Bangladeshis do not have any obsessive liking for Pakistanis or pathological hatred for Indians. Their impression about and relationship with Indians and Pakistanis are determined by their experiences, writes Md Mahmudul Hasan
NEIGHBOURS and the two largest countries in South Asia, India and Pakistan are proverbial adversaries. Both have a long and checkered history with Bangladesh. Therefore, the relationship between Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan can be read as one of a love triangle, with Bangladesh being at the centre of attraction and the other two countries competing for its heart.
When British colonial rule ended in the region and the South Asian subcontinent was partitioned into India and Pakistan in August 1947, Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) became part of Pakistan and remained so until December 1971. During the liberation war of 1971, people of what is now Bangladesh rose against Pakistani rulers. India assisted them to gain independence, arguably to serve its own strategic interests.
While India demands gratitude from the people of Bangladesh for what it did for them in 1971, Bangladeshis have multiple plausible reasons to be unhappy with this neighbouring benefactor. Among their complaints against India, the following three are perhaps most notable: a) Thousands of Bangladeshis have been killed by Indian border security forces in the last decades, and the grisly killings in the border region have been going on unabated; b) there exists significant trade imbalance between Bangladesh and India, as the former is being used as a market for the latter; and c) India has supported undemocratic and oppressive regimes in Bangladesh 鈥� especially the one that was in power from 2009 to 2024 鈥� with the obvious intention of exploiting its Muslim-majority neighbour on multiple fronts and outflanking the influences of other neighbouring actors on it.
For the above and other reasons, most Bangladeshis maintain a lukewarm attitude towards India, which manifests itself in different ways. For example, during cricket matches between India and Pakistan, Bangladeshi fans often cheer for the Pakistani team, while Bangladeshi supporters of the Indian team are fewer in number.
Moreover, since Bangladesh and Pakistan are Muslim-majority nations, many people of one country regard those of the other as their coreligionist brothers and sisters. In other words, Muslims of Bangladesh and Pakistan see themselves as part of the ummah or the global Muslim community. Therefore, a natural affinity between them cannot be denied.
It should not be forgotten that Bangladesh and Pakistan once constituted one state, and they are still two nearest and most populous Muslim-majority countries in South Asia. While the 1971 war has remained a moral stain on the collective conscience of Pakistan and a blot on Bangladesh-Pakistan relations, Bangladeshis understand that it was the rulers in West Pakistan and members of the Pakistan army that were primarily responsible for the atrocities against them.
Like other peoples, Bangladeshis also believe in the continuity of life and are susceptible to the healing power of time. The grim images of Pakistani atrocities of 1971 are gradually fading and being eclipsed by the Indian hegemonic behaviour and exploitation to which they have been subjected for a long time. Needless to say, the deterritorialized ummatic feeling of Muslim unity sometimes supersedes the past history and helps strengthen the ties between the peoples of Bangladesh and Pakistan.
Unfortunately, the bonds of religious kinship and fellow feeling that connect Bangladeshis with their coreligionists in Pakistan are often misconstrued as 鈥減ro-Pakistani sympathies鈥� and 鈥渁nti-Indian antipathies.鈥� This suspicion is told and retold and exaggerated to such an extent that it is often said (even in academic discourse) that pro-Pakistani forces are active in Bangladesh.
But are Bangladeshis pro-Pakistani?
I may not be the best person to give a definitive answer to this question. However, given the fact that I have lived in a few foreign countries and intermingled with both Indians and Pakistanis, my insights and thoughts on this subject may be worth considering and may help foster some understanding.
In the early 2000s, I attended a seminar in a British town where the main speaker was a non-British European academic of Pakistani origin. The presentation went well, but during the Q&A session towards the end of the event, I raised a question to the speaker. Before answering my question, he asked me where I was from. Once I informed him that I was from Bangladesh, he broke out into a hysterical laughter and insinuated that he didn鈥檛 anticipate a better question from a Bangladeshi.
Many members of the audience knew me and they were shocked to see the Pakistani academic鈥檚 hilarity at my origin. I was fretting and fuming over his racist undertone but, in the interest of decency, refrained from creating a scene. I immediately reached the conclusion that such condescending attitudes of a section of the Pakistani ruling elite largely contributed to the disintegration of Pakistan in 1971. I also have had bitter experiences with Indians, but they are not the subject of this essay. However, I can safely say that I have many good friends from both India and Pakistan.
Coming back to the topic of this essay, the strategy of using the 1971 Pakistani atrocities against the people of Bangladesh to drive a permanent wedge between Bangladeshis and Pakistanis may not be effective forever. While the 1971 factor cannot be denied, Bangladeshis are facing new and evolving realities; they are navigating and re-navigating their relations with people of other countries, including India and Pakistan.
Members of the Bangladeshi diaspora around the world frequently meet and interact with their counterparts from India and Pakistan. Based on their experiences with people of Indian and Pakistani origin, expatriate Bangladeshis assess and revise their impression about them. Bangladeshis in Bangladesh and in the diaspora also observe which of the two countries (India and Pakistan) supports their causes on international forums.
What I have argued above is that Bangladeshis do not have any obsessive liking for Pakistanis or pathological hatred for Indians. Their impression about and relationship with Indians and Pakistanis are determined by their experiences. The 1971 war aside, Bangladeshis鈥� eyes are wide open to the happenings in the international arena; after all, they observe which country 鈥� India or Pakistan 鈥� is more ready to stand by Bangladesh.
If India/Pakistan is friendly to Bangladesh, people of Bangladesh are grown-up enough to understand it; conversely, if India/Pakistan is hostile to their country, Bangladeshis will know this too. Therefore, it will be an affront to all Bangladeshis to suggest that they are wrong or ill-advised in their (positive or negative) attitude to the people of a particular country.
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听Dr Md Mahmudul Hasan is Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature, International Islamic University Malaysia.
