The euphoria with which most top-ranking BNP leaders welcomed the red-carpet treatment in Delhi of the Leader of the Opposition of Bangladesh National Assembly, and the express declarations of goodwill and understanding, with stated positions on both sides, between the government and the opposition leaders of India on the one hand and BNP-led opposition alliance leader Begum Khaleda Zia on the other, has now settled down to sober reflections. Ahead of Khaleda Zia’s separate meetings in Delhi with India’s Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh and Foreign Minister Mr. Salman Khurshid, Bangladesh media analysts talked about “imperative on both sides” for the week-long India visit of the Bangladesh opposition leader (vide Holiday, October 26). Likewise Indian media analysts noted that the Bangladesh opposition leader’s visit was “more than a courtesy call”, and expected “a flurry of substantive exchanges” (vide The Times of India, October 28).

Welcoming Khaleda Zia, Indian Prime Minister Manmohon Singh hosted a luncheon in her honour after an hour long official meeting. BJP leader L K Advani was present in the luncheon and had a 15-minute meeting with her. Begum Zia also met BJP leader in Parliament Sushma Swaraj and BJP President Nitin Gadhari on separate occasions. She also met two key government leaders, namely Indian Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid and the National Security Adviser Shiv Shankar Menon.
Begum Zia’s visit was thus given a profile befitting her position as Leader of the Opposition and as a two-time former Prime Minister of Bangladesh. Indian National Congress President Sonia Gandhi, presumably in a gesture of deference to her special relationship at family level with Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, excused herself from meeting the latter’s bitter rival Khaleda Zia. For the same reason, so did India’s President Pranab Mukherjee until nearly the time of departure of Khaleda Zia, who meanwhile made a pilgrimage to Ajmer Sharif. After her meeting with India’s President, who as Finance Minister had come to Bangladesh for a cultural event and had extended the invitation to the Opposition Leader of Bangladesh to visit India, dropping at the latter’s residence on his way back to Delhi, Khaleda Zia told journalists in Delhi that it was a very cordial and fruitful exchange of views, and sentiments. Some members of her entourage, however, had privately expressed unease that it was necessary to resort to discreet lobbying while she was in Delhi to make sure that her planned meeting with India’s President actually took place.
In Dhaka, even before her courtesy call on India’s President, the reports of Khaleda Zia’s official meetings with the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister of India were hailed by some leaders of opinion both in the media and the civil society as a “dramatic turn in the politics of Bangladesh in relation to India”, that will have “significant impact on domestic politics” and “positive development in Bangladesh-India relations.”

But ruling party leaders including the foreign minister, Dr. Dipu Moni, pooh-poohed over news reports of Khaleda’s “substantive exchanges” with Indian government leaders, trivialising their contents and detecting in Khaleda’s responses to Indian overtures her latent “admission of guilt” in alleged past indulgence of Indian separatists.

Looking forward
Veteran journalist ABM Musa characterised such negative reaction of the “Awami League policy-makers” to Indian overtures towards Khaleda Zia as the ruling party’s “nervousness” over possible assessment by Indian intelligence of Khaleda’s fair chances of return to power. News commentary in the Indian media and comments from informed members of the civil society were generally of “cautious optimism” over Khaleda’s assurances about not allowing any anti-India activity on Bangladesh soil and her express intent “to look forward and not dwell on the past – a remark interpreted in India as an acknowledgment of India's concerns. Former Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh, a leading figure in India’s Opposition benches said: "In the past, India kept Khaleda at bay, which only pushed the BNP deeper into the embrace of anti-India groups. But Khaleda herself is changing now. She has given interviews in recent days openly admitting to the 'mistakes' in her anti-India stance."

Within its own camp, BNP leadership reaction to the “success” of Khaleda’s visit was effusive. Former foreign minister M Morshed Khan said the relations between the BNP and India could not grow to an expected level due to “politics of blame game; “madam's (Khaleda’s) visit certainly marks a change in her mindset regarding India. It would be foolish to bank on anti-India politics just to please the country's people. The days of anti-India politics are gone.”
Lt Gen (retd) Mahbubur Rahman, a BNP standing committee member, said: “The party had been pursuing wrong policies, especially from 2001, when it made a political alliance with the Jamaat-e-Islami and Islami Oikya Jote. The two Islamist parties [Jamaat and IOJ] had Islamised the BNP-led four-party alliance and with the support of a section of BNP policymakers, they convinced the chairperson to follow an anti-India stance to exploit popular sentiment against India.”

Another BNP Standing Committee member and former Law Minister, Barrister Moudud Ahmed, put the matter of attitudinal shift the other way round, more in line with what Mr Jaswant Singh indicated. He said: “We have got a clear signal of its changed mindset when Pranab Babu categorically mentioned that his country wanted to maintain good relations with all democratic parties of Bangladesh and the people of Bangladesh, not with any particular party.”
With regard to the substance of exchanges between Khaleda Zia and Indian leaders, the following were briefly the major Indian concerns, according to an analysis by The Times of India, apart from India’s prime demand for cooperation of Bangladesh in hunting down “terrorist (separatist) fugitives from India’s Seven Sister States.
(1) Caretaker government: Last year, the Awami government repealed the system that saw elections being held under a neutral, non-party caretaker government. The BNP wants the system reinstated and has threatened to boycott the next election if it's not. If the BNP sticks to its demand and boycotts the polls, another round of political instability in Bangladesh won't do anyone any good.

(2) Transit or transshipment: One of the key economic advantages of enhanced bilateral ties is mutually beneficial transit facilities. India has agreed to facilitate transit between Bangladesh and Nepal and between Bangladesh and Bhutan through its own territory. Bangladesh, on the other hand, is yet to finalise the modalities of the transit package it would like to offer India. New Delhi would like to know from Zia what exactly is her position on providing transit to India.
(3) War crimes trials: It is in the interest of a strong, secular Bangladesh that justice be done and those responsible for war crimes in 1971 are brought to book. Bangladesh's secular credentials depend on the successful conclusion of the war crimes trials involving former and incumbent leaders of the Jamaat-e-Islami --- an ally of the BNP. New Delhi would want to know from Zia her position on the war crimes trials and whether she would allow them to continue if she were to come to power.
From sources close to the official meetings, it is learnt that India also expressed concern about possible attempts after change of government to rekindle anti-Indian sentiments over suspicion of Indian covert hands in the BDR mutiny, as alleged in social networking on the web in the aftermath of that mutiny.

On Khaleda Zia’s return, details of her engagements in the Indian capital became known in the political circles both from her entourage and from Indian connections of the political establishment in Dhaka. She is understood widely to have responded as follows:
(1) On the matter of Caretaker government, she remained firm that she would resist holding of general election under Sheikh Hasina.
(2) On the matter of Indian transit through Bangladesh, she agreed that India-Bangladesh connectivity is a common compulsion.

(3) On Jamat’s alliance with BNP, she differentiated the election compact from the war crimes trial, and argued that Jamaat abided by secular practices as a result of the alliance (both her Jamaat ministers while in office had visited Durga Puja celebrations with messages of goodwill), and as such the alliance did not impinge on the “secular credentials” of Bangladesh.
(4) On the matter of anti-Indian conjectures over the BDR mutiny, she clearly committed that she would not change or expand the terms of reference for the investigation and trial of the mutiny under pressure from any quarter.

A section of the BNP and certainly the Islamist parties appear to have been mildly disturbed by such trickle-charger reports. The Awami League leaders also appear to have got over their so-called “nervousness” soon enough, and are in high gear again in their practiced blame game to vilify BNP.
One consequence of such reports, it seems, is the Jamsat camp’s launching on its own a quasi-militant agitation against police raids, arrests and torture, among other issues of public disaffection. Jamaat initiated its agitational programme going it alone without waiting for the “hard line of action” after Eid-ul-Azha as earlier declared by the BNP-led 18 party alliance. The police came down heavily on Jamat men, and the Home Minister told Awami student League and Youth League members to catch hold of Jamat-Shibir followers, whenever and wherever any of them is in sight, and hand them over to the police. In the face of violent resistance, the police has become somewhat perplexed and wavering. The BNP, including Begum Khaleda Zia, voiced indignation and protest against such police-raj tactics and blanket persecution of their ally Jamaat.
Three days after Khaleda Zia’s return from Delhi, BNP held a press conference and clarified that there was no shift in its India policy. BNP standing committee member Tariqul Islam who had accompanied Begum Zia in her official meetings in Delhi unequivocally told the media in Dhaka: “The party still maintains the same view as in the past on different bilateral issues with India.” In the huge mass demonstration held by the 18-party alliance on November 12 throughout the country, Dhaka dwellers witnessed overwhelming Jamat presence along with BNP activists, and remarkable restraint in the conduct of the police and the agitators alike.
Nevertheless, talks about Khaleda’s Delhi visit is continuing to reverberate. A net result, as candidly espoused by former energy-adviser of Khaleda Zia government and currently newspaper editor, Mahmudur Rahman, is India’s overt ascendancy in Bangladesh affairs. India has eminently shown to other geo-political players in the region that Delhi has commonly captured the height of influence in Bangladesh to be able to lecture mainstream leaders of this country intimately encroaching on its domestic affairs. But if ostracisation of Jamaat and other Islamist parties was a definite purpose of Indian overture to Khaleda, the move has failed and perhaps has brought Jamaat into the centre stage of the political muddle in Bangladesh, forcing Awami League also to think of changing track.

(Source, Weekly Holiday, 16/11/2012)