Call from Dhaka, Colombo and Kathmandu for an end to Indian interference

Five eminent personalities of three countries in a statement on Saturday called upon India to refrain from interfering in their respective polities in the wake of recent changes in Bangladesh.

The personalities are : Firdous Azim, professor of English, member of Naripokkho (a feminist organisation) in Bangladesh, Kanak Mani Dixit, writer and founding editor Himal Southasian in Kathmandu, Lakshman Gunasekara, journalist, social activist in Colombo, Manzoor Hasan, Centre for Peace and Justice, BRAC University in Dhaka and Sushil Pyakurel, former Commissioner, National Human Rights Commission in Kathmandu.

The statement is published ad verbatim:

We, five citizens of Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka, come together in the context of momentous changes in Bangladesh, to demand that the government of India desist from interfering in our respective polities. Over the decades, intervention by New Delhi’s political, bureaucratic and intelligence operatives in Colombo, Dhaka and Kathmandu, has contributed to the unending political instability in our countries and has empowered autocratic regimes.

India’s interference weakens the neighbouring democracies and compromises their socio-economic advancement. It contradicts the Panchsheel principle of peaceful coexistence once advocated by India and belies the Narendra Modi government’s much-publicised ‘Neighbourhood First’ policy. Furthermore, it is beneficial to India’s own interest in seeing South Asia as a whole achieve political stability and peace, which will in turn benefit India’s own economy and enhance its international standing.

While Bangladesh’s citizens have been grateful for Indian assistance at the time of liberation in 1971, in the decades since, New Delhi has sought to guide Dhaka’s politics for its own purposes. These include the diversion of river waters as the upper riparian state, access to the Indian Northeast through Bangladeshi territory, and the use of Bangladesh as a sizeable market for Indian goods. New Delhi actively worked to prop up the autocratic regime of Sheikh Hasina over the last decade and received political and economic concessions in return.

New Delhi’s interventionism in Sri Lanka peaked with the deployment of the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) in the late 1980s, meant first and foremost to protect India’s ‘national interest’ amidst the Tamil insurgency. Before and since the time of the IPKF, Sri Lanka has had to repeatedly wrestle with New Delhi’s encroachment in its politics. In addition, lately New Delhi authorities have been actively pushing Indian business conglomerates onto the island.

While India once intervened in Nepal’s politics through proactive politicians and diplomats, it now does so also through intelligence agencies and Hindutva activists of the RSS. New Delhi has lately been engaged in manufacturing consent within Nepal’s polity in order to maintain control over Nepal’s water resources. A significant coercive action was the blockade imposed on Nepal in 2015, even as the country was reeling from an earthquake, following the promulgation of the constitution that was not to New Delhi’s liking.

In each of our countries, there exist politicians and political parties that put self-interest before national needs and have been receptive to New Delhi’s interventionist moves. However, we are perplexed by the inability of Indian policymakers to appreciate the fact that such interference creates layers of animosity against India that does not dissipate easily. As has happened in the case of Bangladesh, these interventionist plans ultimately fall apart, but New Delhi will move from one folly to the next.

Mistakes are repeated in neighbourhood policy because New Delhi’s academia and media tend not to keep independent watch on their government’s assumptions and actions, unquestioningly following the dictates of the external affairs and home ministries. A rigorous and introspective study of its South Asia policy, including an evaluation of past misadventures, would benefit India and the entire subcontinent. India’s regional presence would be more benign if New Delhi were to view neighbouring countries through the eyes of its own border regions, peoples and economies.

Some of New Delhi’s sense of vulnerability with regard to each of our countries is based on geography: Sri Lanka’s strategic positioning south of the peninsula, Nepal’s placement along the Himalayan range, and Bangladesh’s location between the mainland and the Northeast. None of these factors would be seen as problematic, however, if New Delhi’s policymakers understood that our societies wish only the best for India, its government and people. Much of the public acrimony directed at India is but a reaction to New Delhi’s interference in internal affairs.

New Delhi also seems to fear Chinese involvement in each of our countries, as if there were a coordinated plan at play to encircle India. To begin with, New Delhi must accept the sovereign right of each neighbour to deal with Beijing on its own accord, much as New Delhi does. We find it incongruous that China has become India’s largest trading partner even as New Delhi seeks to prevent the neighbours’ links with Beijing. We insist that Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka are not and should not be in the sphere of influence of China, India or any other power, and that the alarm in New Delhi is misplaced.

We recognise that the Maldives and Bhutan too suffer from New Delhi’s efforts to be the decisive player in their internal and external affairs. The hostility between Islamabad and New Delhi has been distressing and constant, and it impacts not only the societies and economies of South Asia’s two largest countries but also holds hostage the agenda of upliftment across all our countries.

New Delhi can contribute to stable polities and long-lasting peace in South Asia by abandoning its overt and covert interference in the internal affairs of its neighbours. India should be supportive of the democratic aspirations of South Asia’s peoples and let them build their individual paths to the future.