In Bangladesh, Mamata wins hearts and trust
Perhaps the best description of Ms Mamata Banerjee's maiden visit to Bangladesh, as West Bengal Chief Minister, is that it was a good confidence-building measure. Though the three-day trip did not produce any major breakthroughs in any of the contentious issues, it was a success to the extent that it generated a positive vibe between Dhaka and Kolkata. Ms Banerjee seemingly established a good rapport with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and was reportedly quite a hit with the Bangladeshi public as well. Both parties also used the opportunity to highlight their expectations and constraints, which is always a good starting point for a dispute resolution process.
Two key issues are weighing down the relationship at the moment — the modalities of sharing the waters of the Teesta river and the land border agreement. Both are long-standing issues and, in the recent past, Delhi and Dhaka have been close to resolving them but the lack of support from Kolkata has put a spanner in their works. In 2011, Ms Banerjee publicly backtracked from accompanying then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to Bangladesh for a trip that was supposed to include the signing of a water-sharing agreement.
The reasons for the diplomatic fiasco — be it the Centre's inability to bring the State Government on board or Ms Banerjee taking an unnecessarily cussed stand on the issue — notwithstanding, the fact is that, since then the Teesta matter has effectively been in a limbo. In the fag end of its tenure, an almost paralysed UPA regime simply did not have the political capital to push the deal through, while the Modi Government also has little to show beyond assuring Prime Minister Hasina that contentious issues will be resolved at the earliest.
This is also true for the land border agreement which, notably, even the BJP had opposed while it was in opposition. Of course, this is not to say that any party wants to hold up a deal perpetually —be it with Teesta or the border, there is a bipartisan consensus that some sort of an agreement, which will require compromises on both sides of the border, is needed for public welfare. However, the devil, as they say, is in the detail, and only time will tell how the final agreements will shape up.
In the meantime, visits such as these help build up the political trust necessary for resolving such complicated issues. In this context, it is no coincidence that Chief Minister Banerjee's trip had a strong cultural component. Her 39-member entourage included several prominent members from the arts and culture field, and during the trip, she emphasised the strengthening of cultural ties. Importantly, she also addressed the public on February 21, Martyrs' Day. On this day, in 1952, students and political activists rose up in revolt against the Pakistani Government which had sought to enforce Urdu as the national language upon the Bengali-speaking people.
The movement met with a brutal crackdown which sparked a nationwide movement that ultimately compelled the (west) Pakistani regime to accept Bengali as a state language alongside Urdu. The movement reinforced the ethnic identity of the Bengali-speaking people over their religious one — which still serves as Bangladesh's unbreakable connect with India.