Bangladesh : Clear and present concern

Originally posted as a comment here, turned out good so reposting it.

The recent spate of bombings in Bangladesh has awoken world and India to the situation in Bangladesh. I think as dastardly as these blasts are, one consequence ironically is that world is becoming increasingly concerned. The security concerns for India are most grave, and yet, I am afraid that our approach to this will be short sighted as well as hamhanded.

Nitin and Jaffna have posted about this. In my view the perception about secularism and tolerance of Bangladesh are a bit misplaced or exaggerated.

Soon after coup in which Sheik Mujib -Ur- Rehman was butchered along with his family, Bangladesh was declared Islamic Republic, to this date that is what it is.
In fact, Bangladesh (Former East Bengal) has been slowly islamisized since turn of century.It is not a well known fact that British had tried to push a cleft between Muslims and Hindu in Bengal by diving that state on religious basis, what is more it encouraged Muslims to assert a different and often antagonistic position against Hindus. The manifesto of Bengali muslims was circulated by maulvis and in the process raised muslim peasantory against Hindu landlords, this process was to ultimately result in Partition.

Partition saw the worst instances of violence in Bengal. Suprisingly while there are lots of books and movies about division of Punjab, there is hardly any work on division of bengal.(In my opinion it can be due to difference of bengali and punjabi mindset).

After Partition this process got stalled and even reversed (to some extent) due to resentment against punjabi discrimination.Punjabi Muslims considered Bengali Muslims to be inferior (Dark, Small and Rice Eaters).This resentment ofcourse resulted in creation of Bangladesh in 1971.At that time it was secular republic but as I wrote before this state changed after coup.

In the intervening decade the process of islamization continued and the hindus were marginalised.However the reasons it was not realized in India were ,apart from apathy of elites/chattering classes for anything hindu, The medium of radicalism was still to a large extent Bengali which defeated the very purpose and terror was not considered exportable commodity.

However in the last decade large number of Madrassas with Wahabi money have been established whose medium of instruction is arabic and the only subject that is covered is theology. This is no different on Indian side.

This is radicalizing the populace at a rate much greater than previous decades, effectively alienating them from their Bengali Culture (To understand how the people are "arabised" , effectively erasing their traditional identity, it is instructive to read "Among the believers" by V.S. Naipaul ).

These radicals have a significant vote share resulting in their participation (Jamat- e-Islami)in present regime headed by Begum Khalida Jia ,widow of slain army dictator Jia- Ur-Rehman, making any concrete step against going radicalism impossible.
It is not unusual to hear cries of "We are taliban, and we will make Bangladesh Afganistan" in rallies of fundamentalist.

Apart from political compulsion, there is economic incentive in form of petro dollars as well as territorial ambition by inclusion of districts of Assam and Bengal , (whose demography has been changed by Bengladeshi influx) in Bangladesh.All this, especially the last demands immediate attention from India.
Sadly, our elites/chattering classes retain the same indifferecne.

All this is courtsey Arun Shourie's latest book .