A direct fallout of India’s twin Citizenship (Amendment) Act, along with the proposed National Register of Citizens (NRC), is that it has annoyed its friendliest neighbour, Bangladesh. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who cherishes her country’s India relations and has done the most to help India eliminate militancy in its Northeast, with inadequate returns, is struggling to keep the India-triggered tensions on a low key.

“This has caused a difficult situation for us,” a senior aide of Sheikh Hasina told this writer during a recent Dhaka visit. Tension is palpable if you keep your eyes and ears open. The front-page reports quoting international articles that question India’s actions and cautiously written editorials can’t be missed. 

Days after cancelling his official visit to Delhi, Bangladesh Foreign Minister A K Abdul Momen alleged: “Indian nationals have been entering Bangladesh illegally for food and work, since economic conditions in our country are better.” 

At a political level, the ruling Awami League emphasizes that Bangladesh ‘values’ relations with India and is keen to keep away the misgivings of its citizens. That pressure is mounting is evident from the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) General Secretary Mirza Fakhrul Islam saying that CAA “is a matter of life and death for the people of Bangladesh.” 

The Indian leadership does not seem to realize or care about this “India factor” that can, and has in the past, been trumped up in Bangladesh, to India’s detriment. Anti-CAA protests in Meghalaya has caused suspension of immigration facilities for Bangladeshi nationals at Tanabil Land Port. The Indian High Commissioner Riva Ganguli Das was summoned by the Foreign Office and told of these ‘concerns’. 

People stress that India is unmindful of their concerns. Although people have migrated out of today’s Bangladesh since the British era, India’s accusations today and selectively inviting Bangladeshi nationals to seek Indian citizenship is seen as a slap on Bangladesh’s face and a challenge to their sovereignty.  

Years of Indian sacrifices and goodwill have been jeopardized. If ever India was seen as the “Big Brother” it is now, and with valid reason, say Bangladeshis.

People do cross over in search of safe homes and of livelihood. Fully accepting that Bangladeshis have come to India, legally or illegally, what has been the past record of detecting, investigating and, on acceptance by the Bangladesh authorities, deporting them? 

After much protest in the 1990s, the Narasimha Rao Government went through these processes. Then Indian Home Minister, Shankarrao Chavan, told Parliament that about 600 people were identified and deported. They returned to India within months! Such is the corruption among the authorities in both countries. Everyone knows how easy it is to acquire ration cards or voter’s cards in India. 

Indeed, the CAA has annoyed not just Bangladesh, but the entire neighbourhood. Not just adversarial Pakistan, but friendly Afghanistan, fighting for its own survival, has been targeted by these policies of the current Indian dispensation.

No country likes to be criticised about their internal matters. Home Minister Amit shah calling migrants ‘termites’ cannot go well with neighbourly relations, leave alone India’s ambitions to become a regional and global power that requires it to carry them along. 

One does not have to be a South Asia expert to know the religious composition of populations and invite, selectively, all non-Muslims. Who has given India this right or responsibility when its own minorities, especially the Muslims and Hindu Dalits and tribals (in the name of Naxalism) have been targeted and live in fear? 

Lakhs of Hindus do live and adjust to their conditions in their chosen homes. India can consider applications of those who apply. But a general invitation militates against the sovereignty of neighbours. Of a few thousand Hindus and Sikhs from Afghanistan and Pakistan, many are already refugees in India, awaiting citizenship for long years. Incidentally, are there Jains in any of these countries? Have Pakistan’s Parsis, estimated at a few hundred, complained to India or sought its citizenship?

Assuming that the communities selected by the new Indian law in any of these countries are being ill-treated by their government(s), who has given India the right to speak for them and enact laws to extend invitations to them? Can India challenge the sovereignty of other nations and think of living peacefully with them?  

India has long been home to diverse populations, just as 30 million Indian diaspora have made their homes in countries across the world. They are from all communities. Is India willing to place these people at risk from authorities and/or people in those countries?   

Lessons need to be learnt from Pakistan that has suffered each time it has sought to speak for the Muslim Ummah and, like Zia ul Haq used to do, make “Islam is in danger” declarations. In a recent blunder, Prime Minister Imran Khan was forced to stay away from an Islamic summit in Malaysia after promoting it because Saudi Arabia summoned him and, reportedly, threatened him with holding back promised funds if he hobnobbed with Saudi Arabia’s rivals  -- Turkey, Qatar and Iran. Khan annoyed all of them. It does not pay to play politics of religion.

What is the point India wants to score by claiming to speak for the Hindus that it says were ‘victims’ of the 1947 Partition? Can it rewrite history by selecting, after seven decades, who were the victims and who were perpetrators of violence that forced millions of Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs to leave their homes, and also those who chose to stay or moved to a new country? Is it worthwhile reviving that painful past?    

In sports terminology, India has scored a self-goal. How do the two laws match with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s own painstaking efforts to build good ties with Muslim nations of the Gulf, his winning Saudi investments, his taking ‘selfies’ with Indian Muslims in the UAE? Is his government seeking to drive in reverse gear now? 

If India thinks it can annoy countries, whatever their political stance and composition, and remain friendly with them, it is seriously mistaken. 

 (The writer is President of the Commonwealth Journalists Association)