irritant.
And, as Pakistan became marginal in the Indian scheme of things, Bangladesh’s centrality grew. With Hasina at the helm since 2009 and keen to boost Delhi-Dhaka ties, the stage was set to usher in a paradigmatic shift in India’s South Asia policy. India certainly could not afford to ignore the region as China had started wading into the waters of the Indian Ocean in ways that troubled India. Strengthening India’s ties with Bangladesh allowed New Delhi to pivot its neighbourhood policy from the west to the eastern shores of the Bay of Bengal. It made it possible for India to reimagine its strategic periphery by making the Bay of Bengal the maritime link space between India and the Pacific Ocean.
With India engaging more substantively on its eastern front, New Delhi can categorically claim its links with East and Southeast Asia. It is not an external entity to be invited to the region but remains organically connected to it because of the civilisational links of the past and the trade and strategic ties of today. The entire maritime geography of the Indo-Pacific, thereby, attains a new dimension from New Delhi’s perspective.
The move from the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) to the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (Bimstec) should also be viewed in this context. With the marginalisation of Saarc, India made Bimstec the key pillar of its regional outreach. Much more may need to be done to make Bimstec a more potent organisation but it has done away with the old excuse of India-Pakistan differences hampering South Asian integration.
And for all this, India’s robust ties with Bangladesh are essential. Strong India-Bangladesh ties make it possible to imagine a vibrant Northeastern region in India as well as a serene and peaceful Bay of Bengal periphery. And, it is only this that makes India a key interlocutor in the emerging Indo-Pacific strategic architecture. New Delhi’s investment in ties with Bangladesh is welcome and it should be willing to go the extra mile if needed to help Dhaka achieve its true potential. Only then will Indian foreign policy and South Asia be able to achieve theirs.
Harsh V Pant is vice-president, Observer Research Foundation, and professor at King’s College London
The view expressed are personal