Let cricket break the ice

A full-blown crisis currently commandeering the India and Bangladesh relationship, interestingly, also has all the elements fit for resolution — and the opportunity for New Delhi to turn the tables on all the gloom-and-doom naysayers announcing the end of the very special relationship that has survived at least since 1971.

On top of the charts is a resolution of the cricket crisis, triggered by fringe Hindu outfits a fortnight ago demanding the banning of Bangladeshi cricketer Mustafizur Rahman from the Indian Premier League, which starts in March. The BCCI fell in line and young Mustafizur was sent home packing. The irate Bangladeshis have since been unstoppable, pulling out of the India matches of the T20 World Cup — including playing at the holy grail, Eden Gardens in Kolkata — and demanding that their share of cricket be moved, just like Pakistan, to neutral Sri Lanka.

Here, then, is an idea. Perhaps the Bangladesh matches can be moved to South India where the audience is less Bengali and not as intimately aware of the precious turbulences Amitav Ghosh has chronicled (The Shadow Lines, The Hungry Tide, Gun Island) so intimately over the decades. Now’s the time for a top BJP leader to reach out to the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) — and vice-versa — and its boss, Tarique Rahman, these days storming the country with rallies and meetings in preparation for the February 12 elections.

After all, if the RSS can talk to the Communist Party of China, everything else is possible too.

The idea is for both sides to save face, let cooler minds talk and not hotheads run away with the programme. Far worse has transpired in our bilateral history. In fact, the euphoria of 1971 didn’t last that long; less than four years later, on August 15, 1975, Bangladeshis were killing Bangladeshis again.

Fast forward to the present. Today’s story is no longer about Mustafizur Rahman or even Sheikh Hasina, who in her interview to The Print described the banning of the Awami League in the coming Bangladeshi polls as “authoritarianism dressed up as transition.” Or the fact that she has delivered a voice message at the Foreign Correspondents Club in Delhi which basically delivered the same message. (It is said the compromise involved her not being present at the Club or delivering a video message.)

Fact is that the relationship between India and Bangladesh — both stirred and badly shaken since Hasina was overthrown in August 2024, and the much more recent, disturbing vengeance killings of innocent Hindus inside Bangladesh — is far too precious to not start damage control immediately.

A beginning has been made. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar travelled to Dhaka to pay India’s last respects at Khaleda Zia’s funeral. Last November, Bangladesh’s National Security Adviser Khalilur Rahman came to Delhi to meet India’s NSA Ajit Doval.

There are enormous stakes on both sides. Delhi needs Dhaka on board to secure its fragile North-East, a cocktail of tribes and religions and clans and political parties, as well as its rapidly changing East — and not just because elections are taking place in West Bengal and Assam, both states that border Bangladesh, in the next few months.

Hasina’s arrogance and misrule is cited by many as to why she was overthrown. It is equally true that Delhi overlooked much, including the fact that she and the BNP were always at loggerheads — the BNP twice didn’t contest the national elections, thereby exacerbating political strife at home.

But the reason why Hasina continued to be an India favourite, across the Congress-BJP spectrum, is because she was truly secular, understood the importance of keeping the Hindu minority safe, was in favour of open conversations as well as trade across the border. Most importantly, she held off the bad guys led by Pakistan’s ISI — they could have wreaked such damage in the Bay of Bengal region, making Dhurandhar in comparison look like a kitty party serving Darjeeling tea and watercress sandwiches.

Who can forget the enormous arms haul that was accidentally discovered when Tarique’s mother, the late Khaleda Zia, was prime minister and that was intended to stir up trouble in the Seven Sisters?

Still, the past is past. Today, Hasina is in Delhi and Delhi will never give her up — that much Dhaka must understand and even appreciate. That India doesn’t give up on its friends, no matter what the stakes are and however many tribunals demand she be returned because she is “guilty of crimes against humanity.”

Above all, the elites in both countries must realise that today’s India and Bangladesh is far younger, much more aspirational, ambitious — 63 per cent Bangladeshi and 52 per cent Indians are below 30. They don’t carry the baggage of the past. They were not even born when the liberation of Bangladesh took place. They would rather move on and schmooze — not brainstorm — about life. Even their vocabulary is different.

The way forward, then, is to sequester Hasina, and not allow her presence in India to contaminate the bilateral relationship. Naya Dhaka must understand that India’s enormous size and presence gives it an extraordinary leverage that middle powers can only dream of. If all goes according to plan, Khaleda’s son, Tarique, will be the new prime minister of Bangladesh in less than a month. By all accounts, he had a good meeting with Jaishankar. The time for both sides to reach across the divide is now.

The truth is that Dhaka needs Delhi even more today. Xi Jinping’s China may cut an even larger cheque for Tarique, like Xi did with Hasina in 2016, and Pakistan may begin to fish in the Bay. But everyone knows that Pakistan is more than 2,000 km away and its economy is in such a shambles that it has virtually handed over itself to China. The natural neighbour is India. The natural market is India. The natural partner is India.

That’s why cricket can become an ice-breaker and take the sting out of the tensions between the two sides. Let Litton Das meet Suryakumar Yadav. Let people play.