Sunday, December 17, 2000		Speaking generally

Lack of interest in our neighbours
By Chanchal Sarkar

OUR lack of interest in our neighbours and our region is already costing us dear and will do so even more. While Bangladesh and relations with it are enormously important to us, we have not fully grasped the significance of two gigantic mistakes of Sheikh Mujib. Though he declared secularism as a pillar of the new State, he backed from it in the next three years because he felt he must placate the fundamentalist Muslim elements. Thus was lost the battle of secularism in Bangladesh and Mujib’s successors, the military dictators, made all the possible political use of Islamic propaganda.

Mujib’s other mistake was not to recognize the separate identity and sentiments of the tribal people of the Chittagong Hill Tracts. They rebelled and there began decades of guerrilla conflict during which successive military governments in Dhaka tried to enforce, without success, a military solution and also attempted to people the hill region with Bengalis from the plains. Two years ago the Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, had the inspired good sense to make a pact with the northern tribals and one hopes that it will last. The Opposition in Bangladesh are dead against the pact.

What about in Hindus who should, by statistical calculation, have been 18 million in Bangladesh but are a little over 11 million? As many as 7 million people have, therefore, left Bangladesh. One of the effects of this large-scale migration is that land and property has been left behind by the Hindus. In 1965 during an Indo-Pakistan War President Ayub had passed an Enemy Property Act relating to the property of the Hindus who migrated. The government was made the custodian and protector of the property which could be leased out to others.

Here again has come a big mistake of the post-Liberation Bagladeshi government. This law was never annulled and today it covers 2.1 million acres and 40% of the Hindu households of Bangladesh. The name of the law was changed to Vested Property Act and all else remained the same. ‘Vesting’ went on till 1996 and the largest amount of vesting was in post-Liberation Bangladesh, during the rule of military dictators.

Not even many Bangladeshis know about his and Indians not at all and the Vested Property Act is thorn in the consciousness of Hindus. It must be said that the wresting of property under the Act was done to take advantage of weak neighbours not simply because those neighbours were Hindus. There have been examples where Muslims came to the aid of Hindu neighbours and instances when the Courts pronounced in favour of Hindus.

Human rights activists, distinguished lawyers and some political and public figures have called for the repeal of the Vested Property Act since 1979 but even a government of the Awami League does not dare to it because the Opposition will shout itself hoarse that the Awami League is a pawn of India. So the situation will continue for sometime until there is a government strong enough to do justice. But even if the law is rubbed from the statute book justice will not follow. Encroachments have gone on for so long, two generations, that it will be extremely difficult to right the wrongs. And it is most, most unlikely that those who have migrated to India will get their property back. The value of the vested property at current prices is equal to 70% of the G.D.P. of Bangladesh!

Time and again I wonder how advanced countries strain to preserve their heritage. To give as example the illustrated annual report to the Cambridge colleges show how carefully they protect their buildings, gardens and their rituals, dresses and ceremonies while investing in 21st century science, building new laboratories and museums and giving special attention to having more women in the universities.

This is such a contrast to what I hear of my Calcutta College, the once-famous Presidency College. "Gravely declined", is what witnesses, former students, say. Reading the report of the women’s college, Nawnham, in Cambridge I was surprised first by the change in the report’s presentation. It is now beautifully illustrated. The second surprise is to know that, some 60 years after World War II, the British Government has stopped funding the colleges except for a small amount through the university not directly to the colleges. But most surprising of all is that a college like Newnham is not dismayed by this cut off of funds from the government.

On the contrary the college is being resourceful in other ways — and it is forbidden to charge any fee that would fill the gap. So the effort is being made to increase the endowments and the income from conferences held during the vacations. At the same time the college is doing its utmost to protect students who will not have grants and it will discourage students from taking loans for their education.

Riffling through the pages of the report I was struck by the large number of people who donate money to the college. And I was saddened to see only one Indian name on the faculty list — a lecturer in Economics and only one name in the prestigious roll of Honorary Fellows, Dr Dharma Kumar, retired from the Delhi School of Economics.