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DACCA — . The fumblings towards yet another conflict on the Indian subcontinent have begun. The nine-month-old military government of Bangladesh seems to be shaping up for a confrontation with its giant neighbor, India. For the past few months Bangladesh’s military leader, Major General Ziaur Rahman, who seized power last November, has been attempting to deal with the causes of the quarrel by discreet diplomacy. But it is now being said in Bangladesh’s capital, Dacca, that these approaches have proved fruitless, and the Bangladeshis have decided to go for broke by confronting ndia publicly and even preparing for the possibility of a real conflict. Last weekend General Ziaur Rahman told a widely cheering gathering in Dacca of Mukti Bahini ‘freedom fighters’ — the men who fought against Pakistan in 1971 — that they ‘‘might soon have to fight again to protect the independence of Bangladesh.”’ He announced that the Mukti Bahini would get new military training, so that they could reinforce the 65,000 men of the Bangladeshi army. The warning came three days after General Ziaur Rahman launched a strong attack on India at the Colombo non-aligned summit. During the conference Bangladeshi delegates lobbied for support against India and called it ‘‘neo-colonialist”’ and “expansionist.” In the past month there has been a resurgence of strident anti-Indian propaganda in the Bangladeshi press, with editorial writers talking of a ‘‘man-made tragedy which ‘could engulf the whole subcontinent.” The dispute with India involves two issues. First, Bangladesh alleges that India has broken, an agreement drawn up when the $300 million Farakka barrage was completed 11 miles inside Indian territory. The barrage complex, with a 20-mile feeder canal, is designed to divert water from the Ganges to the Hooghly river in an attempt to clear away the dangerous silting of the waterways around India’s port of Calcutta. According to Bangladeshi officials, the two countries agreed to conduct a brief test diversion of water in May, 1975, but India continued syphoning after the test ended. The diversion has had a marked effect on Bangladesh's agriculture. According to B. M. Abbas, the presidential adviser on irrigation and water control, during the dry season from mid-March to mid-May more than 70,000 acres of paddy were lost to drought; nearly two thirds of the tube wells could not be used; and serious salination problems developed in the south of Bangladesh as salt water began seeping up canals and rivers. The cost this year alone has been more than $2 million, and this will grow. General Ziaur’s second accusation is that India is training and arming guerrilla groups which since January have been making sabotage raids into the province of Mymensingh from base camps just inside the Indian border in the Meghalaya area. The guerrillas are mainly those supporters of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman who fled Bangladesh after the overthrow and murder of the sheikh a year ago. They are led by a flamboyant hero of the 1971 war against Pakistan, Kader Siddique, and have blown up bridges and government buildings and murdered local officials in the north. The martial law authorities in Dacca assert that they are trained by India’s Border Security Force, and claim to have captured documents and weapons proving the Indian connection. No doubt Bangladesh, at least in public, is exaggerating both issues. But they have now become the focus of intense anti-Indian feelings, the depth of which surprises even Western diplomats. Perhaps part of the government's aim is to use this as a means of uniting Bangladesh, no small attraction in a country which has gone through three coups d’etat in 12 months and is facing a new round of instability as next February's election approaches. India’s motives are more obscure. Admiral M. H. Khan, the Bangladesh navy’s chief of staff, hazards the guess that India wants to “destabilize” his country in the hope of imposing a more pro-Indian administration in Dacca. Given India's high-handed policies in the past towards its smaller neighbors, Sikkim and Nepal, other senior officials claim that it is just another manifestation, of Indian ‘arrogance.’ The prospect of overt Indian military action against Bangladesh might seem remote. What Indian government, after all, would want to take over 70 million poverty-stricken and hostile Moslems? But the fear in Dacca is that, if Mrs. Gandhi stumbles on the road to her New Democracy in India, she might exploit the quarrel with Bangladesh to create a wave of jingoist popularity to keep her in power.
Newspaper Details
Panama City News Herald
Panama City, Florida, US
Wed, Sep 08, 1976
Page 31
Full Page
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USA 15 Apr 2026
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