Bharat Rakshak

In September 1971, the Pakistan military junta placed Shah Azizur Rahman at the head of Pakistan’s delegation to the General Assembly session of the United Nations that year, and with him on the team were two other Bengalis: Mahmud Ali and Syeda Razia Faiz.

Post-1975, Shah Aziz was appointed Bangladesh’s prime minister in the regime of General Ziaur Rahman and Syeda Razia Faiz became a minister in the military-ruled government of General H.M. Ershad.

Throughout the nine-month War of Liberation, Justice Nurul Islam, chairman of the East Pakistan Red Cross Society, remained loyal to the Yahya Khan regime and went abroad to argue the case for Pakistan against the Bengali struggle. Under General Ershad, he served as Bangladesh’s vice president before fading away.

The Zia dictatorship will also remain infamous for the subtle and surreptitious way in which it permitted Ghulam Azam, an active collaborator of Tikka Khan and A.A.K. Niazi, to re-enter Bangladesh on a Pakistani passport, and stay on even after his Bangladesh visa expired.

Azam’s sin was not merely in supporting Pakistan’s genocide in 1971. Following the emergence of Bangladesh, he travelled the Middle East as a representative of Pakistan’s Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, disseminating the lie that Bangladesh had fallen under Hindu domination; that Islam was in danger in the country; that Muslims were being killed in Bangladesh.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a little reminder for all of us of the sordid history of some collaborationist Bengalis in 1971. There were others. We will know of them by and by.

“The British-Bangladeshis now fighting in the Islamic State are going to find it very hard to return there,” said Dhaka Police’s Islam. “A lot of them are going to try coming here, instead of risking arrest at home. From our point of view, that’s going to be bad news.”

From history, it’s clear his fears are well founded. For two generations now, Bangladeshis have given their lives in foreign battlefields. In the midst of the Palestinian Martyr Cemetery at Shatila, in southern Beirut, there is the grave of Kamal Mustafa Ali — a Bangladeshi killed in combat against Israeli troops on July 22, 1982, in the Battle of the High Rock, in the province of Nabatiyeh.

He was one of many Bangladeshis who fought for Palestine: 8,000, a United States Congressional report claimed in 1988; 1,000-1,500, the Palestine Liberation Organisation told al-Akhbar newspaper last year.

Naeem Mohaiemen, a writer, has placed the Bangladesh volunteers’ presence in Lebanon in the context of the country’s desperate post-independence outreach to the Organisation of Islamic States, and military ruler General Ziaur Rehman’s Islamisation programme.

The scholar Ali Riaz recorded: “Beginning in 1984, a ‘volunteer corps’ was organised to join the jihad. Some 3,000 people under the leadership of Abdur Rahman Faruki were motivated to travel in several batches to Afghanistan and fight alongside other volunteer mujahideen.”

Following the Taliban’s triumph in 1992, the veterans returned home, determined to use their experience as a template to create an Islamic State in Bangladesh. If history is repeating itself, Bangladesh could find itself at war with the rising Caliphate.

In fact, Bangladesh has already used a ship built by GRSE. The first warship built in India was the INS Ajay. This was delivered to the Navy by GRSE in 1961. In 1974, the ship was gifted to Bangladesh after a major refit. There it was renamed BNS Surma.

A_Gupta wrote:The IS threat to Bangladesh:
http://indianexpress.com/article/india/ ... -gen-next/

“The British-Bangladeshis now fighting in the Islamic State are going to find it very hard to return there,” said Dhaka Police’s Islam. “A lot of them are going to try coming here, instead of risking arrest at home. From our point of view, that’s going to be bad news.”

DHAKA — Taka gaining against the US dollar and declining share prices in 2014 helped Bangladesh’s capital market to attract foreign investment twice the amount of 2013, a Bangladesh Bank report revealed.

More than 60 percent of it came from American investors.

Last year, the Dhaka and Chittagong stock exchanges received about $714 million investment from 19 countries.

American investors led the list with an investment of $471.1 million, which is 65.97 percent of the total foreign investment, according to the report.

Swiss investors followed with $120.8 million and the UK with $53.6 million.

Bangladesh expects that India would honour the Land Boundary Agreement-1974 and its protocol signed in 2011 and implement those in full.

“We expect that those would be implemented as agreed,” State Minister for Foreign Affairs Md Shahriar Alam told the Dhaka Tribune.

Bangladesh and India had resolved the boundary issue after having intense negotiation for years and now Dhaka wants its full implementation agreed by both the parties.

In recent times, several media reports suggested that India is considering implementation of LBA at West Bengal, Tripura and Meghalaya borders but it does not want to execute the agreement on the Assam border keeping the provincial assembly in mind to be held next year.

The junior minister said the Indian government did not communicate with Bangladesh to implement the LBA partially.

“We have no knowledge about such any initiative. The Indian government did not communicate with us about any other alternatives,” the state minister said.

He said on several occasions Bangladesh was assured by the top Indian authorities that implementation of LBA would be a matter of time.

“It is not our concern what has been written in the Bangladesh and Indian newspaper about implementation of LBA,” he said.

Bangladesh and India signed LBA in 1974 and Dhaka ratified it in the same year but New Delhi is yet to do it.

The implementation of LBA will solve the problems related to enclaves, adversely possessed land and un-demarcated boundary between the two countries.

Bangladesh has 51 enclaves with 7,110.02 acres inside Indian territory while India has 111 enclaves with 17,160 acres of land in Bangladesh territory.

According to a LBA booklet published by the Indian foreign ministry, the Indian enclaves in Bangladesh are located in four districts - Panchagarh, Lalmonirhat, Kurigram and Nilphamari – while all of Bangladesh’s enclaves lie in West Bengal’s Kochbehar district.

According to a joint headcount conducted in 2011 determined the total population in the enclaves to be around 51,549. Out of them, 37,334 live in Indian enclaves within Bangladesh and 14,215 in Bangladesh enclaves within India.

Under the LBA, India agreed to lease in perpetuity to Bangladesh, an area approximately 3.74 acres to connect Dahagram and Angarpota with mainland Bangladesh at a token price of Tk1 per annum which has since been waived off.

India needs to amend constitution to resolve the issue of exchange of enclaves and redrawing of boundaries to maintain status quo in areas of adverse possessions involves the transfer of territories from one state to another but no amendment is required for a resolution of the un-demarcated segments of the land boundary.

“With regard to demarcation of the Lathitilla and Dumabari sector, the line drawn by Radcliff and actual position on the ground has been followed,” the booklet said.
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Members of the Bharat Bangladesh Enclave Exchange Coordination Committee (BBEECC) has written separately to Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan and Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister Venkaiah Naidu regarding the “speedy implementation” of the Land Boundary Agreement between India and Bangladesh which remains unresolved since 1974.

Diptiman Sengupta, assistant secretary of the BBEECC, pointed out in the letters how the NGO had been fighting for the granting of “right to citizenship” to the enclave dwellers and bestowing of “nationality to stateless people” living in enclaves for more than two decades now.

Parliament’s Standing Committee on External Affairs has already cleared the draft Land Boundary Agreement Bill for Parliament’s perusal, which will subsequently be signed by the two countries, Sengupta said. The BBEECC has urged the leaders to take the initiative to introduce the Bill in Parliament. “It will be a historic move,” Sengupta said, “if the two countries can implement the LBA as it will bring an end to the “greatest human tragedy of our times”.

The Cabinet has cleared an agreement to export unused submarine cable bandwidth to India that will fetch Bangladesh $1.2 million every year.
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“Bangladesh is earning foreign currency while India’s north-east is getting easy internet connection, which they had to get from Mumbai [previously],” Bhuiyan said.

India’s Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) and Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company (BSCCL) will sign the agreement.
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He said the bandwidth export could be extended to 40GBPS based on India’s requirement.

It will be exported through Brahmanbarhia’s Akhaurha from the Cox’s Bazar landing station of Bangladesh’s only submarine cable C-M-U-4.

Secretary Bhuiyan said, “Bangladesh uses only 30GBPS out of the submarine cable’s 200GBPS bandwidth. We’ll have lots of unused bandwidth even after exporting.”

While cross-border infiltration of humans has been a hotly debated issue between Bangladesh and India and particularly West Bengal, this time the gruesome killing of an Indian lone tusker that strayed into Rajsahi district of Bangladesh from Murshidabad district of West Bengal has raised a storm of protests.

The Bangladesh Border Guards pumped 34 bullets into the tusker and it died instantly on Monday afternoon.The carcass was buried immediately by the BBG and later they informed the Indian officials about the killing. It all happened when a West Bengal wildlife team had reached the border with tranquilising guns to bring back the elephant into West Bengal. “But unfortunately we did not get an opportunity,” said member of the team.

The West Bengal Wildlife officials plan to lodge a report to the Project Elephant drawing its attention to the tragic and brutal killing of the elephant and to take up the issue with the wildlife wing of both the countries.

India and Bangladesh have agreed on the extension of Protocol on Inland Water Transit and Trade (PIWTT) with the provision of automatic renewal in line with the proposed amendment to Bangladesh-India trade agreement.

The Indian government today said the decision was taken during the Secretary-level talks between the two countries.

"It was also agreed between the two countries that a draft agreement for the regular movement of passenger and cruise vessels would be shared by India with Bangladesh through the diplomatic channel," said an official statement by the Ministry of Shipping.

The country’s foreign exchange reserves crossed US$24bn mark yesterday, setting a new record.

“The country’s foreign currency reserve has reached to a new height thanks to the stable inflow of remittance and export growth,” said Kazi Sayedur Rahman, general manager of Forex Reserve and Treasury Management Department of Bangladesh Bank.

The reserves, which had earlier crossed the $23bn mark for the first time on February 26 this year, are currently strong enough to meet the country’s import bills for more than six months. The country’s foreign currency reserves had crossed $23bn again on March 31 for the second time in a month.

Currently, Bangladesh is ranked second in South Asia in forex reserve, right behind India, which has a reserve of $339.99bn.
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Seed associations of India and Bangladesh on Thursday signed a cooperation agreement to initiate cross-border trade in high-yielding variety (HYV) rice seeds that will also enable knowledge-sharing in their production and trade.

A Memorandum of Understanding for this purpose was signed here between the Bangladesh Seeds Association and the National Seed Association of India.

There is currently no formal trade between both countries in HYV rice seeds, but there much movement through informal channels in this low-value, high-volume trade that is nevertheless of importance to the food security of the region.

While a protocol has been recently signed between India, Bangladesh and Nepal creating the possibility for the release of seed varieties developed by one country in others, Thursday's MoU marks a definitive step closer to formalisation of rice seeds trade and knowledge-sharing.

Bangladesh and India have signed a draft agreement on coastal shipping, a move that will reduce the cost of export and import between the two countries by two thirds.
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For instance, to import a tonne of rice from Kolkata it now costs $90, but after the signing of the agreement it will come down to $35, said SK Mahfuz Hamid, managing director of Gulf Orient Seaways, who also attended the meeting in New Delhi.

For years authorities in Bangladesh have battled to stop men urinating in public, with signs in the local Bengali language failing to halt the seemingly endless number of offenders.

But the Bangladesh religious affairs ministry`s recent decision to erect new signs in Arabic has had a marked effect, despite most Bangladeshis being unable to read the language.

For most in the mainly-Muslim country, Arabic is sacred because it is the language their holy book, the Koran, was revealed in.

"This campaign has received a great positive response so far," Anwar Hossain, a ministry spokesman, told AFP. "Bangladeshi people respect Arabic and we`ve just utilised that."

The campaign however has sparked a strong rebuke from influential cleric Fariduddin Masud, who said it tarnished the prestige of the Arabic language.

"Nobody has the right to use the language of the Koran for such a campaign," the cleric said, according to online newsportal Natunbarta.com.

"The people of the country respect Arabic but that does not mean that we`ll tolerate the use of Arabic to stop people from urinating (at street corners)."

The Union Cabinet’s decision to operationalise the India-Bangladesh land boundary agreement has been long overdue. It is a measure of prime minister Narendra Modi’s determination to see it through. The agreement has a four-decade-old history, having been signed by Indira Gandhi and Sheikh Mujib in 1974. A redrafted agreement was signed by Manmohan Singh and Sheikh Hasina in 2011. Though Dhaka has enacted the laws to operationalise the agreement, New Delhi could not do much because of opposition from political parties like the BJP. Under the agreement, India and Bangladesh will cede to each other enclaves of their people which are within each other’s territory. In India, these enclaves are in West Bengal, Meghalaya, Tripura and Assam.

The agreement will come into force only after a Bill to amend the Constitution is passed by Parliament and the requisite number of state assemblies. India will lose a total of about 40 square kilometres, spread across these states and gain some from Bangladesh. The deal is unlikely to result in any movement of population as the residents of these enclaves will stay wherever they are. At present they are, for all practical purposes, considered “stateless” and are, therefore, not entitled to any government benefits. The BJP was in the forefront of opposing the agreement on the specious plea that parliament did not have the mandate to cede any portion of its territory. Regional parties like the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) and the Trinamool Congress were opposed to it on similar grounds.

Modi is keen to operationalise the agreement before he visits Dhaka in June. One reason for his interest in the matter is the emphasis he has been laying on strengthening relations with neighbours. He is also conscious of the role Sheikh Hasina has been playing in strengthening their bilateral relations. She has been cooperating with India on all fronts and it is only in the fitness of things that India reciprocates in equal measure. The problems of the people in these enclaves have been an irritant in the bilateral relations. The total population of these enclaves is less than a lakh. Modi will have to do a bit of explaining to his party men who have been opposed to the land swap. He has to tell them that it is time for a demonstration of pragmatism and responsibility in contrast to BJP’s obduracy while it was in opposition.

Bangladesh Minister of Public Administration Begum Ismat Ara Sadique called on Minister of State in the Prime Minister's Office Dr Jitendra Singh and hailed the government's initiative to finalise the Land Boundary Agreement with her country, which would enable the exchange of enclaves by the two sides.

Referring to the traditional ties between the two nations, Dr Singh said it was a matter of great satisfaction that in recent times, the bilateral relations had grown further at all levels and today, India is also making a huge contribution by way of offering training to Bangladesh Civil Service (BCS) officers.

He said that as a part of this initiative, over 500 BCS officers and 40 Bangladesh police officers have already received training at the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration in Mussoorie and the target is to train 1500 BCS officers over a period of three years.

The minister further said that the process of training of Bangladesh officers in Indian academies not only helps in sharing healthy inputs on good governance but also helps the Bangladesh administrators and civil servants to develop a healthy mindset towards India and its people. In addition, 40 police officers from Bangladesh have also received training so far and 35 Bangladesh scientists have successfully finished a course in civil nuclear sector in India.

Dr Singh further noted that India has also offered courses to country officials in Bangladesh who belong to other departments and institutions like customs, railway, election commission and fire services.

In her first extensive interview since the attack, Ahmed criticized the Bangladeshi government for not responding more aggressively to her husband's slaying. "This was well planned, choreographed – a global act of terrorism," she said. "But what almost bothers me more is that no one from the Bangladesh government has reached out to me. It's as if I don't exist, and they are afraid of the extremists. Is Bangladesh going to be the next Pakistan or Afghanistan?"

Police in India have detained the chief spokesman of Bangladesh’s main opposition party after he was found wandering in a disorientated state near the border, more than two months after he went missing in an alleged abduction.

Salahuddin Ahmed, a former minister for the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, said he had been snatched in his home country on 10 March but had no idea how he had come to be in the northeastern Indian state of Meghalaya.

“I was kidnapped by a group of unidentified people from Uttara (a district in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka) but I do not know how I landed in this place,” he said on Tuesday before being led away to a prison cell in the state capital Shillong.

Ahmed’s disappearance at the height of deadly anti-government protests in early March sparked widespread allegations he had been secretly taken into custody by intelligence agents.

His fate had become a growing source of tension between the opposition and government of prime minister Sheikh Hasina, with her administration insisting it knew nothing about what had happened to him or of his whereabouts.

Police in Meghalaya said Ahmed had been picked up near a golf course on Monday morning after being alerted by the public “about the suspicious movement of an individual” and then brought in for questioning.

The ongoing dynamics in national policy makers level on Indo Bangladesh land boundary issue and the process of passing The Constitution (119th Amendment) Bill has given new life to the hope for 'Tetulia Corridor.' An India to India short passage through Bangladesh. The demand for which remained unresolved since independence.

The bill is to allow the operationalisation of the 1974 India-Bangladesh Land Boundary agreement and thus settlement of century old border issue that made India and Bangladesh to host many land pieces of one country, detached from its mainland, to remain within the territory of another country like islands. These land pieces are known as Chitmahals.

"Since Chitmahal crisis has reached a definite resolution, we expect Tetulia too to come to a positive ending," said Mr. Rahul Sinha, President West Bengal state BJP.

Proposed Tetulia corridor is a 4 km long strip of land in Bangladesh that can connect two places in India- namely Chopra and Maynaguri, both in northern West Bengal, shortening the travel for all North East region bound traffic from Indian mainland for near 84 km.

Read more at:
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/art ... aign=cppst

DHAKA: A joint patrol team of Bangladesh coast guards and navy detained a trawler in the Bay of Bengal on Tuesday after it was cast adrift with 116 Malaysia-bound illegal migrants on board, a coast guard commander said.

Police in India have detained the chief spokesman of Bangladesh’s main opposition party after he was found wandering in a disorientated state near the border, more than two months after he went missing in an alleged abduction.

Salahuddin Ahmed, a former minister for the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, said he had been snatched in his home country on 10 March but had no idea how he had come to be in the northeastern Indian state of Meghalaya.

NEW DELHI: Bangladesh today said it was looking forward to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's upcoming visit to Dhaka and hoped that the long-pending Teesta pact will be inked during the trip besides expansion of cooperation in key areas of energy and connectivity.

Read more at:
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/art ... aign=cppst

A_Gupta wrote:http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/new ... 376608.cms

NEW DELHI: Bangladesh today said it was looking forward to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's upcoming visit to Dhaka and hoped that the long-pending Teesta pact will be inked during the trip besides expansion of cooperation in key areas of energy and connectivity.

Read more at:
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/art ... aign=cppst

johneeG wrote:Why can't Bhaarath send its forces to clean up the jihadi forces in BD? For all his faults, Rajiv Gandhi had the guts to send troops to Sri Lanka against Tamil Tigers. It didn't quite work out. But, atleast, he tried to be bold.

Sending humanitarian help to Nepal is good. But sending forces to clean up jihadi forces in BD is also important and will send many messages to many people. Chinese supposedly have a proverb: Kill the chicken to scare the monkey" (杀鸡儆猴, lit. kill chicken scare monkey).

I say go after BD jihadis to gain some respect internationally.

RoyG wrote: Go after the jihadis with what?

RamaY wrote:
{quote="A_Gupta"}The IS threat to Bangladesh:
http://indianexpress.com/article/india/ ... -gen-next/

“The British-Bangladeshis now fighting in the Islamic State are going to find it very hard to return there,” said Dhaka Police’s Islam. “A lot of them are going to try coming here, instead of risking arrest at home. From our point of view, that’s going to be bad news.”{/quote}


The problem and solution for Bangladesh is same; Islam. They can opt to absorb more Islam or get rid of it. Either way, Bangladesh will be fun to watch.

While I have not reviewed the most recent version of the LBA and am not unaware of the judicial pitfalls which still lurk before its implementation, it is a step in the right direction by South Asia’s giant. Unless, of course, you ask the instinctive Indiaphobes who, along with the pathological Pakistan-bashers, form a very real part of the chattering classes in Bangladesh.

Come to think of it, those obsessed with India-centric or Pakistan-centric conspiracy theories can be found in just about every corner of middle-class and upper-middle class Bangladeshi society. Hence, it is hardly a surprise that one of the first themes of reaction from the Indiaphobes in this instance was along the lines of “see, see, I told you, the Awami League is India’s agent and wants to make Bangladesh into India by giving everything away.” I wish.

Please take a deep breath and hold off tarring and feathering me as some kind of RAW agent or an apologist for the ruling regime. Au contraire, I am the grandson of men and women who left it all in 1947 in what became the Republic of India, and never looked back. The “I wish” is a tongue-in-cheek comment.

But truth be told, from a cold and evidentiary perspective, there is indeed a whole lot that Bangladesh could have emulated in terms of governance from a neighbour that has defied two long-held hypotheses in the theory of democratic consolidation.

The first such hypothesis, drilled into the heads of political science students in graduate school in any respectable North American university, is that countries where a majority of the population lives under the poverty line are unlikely to have their democracies take root; the second hypothesis, obviously favoured by today’s rulers in Dhaka for very transparent reasons, is that economic progress has to happen before there can be a pluralist democracy.

India stands as a proud counterpoint to both these otherwise reputable -- if not exclusive -- claims of scholarship. Barring the aberration of the 21-month Emergency period in the mid-1970s, India has continued as a vibrant pluralist, multi-party, representative democracy from her first moments of Independence in the August of 1947.
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When I think of India, I look at a country whose cultural and linguistic heritage is not too dissimilar to Bangladesh, but whose governance has consolidated, albeit imperfectly, all the things we wished we had in Bangladesh: Strong autonomous institutions, fair elections, multi-party democracy, independent judiciary, and a free press.

If anyone wants to make Bangladesh more like India in that sense, I say all the power to them.

For now, the joint secretary-general of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) appears stuck in a legal limbo, awaiting a decision on whether Indian authorities will charge him under the Foreigners Act for illegal entry or hand him over to Bangladesh.

He is wanted in his home country in a number of cases of subversion and other anti-state activities stemming from a three-month economic blockade that the BNP organized earlier this year. The opposition party’s anti-governmental action and series of work stoppages turned violent, resulting in the deaths of 120 people nationwide.

“We are waiting for the decision of the Indian authorities and we’ve not yet been informed whether he would be handed over to us,” Bangladeshi State Minister for Home Affairs Asaduzzaman Khan told reporters in Dhaka on Wednesday.

“Ahmed will be arrested as soon as he is handed over to us as he’s wanted in a number of criminal cases.”

A partnership between New Delhi and Dhaka to save the rare ecosystem of the Sundarbans and that agreement should be signed in a boat — that was Union Minister Suresh Prabhu’s suggestion as Environment Minister in 1998 to his counterpart in Dhaka which could not be carried out.

Ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Dhaka, Mr. Prabhu, who now holds the portfolio of Railways, said his earlier suggestion could still be followed up with more such agreements between the two nations on various other fronts including climate change, transportation and agriculture.

“I proposed to my counterpart [then] that the Sundarbans is one common ecosystem, when the tigers go from India to Bangladesh and from there to here, they don’t need any passport or visa, no custom can stop them ... why not we, therefore, conserve the rarest ecosystem in the world. I proposed I will come from this side on a boat; you come from that side ... I think we should try to do that soon. We will have to do so many things together, this is one of them,” he said addressing the sixth India-Bangladesh friendship dialogue on “Bangladesh-India relations: bilateralism and beyond.”

Sheikh Hasina, a friend of India, is one of the few leaders in today’s world unafraid to take on violent Islamists, even as she fights to retain control of the country.

chetak wrote: Boss, these guys are surely headed for India. bangladesh will quietly, politely and politically steer them our way as "normal" ghus petis. they have credible denial and can also provide surreptitious support. Two birds with one stone, as it were.