The smooth exchange of 162 adversely held enclaves of India and Bangladesh and the conferring of the citizenship of their choice on the 51,000 previously stateless persons living in them are a tribute to how productive the bilateral relationship has become for the people of the two countries. The land exchange is being followed up in the annual meeting of the Director-Generals of the Border Guards of Bangladesh and the Indian Border Security Forces to promote cooperation of dealing with security and curbing all forms of illegal activity on the border. Indo-Bangladesh relations had started on this kind of promising note, on account of the joint participation in the struggle for Bangladesh’s Independence in 1971.
Soon after however, the warmth began to be replaced by acrimony due to internal Bangladeshi politics. The assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in 1975 was followed by a series of military coups (five between 1975 and 1982). After each power grab, much as in Pakistan, the military sought legitimacy through Islamisation, which was instrumentalised to attack the perceived ‘Hindu India’. Inevitably, mirroring developments in Pakistan, it also led to the Islamisation of Bangladesh’s hitherto secular Constitution and over time, its society. A sobering statistic is the fall in the percentage of Bangladeshi Hindu’s from 13.5% in 1774 at the time of Bangladesh’s first census, to 8.2% in 2011, registering an incredible drop of nearly 40% over a period of 36 years.