Dilip Simeon's blog

NB: December 1971 is a time I remember vividly. I was in Kolkata and travelled to Purnea in North Bihar to meet my dear comrade Lalloo, ( Rabindra Ray ). We were then amongst the last remaining comrades from amongst our collegiate group who were still in what was known as 'the underground'. That story has been recounted in fictional form in my novel, Revolution Highway , and I will not recount it here.  The posts below are a small collection of materials (from among many) I have placed in the public domain which are connected to Bangladesh and the political developments of that turbulent time. They should be self-explanatory.  I offer my deepest respect and condolences to all the soldiers and activists who perished in 1971. It was in many respects the most formative year of my life. I can never forget it.  DS An Open Letter to the world on the Bangladesh crisis of 1971 Remembering Rabindra Books reviewed - Deb Mukharji: 1971, Bangladesh and the Blood Telegram Imtiaz ...

NB: I have just one comment to make on this issue, communalism of every hue thrives on state support whether open or covert. This is the ideology of choice for the ruling classes of South Asia. It has led to the criminalisation of state structures and the near-complete erosion of justice. It remains to be seen if civil society awakens to this ideological disease; or continues to tolerate it. DS Despite Islam being declared as its state religion since 1988, Bangladesh’s nationalism has been primarily defined in a cultural and linguistic idiom and it sees itself as a secular nation. The ruling Awami League claims a commitment to the secular values on which the republic was founded and is considered “minority friendly”. As Prime Minister  Sheikh Hasina  and her party have had an uninterrupted tenure since 2009, one would think that secularism would have strengthened under her regime. Yet secular voices have become somewhat muted in  Bangladesh. The recent communal violence...

The violence against the Hindu minority in Bangladesh is an ominous development. But it is also a reminder of one cardinal truth: All of South Asia is “tied together in a single garment of destiny,” to borrow Martin Luther King’s phrase from a different context. Violence in one place will spill over to another; freedom endangered in one place will inevitably corrode the freedom of others. We have tried to act as if this was not true. But that modus vivendi has been unravelling for a while. Anti-Hindu violence in Bangladesh is not new. The current violence is strategically timed. It is surely not a coincidence that the violence coincides with targeted attacks on Hindus in Kashmir. The intent is not just local ethnic terror, but a deepening of the communal divide in India. It is tempting to say that this violence is a strategic act by particular organised groups, perhaps with transnational links. It is not organically embedded in society. This is a comforting thought, and can empower u...

Deb Mukharji: For Indian Diplomats in Pakistan, the Run up To the 1971 War Was a Very Tense Time      1971. The most cataclysmic year in the history of the sub-continent since the Partition of India in 1947. Even as we celebrate the 50th anniversary of  Muktijuddho , the War of Liberation, India’s  decisive military victory  over Pakistan and the emergence of Bangladesh in the comity of nations, one must remember the extreme price exacted by a vengeful Pakistan army, the countless innocent men killed, the countless women violated. There had been unease in the relations between the two wings of Pakistan from the very early days. Mohammed Ali Jinnah’s refusal to accept Bengali as a state language, even though it was the language of the majority, had caused him to be heckled in Dhaka University in 1948. The language movement simmered and burst into flames with the killing of students on February 21, 1952, since immortalised as ‘ ekushe ’, and now observed by...

NB: The veracity of this report is contested, because this may be part of a campaign promoted by opponents of Sheikh Hasina. There are indeed well-respected persons who seem to have assisted this expose. Readers can make their own assessment. DS An explosive investigation reveals how a criminal gang is colluding with the security forces of Bangladesh and has links to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Undercover reporters with the I-Unit expose how a former street mafia claims to have captured a state. The brother of Bangladesh’s army chief boasts that he can use police and paramilitary units to abduct rivals and earn millions in bribes. Documents obtained by the I-Unit also show that head of the army has helped a convicted killer evade justice. And how the country’s military intelligence service has secretly bought spyware from Israel – a country that Bangladesh does not recognise – that can monitor the prime minister’s political rivals. The I-Unit invited all those involved in this inve...

Alarm bells are ringing in Delhi at Beijing’s potential involvement in the hydro-politics of India and Bangladesh. Foreign Secretary  Harsh Shringla’s sudden visit to Dhaka  on August 18-19 is being seen in this light. China has offered a $987.27-million loan to Bangladesh for a comprehensive management and restoration project on the Teesta, a river Bangladesh shares with India. The loan agreement is to be signed by December this year. The project will be implemented by Power Construction Corporation of China, or Power China, beginning 2021.  Despite China’s collaboration with Bangladesh in the Brahmaputra basin since 2006, Chinese companies were not present on the ground till now. Although official statements say that Shringla’s meetings were confined to ongoing bilateral issues, it is unlikely that Chinese involvement in the Teesta basin was not discussed. Chinese companies would be involved all along the 113-km route of the river in Bangladesh: managing flood cont...

Camelia Kamal’s Facebook inbox is inundated with dozens of messages everyday — most of them are rape threats and fundamentalists claiming they’d murder her. She has shared her phone number with just a handful of people and doesn’t check the messages in the inboxes of her social media accounts, unless she spots a familiar name while scrolling. Kamal, is known to her readers, followers and haters as Foring Camelia, an atheist blogger who writes extensively on atheism, secularism, feminism, LGBT rights and free speech. She has more than 73,000 followers on Facebook. Kamal, who had been receiving online threats since 2013, fled Bangladesh in 2015, along with her husband Subrata Adhikary who is better known as Subrata Shuvo, also a blogger who writes on atheism, following a spate of killings of atheist writers and intellectuals by Islamic fundamentalists in the country. Shuvo was in jail for 42 days, before he was released on bail, for ‘hurting religious sentiments’. Kamal and Shuvo are...

NB: This is especially ironic because of India's role in the emergence of Bangladesh as an independent country; and China's furious opposition to the break-up of Pakistan in 1971. China even used its veto to block Bangladesh's entry into the UNO in August 1972. (India had supported China's membership of the Security Council).  DS India has gone into overdrive to initiate new projects in Bangladesh and improve cross-border trade. This week it delivered ten broad-gauge locomotives to Dhaka, and earlier this month, that is, July 2020, it launched a multi-modal transport link opening up supply lines from Chittagong port to its northeastern states. This is in the wake of China’s successful economic diplomacy. China announced tariff exemptions for 97 percent of all exports from Bangladesh (excluding narcotics-based products) from 1 July 2020.  This decision addressed Bangladesh’s yawning trade deficit with China and the economic hardships caused by the pandemic. Bei...

there are indications that Pakistan and Saudi Arabia may have had prior knowledge that the coup d'etat would take place. Both countries recognised the "Islamic Republic of Bangladesh" very soon after Mujib's death. Clearly, this represented some level of coordination between Islamabad and Riyadh. The coincidence is simply too coincidental.. .     Lawrence Lifschultz has been writing on Bangladesh in diverse journals and newspapers from the Far Eastern Economic Review (Hong Kong) to The Guardian (London), the Economic & Political Weekly (Mumbai), and The Nation (New York) for nearly four decades.  In this recent interview with Anisur Rahman, Chief Reporter BSS, he reflects on his first meeting with Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in 1970 and the events surrounding Sheikh Mujib's death. Lifschultz once again brings new details of this tragic history to light. (Special to The Daily Star) Anisur Rahman (AR): Could you recall your personal memories of Bangabandhu durin...

The  strongest cyclone in recorded history  flattened the Bay of Bengal this week, coming after both Indian West Bengal and the country of Bangladesh. Massive and successful early warning systems and the movement of 2.4 million people into shelters kept India’s and Bangladesh’s loss of life to 80 dead. That compares to half a million dead in a cyclone in 1970, and 3500 dead in 2007. The 100-mile an hour winds on landfall nevertheless destroyed thousands of homes, leaving people without shelter. On May 18 when tropical cyclone Amphan was still out in the Bay of Bengal and before landfall, it was clocked as the most powerful tropical superstorm in recorded history. In the areas worst hit,  Alex Ward at Vox reports,  90% of clinics, community centers and businesses were destroyed. He notes that hundreds of Bangladeshi villages are underwater and a million have been left without electricity. Ward says that victims of the cyclone are refusing to go to shelters where ...

That Majed stayed as Ahmed Ali in Kolkata for two decades suggests that Indian intelligence agencies probably knew about him and that he may have been under their protection. A good indication of their complicity is the fact that Majed’s presence in Kolkata was not politicised. This is in contrast to the BJP’s high-pitched campaign against Mamata Banerjee in 2014 of harbouring Islamic terrorists Did India just gift a hanging to  Bangladesh  in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic? On Sunday April 12, at one minute past midnight former  Bangladesh  Army Captain Abdul Majed was hanged at Dhaka Central Jail. He was one of the twelve  Bangladesh  Army officers convicted in the assassination of the founder of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman on August 15, 1975. They killed more than 20 members of Mujib’s family - only his two daughters,  Sheikh Hasina  and Sheikh Rehana, being out of the country, fortuitously escaped the bloodbath. Five of...