India’s top diplomat arrived in Bangladesh on Monday to ease tensions between the two neighboring countries that arose after the student-led revolution that ousted former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. India had strongly supported the former Prime Minister Hasina’s administration. The 77-year-old Hasina arrived in New Delhi by helicopter with some of her family members as the student protests in Bangladesh against alleged irregularities in the government job quota system gained momentum.
Bangladesh has announced that it will seek his extradition. This is the first time an Indian diplomat has visited Dhaka for formal discussions with the administration led by Muhammad Yunus, a Nobel laureate and leader of the interim government tasked with implementing democratic reforms. Indian Foreign Ministry Secretary Vikram Mishra arrived in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka on Monday for the first in-person meeting between high-ranking officials from both countries since Hasina’s departure.
“It is necessary to acknowledge that there has been a qualitative change in the relationship between the two countries,” Bangladeshi Foreign Minister Towhid Hossain said on Sunday ahead of his visit to Egypt. “We must move forward with the relationship by accepting reality,” he said. Mishra was scheduled to meet with Touhid and Yunus while he was in Dhaka.
India has been accusing the government of failing to adequately protect its minority Hindu community from retaliatory attacks after Hasina’s exile in Muslim-majority Bangladesh. Tensions have been further heightened by the arrest of a prominent Hindu religious figure in Bangladesh last month on sedition charges. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP) and its supporters have urged their government to take a tougher stance on Dhaka.
The Yunus administration has repeatedly acknowledged and condemned attacks on Hindus, and in some cases, it believes they were motivated by politics rather than religion. Yunus has accused India of exaggerating the extent of the violence and running a “propaganda campaign” against his government. There have been many anti-India street protests in Bangladesh since Hasina’s escape.
On Sunday, hundreds of activists of the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) marched to the Indian High Commission (Embassy) in Dhaka, but dispersed peacefully after police blocked the way.
