Now it’s over a fortnight, Bangladesh Government has said amazingly and very much worryingly nothing on the remark the former and only Bengali Indian Army Chief Shankar Roy Chowdhury made in a serious derogatory way in his verbatim, ‘Delhi can’t afford to let Dhaka slip of it its radar.’ Possibly it’s now too late, but better late than never, that Dhaka on its own right for assertion of its sovereign entity of Bangladesh must condemn the statement though demi-official General Chowdhury made somewhat in a foolhardy way.
Bangladesh is an independent and sovereign country since for about four decades now. It matters little that Bangladesh is much smaller in size in all dimensions compared to India. There are smaller countries than what Bangladesh is in terms of geographical area in and around the world. In population size that matters most, Bangladesh is not a small country of thousands or few millions but of 150 million people thus account for about the 8th largest in the world. General Chowdhury has thus put to indignity the 150 million sovereign people of Bangladesh. How could he do that? On what right and privilege? He has to make right and dignified answers to such questions. Let him do so.
The first concern for the dignity of the people of Bangladesh in the matter if when and how the hurt feeling of the nation and the country is going to be conveyed to General Chowdhury, in particular, and to Delhi, in general.
Evidences of the Indian ultimate design for re-establishing the AKHANDA BHARAT or reunited India of the RAMRAJYA of the Hindu epic is nothing new to informed circle. Bangladesh has obviously been in the design more seriously since 1971. The BDR February mayhem was nothing isolated of the design. Recent dispatches about involvement of the Indian intelligence agency R&AW, one made by an Indian born scholar Sunita Paul on the 29th March and in her 30 pertinent points raised therein and another by Ishaal Zehra made on the 6th April (Bangladesh Open Source Intelligence Monitors) may well be taken as the latest of proofs, if any further proof is at all required, in the unprecedented brutal killings of over six dozens of the army officials and brilliant sons of the soil in the BDR campus.
As an ordinary but conscious senior citizen and not anyone of the government, my sincere and honest feeling in the matter is that there is no point for hide and seek but to tell him in a simple and straight forward way that he has, by his foolhardy rhetoric, intended to dent the sovereignty of Bangladesh and the pride of sovereign feeling of the 150 million. Should the Bangladesh Government now saddled in power in Dhaka escape the responsibility and fail to lodge the strongest protest to Delhi in the matter can’t be acceptable to the people of Bangladesh.
National dignity can’t be upheld by behaving in any way that looks clearly friendship of the subservient with the mentor and master.
There are facts of history that might have made the head of the Bangladesh Government amenable to Delhi. That would be better served, I am sure, if kept limited to personal scores and not in any dealings of the state, much less in the question of the sovereignty.
People have the only option to look forward for the Government to immediately lodge a strong protest to Delhi and to General Chowdhury that he has not done the right thing and so must apologize and so also must withdraw immediately his derogatory remark in the matter.
BY : M.T. Hussain.
