Dhaka, Dec 4: India should “unequivocally” recognise the July-August uprising, which toppled prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s regime, to start bilateral ties afresh, a key aide of Bangladesh’s interim government said on Wednesday.
In a Facebook post, Mahfuj Alam – considered a de facto minister in the interim government and a key leader of Bangladesh’s Anti-Discrimination Students Movement – noted that the Indian establishment tried to portray the uprising as “something militant, anti-Hindu, and an Islamist takeover” and asked India to “change the Post ‘75 playbook and realise the new Bangladesh realities.”
“This (recognition) is the first thing to start with. Bypassing the July uprising, the foundation of new Bangladesh will be detrimental to the relationship of both (the) countries.”
“Indophiles, or Indian allies in this part of Bengal” were thinking that things were going to cool down and bypassing the July uprising and the “fascist’s atrocities would not cost them anything,” Alam wrote.
It was Alam’s organisation that that led widespread protests against Hasina’s Awami League-led government over a controversial job quota system starting mid-July resulting in toppling the five-term prime minister. Three days after Hasina fled to India on August 5, Muhammad Yunus, a Nobel laureate, took over as the Chief Adviser of the interim government.
The tension between the two neighbours simmering since August 5 aggravated further with the arrest of the Hindu monk Chinmoy Krishna Das last week.
Alam’s comments came as Dhaka-Delhi relations witness a major strain with India expressing concerns over exposure of Bangladesh’s Hindu community to fright, a notion which Bangladesh vehemently opposed.
Indian Foreign Secretary’s visit to B’desh
Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri is likely to visit Bangladesh next week for a foreign secretary-level meeting, amid tensions between the two countries.
Foreign Adviser Md Touhid Hosain said the scheduled Foreign Secretary-level Foreign Office Consultation (FOC) between Bangladesh and India will take place in Dhaka on December 9 or 10, the state-run BSS news agency reported.
It will be the first high-level visit by a senior Indian government official to Bangladesh since the interim government came to power on August 8 after the ouster of Sheikh Hasina as prime minister.
During the high-level consultation, Foreign Secretary Md Jashim Uddin and Indian Foreign Secretary Misri will lead their respective delegations, the news agency said.
The discussions are expected to cover a range of bilateral issues, including the potential extradition of Hasina and visa-related matters, it said. (PTI)
