New Delhi: India will continue to take up the issue of attacks on Hindus in Bangladesh with the Interim Government of the neighbouring country, external affairs minister S Jaishankar said at a Parliamentary panel meeting in the national capital on Saturday. He also said that the request from Bangladesh for a meet between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Muhammad Yunus, head of the Interim Government in Bangladesh, on the sidelines of the forthcoming BIMSTEC Summit, is under consideration.
Jaishankar told members of the Parliamentary Consultative Committee for External Affairs – all of them MPs from various political parties – that Dhaka maintains the attacks on Hindus in that country is ‘politically motivated’ rather than ‘minority targeted’. However, India is continuing to take up this issue with the Government of Bangladesh.
The EAM is known to have told the members that SAARC has become inactive due to Pakistan’s approach, hence India’s efforts to strengthen the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC).
In the past, during every SAARC event, Pakistan is known to have stalled all discussions by raising the Kashmir issue. The Yunus-les Interim Government in Dhaka has been urging India to revive SAARC but New Delhi is more keen on BIMSTEC, of which Pakistan is not a member. The BIMSTEC Summit is to be held in Bangkok, Thailand, from April 2 to 4. Jaishankar told the Panel that Modi may attend the summit and his meeting with Yunus is under consideration.
Modi will visit Sri Lanka in April though, the EAM confirmed.
The Indian PM had a record number of meetings with Sk Hasina when she was the prime minister of Bangladesh. After she was forced to flee the country on August 5, 2024, Modi has shown no inclination to interact directly with Yunus. And this is not without reason.
Yunus, from the start, has spoken about mending bridges with Pakistan, the country from which Bangladesh broke away in 1971 with India’s assistance, due to continuous atrocities on the Bengali-speaking population. It has not gone down with Modi that Bangladesh’s minority Hindu population that was very much a part of the country’s freedom struggle, is today facing atrocities.
Yunus has also demanded that India extradite Hasina to be tried on cooked-up murder and other charges in Bangladesh. This is something India cannot do for the country’s own interests.
