Bangladesh and the BJP

Abstract

When the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led coalition government came topower in India in the late 1990s, it had to tackle a range of bilateral issuesbetween India and Bangladesh, some of which had existed in one form oranother long before Bangladesh came into existence in 1971. As aconsequence of anxieties embedded in historical circumstances, relationsbetween the two countries have never been easy. For more than twentyyears following independence on the subcontinent in 1947, the majorityof those who ultimately founded and built the Bangladeshi nation fearedand hated India, and took part in major wars between India and what wasformerly the state of Pakistan. In spite of the fact that India played adecisive role in guaranteeing a swift—if bloody—birth for the new nationof Bangladesh, that legacy of suspicion and resentment has not beenswept away in the subsequent thirty years. On the contrary, therelationship has been plagued by mistrust and rancour for the greater partof its lifetime. Yet while some of these issues emerged before or at thetime of Bangladesh's creation, others have surfaced only comparativelyrecently.