The SAARC mechanism: Seeking an amicable divorce through multilateralism

I - Bengali nationalism and Indian hegemony

For the past 15 years, the question of Indian hegemony over Bangladesh was suppressed, often violently, under the Hasina regime. It has now resurfaced with a vengeance. There is little scope for a pro-Indian stance left in Bangladesh. Even those of us who felt some attachment to West Bengal now feel betrayed by Mamata Banerjee’s demand for UN peacekeepers to be sent to Bangladesh.And Mamata’s comments were hardly the worst thing to come from our erstwhile “liberal” allies in Kolkata – the pro-Bengali advocacy group Bangla Pokkho made comments openly celebrating the brutal murder of Jamaat affiliated lawyer Saiful Islam Alif, presenting it is a heroic re-enactment of 1971, and, thus, painfully reasserting the logic of Hasina’s permanent civil war in a sensitive moment. This kind of violently communal statement should make us question to what extent organisations like Bangla Pokkho genuinely promote Hindu-Muslim harmony. In the end, it was the political maturity of the traditional parties – the BNP and the much-reviled Jamaat – and the discipline they exercised over grassroots activists that prevented a catastrophic spiral of communal violence. (As a thought experiment, imagine the kind of rhetoric Amit Shah and Yogi Adityanath would have used had a Hindutva lawyer been lynched by Muslims in India). In the end, it was the Awami League and its allies in India that threatened to fan the flames of communal disharmony through disinformation and dangerous rhetoric. Let us take the logic of Bangla Pokkho’s Bengali nationalism to its natural conclusion: Bengali Muslims are only worthy of advocacy and support if they fully embrace Bengali secular nationalism. Rejecting Mujib and the Awami League is unacceptable – we can either be razakar Islamists or patriotic Bengali nationalists. There is no third way.But the same demand is never made of Bangladeshi Hindus, and their support for Hindu nationalism and the RSS’s irredentist ideology of Akhand Bharat (a direct threat to Bangladesh’s territorial integrity). It seems thus that the Bangladeshi Hindu is allowed to be a “stranded Indian”, to support a unitary Indian state and the subordination of Bangladesh to this state. They are not subjected to any loyalty test – indeed subjecting them to a loyalty test is, rightly, condemned as inherently communal and divisive. 

But the Bengali Muslim is not allowed to resist this subordination, and is constantly subjected to the loyalty test. Subjecting them to this loyalty test is not seen as communal – it is seen as secular. These words have completely lost their original meaning in our present context. The Bengali Muslim is, thus, always secretly a razakar, always one step away from committing a genocide, and the only acceptable solution is to subordinate their identity to a Mujibist Bengali nationalism, and ultimately to the Indian state. It is hard for the majority of Bangladeshis to feel common cause with this ideology, given the circumstances. It is increasingly apparent that the affinity that left-leaning people in the older generation felt towards India was based on a now-dead Nehruvian conception of India – India as a liberal, multi-religious hegemon waving the wand of regional harmony and secularism over Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and, one day, Pakistan. That era is firmly in the past. 

II - An overdue divorce

The conclusion seems clear: we would like a divorce from India. Not a war, not the restoration of the Bengal Sultanate – simply an amicable divorce that allows us to continue co-operating on issues like water-sharing, the climate crisis and trade. But what form should this amicable divorce take? Some would argue for an aggressive Islamic identity to counter the BJP’s Hindu nationalism, others for closer alliances to China. Some even seem to think that we can become a kind of South Asian Poland to India’s Russia, to form one part of a Western-led liberal alliance that exists to prevent emerging powers from claiming spheres of influence.I find these arguments lacking. Closer ties to America, China and Pakistan are more or less a fait accompli at this point – an inevitable reaction to rejecting Indian vassalage. I find it implausible that the Americans will cultivate Bangladesh into an anti-China (China is widely popular in Bangladesh) or an anti-India (India is an American ally) stronghold. More plausible is that both superpowers simply see the widespread resentment towards India in South Asia as an opportunity to advance their own interests.Similarly, I find the anxiety or excitement about ISI and Pakistan quite misguided. The world has changed a lot since the 1990s. Pursuing amity with Pakistan is neither the solution to all of our problems, nor is it a path to inevitable armed conflict with India and Islamisation. Perhaps some degree of intelligence sharing with ISI would help counter RAW operations in Bangladesh? It doesn’t seem unreasonable to suggest this, nor does it portend the reunification of Pakistan. Amity with Pakistan cannot, in and of itself, be seen as a security threat by India. Sri Lanka has a relationship of amity with Pakistan, extending even into security co-operation. Why can’t Bangladesh? My main issue with all of these proposals is that they can only imagine a relationship of antagonism towards India. They all seem centred on the idea that we must “defeat” India in the same manner that Baltic states imagine one day they will “defeat” Russia. 

This is a flawed approach to international relations. The goal should always be to seek greater integration and co-operation – I have no desire to live in a world carved into mutually antagonistic blocs. The solution, in my opinion, is to seek greater multilateral engagement.

The interim government has focused on two foreign policy planks to address the issue of India: an application for ASEAN membership, and calls to revive the SAARC mechanism. As someone who has long advocated for ASEAN membership, I was very pleased to see Muhammad Yunus approach Malaysia with this issue. However, this process is likely to take several years and could possibly end with our application being rejected. I cannot imagine that the average country in ASEAN is particularly thrilled by the thought of adding Bangladesh. 

In the short-term, this leaves the SAARC mechanism. Some have argued that the interim government’s focus on SAARC is confusing and misguided – a dead relic of General Ziaur Rahman’s legacy dug up to capitalise on an explosion of pro-BNP sentiment. 

I would like to argue the opposite: reviving the SAARC mechanism could be our best bet for a productive relationship not only with India, but with all countries in the region, and with China. 

III - Alphabet soup: ASEAN, BIMSTEC or SAARC?

There is no single country in ASEAN that can dominate the others, no ASEAN country is a nuclear power. By contrast, SAARC contains India and Pakistan, two nuclear-armed and heavily militarised countries that both claim spheres of influence over others. This has prevented SAARC from becoming a platform for genuine regional co-operation and integration. The basic idea of the SAARC mechanism was simply to create a platform where the smaller countries in the region – Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Maldives, Sri Lanka, Nepal – could be co-equal to the two nuclear powers, just as every nation big or small has equal voting rights in the UN General Assembly. This multilateral framework offered an alternative to bilateral negotiations where one country was clearly economically and militarily dominant over another. 

Consider our longstanding issues with water-sharing and border killings. In bilateral negotiations we are forced into a position where we are much weaker in every respect than India, and thus struggle to find favourable terms. A multilateral framework where we would get support from the other countries (who also seek to create a region where India is unable to exercise undue hegemonic influence over them) could in theory help us negotiate better terms for everyone. The last SAARC summit was held in 2014 in Kathmandu. Then, on September 18th 2016 militants affiliated to Pakistan carried out the deadliest attack on Indian security forces that had been seen in two decades, near the town of Uri in Jammu and Kashmir. India boycotted the subsequent SAARC summit, and none have been held since. 

BIMSTEC – an alternative regional grouping founded in 1997 that excludes Afghanistan and Pakistan, but includes Myanmar and Thailand – could appear to offer an alternative. As the main stumbling block is the inclusion of Pakistan and as we aspire to join the Southeast Asians, one could easily argue (as I am sure many Indians will): why not just go through BIMSTEC? Why not instead build up BIMSTEC as a platform for multilateralism?The problem with BIMSTEC is that it is dominated by a single nuclear power, and thus becomes another avenue for Indian hegemony rather than multilateralism. There is no one to balance India in BIMSTEC. The antagonism between India and Pakistan ultimately destroyed SAARC, but it is precisely this antagonism that it was designed to address – in theory they balanced each other. In practice they destroyed the whole effort. That brings us back to General Zia’s broken vision of regional co-operation. IV - Reviving the SAARC mechanism

If we are to revive SAARC in 2024, it will not be within the confines of the old paradigm. Firstly, it is in India’s interests to revive mechanisms for regional co-operation – its efforts to pursue purely bilateral engagements with South Asian states have only bred widespread resentment and tension. Multiple Indian commentators have acknowledged this. Retired Jawaharlal Nehru University professor Partha Ghosh, covering the tensions around minority violence in the Wire, writes: “During the India-Bangladesh secretary level meeting held on December 9th Bangladesh pleaded for the revival of SAARC. India must pick up the suggestion.”

Secondly, the issues around Bengali nationalism and closer ties to Pakistan require confronting the India-Pakistan rivalry directly, not just continuing to sweep it under the rug. At the heart of the tensions we face with India is the idea that Bangladesh was meant to be an anti-Pakistan state, a role that the Awami League embraced with much fervour. Now that we have abandoned this role, are we meant to be seen purely as an enemy? Forcing India and Pakistan into a shared multilateral framework will ultimately be necessary to confront these sensitive issues of history and identity. 

Finally, there is the question of China. India sees China’s bilateral engagements in the region (such as its BRI investments in Bangladesh) as a direct threat to its own interests. This is unfortunate, and prevents a fuller embrace of broader Asian integration.

A full revival of the SAARC mechanism in 2024 must acknowledge the rise of China as a superpower in Asia. This is not a reality that was immediately obvious at the turn of the century. Many predicted that China would stagnate and India would overtake it. Instead, the opposite has occurred – and many in India are now realising it is increasingly impossible that India will catch up to China’s level of development any time soon. 

There are some positive signs that India’s approach to China is softening, and even indications that Donald Trump may pursue a policy of rapprochement with Xi Jinping. 

Reviving SAARC must acknowledge this changed reality. China must at the least be upgraded to full observer status, and discussions should be initiated about full membership, with the full participation of India. One may ask: why should India ever agree to China being in SAARC? Given that the strategy of purely bilateral engagement seems to consistently favour China in the region over India, might it not be in India’s interests to bring China’s engagements in South Asia into some kind of multilateral framework?

The retired Indian diplomat and commentator M. K. Bhadrakumar, a strong critic of both the recent regime change in Bangladesh and the interim government, spoke positively of the idea of including China in SAARC in a blog post on Indian foreign minister S. Jaishankar’s recent visit to Pakistan: 

“The government’s real fear seems to be that if SAARC revives the old idea of China’s membership, Delhi may face isolation – and worse still, China may become the elephant in the room. But these are phobias that are not only out of sync with the spirit of the times but also grate against India’s growing self-confidence. A good case is there that the matrix can be turned into India’s advantage as well.”

There is a great hunger for increased multilateralism across the world, particularly after the horrors of Gaza and Ukraine. Perhaps Bangladesh could lead the way in this accursed and benighted subcontinent.●

Zain Ali is an analyst and commentator.