External affairs minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar has called out leaders of Bangladesh’s interim government for making “absolutely ridiculous” charges against India, days after meeting Touhid Hassan, his counterpart from the neighbouring country’s caretaker administration, in Oman, amid unprecedented strain in ties between the two nations.
“If every day, someone in the interim government stands up and blames India for everything…some of those things if you look at the reports, are absolutely ridiculous. You cannot, on the one hand, say that ‘I would now like to have good relations with you’, but I wake up every morning and blame you for everything that goes wrong. It is a decision that they must make,” S Jaishankar said at a public function in New Delhi.
Highlighting India’s “special” relationship with Bangladesh, which goes back to 1971, when the Indian Army and the Mukti Bahini liberated what was then known as East Pakistan from West Pakistan (Pakistan), Jaishankar asked Bangladesh to “make up their minds” on the kind of relationship it wants with India.
Further, the minister mentioned “two aspects” of the current problem in the India-Bangladesh bilateral ties.
“The first is the communal attacks on the minorities. What is very concerning for us is the spate of attacks on the minorities. It obviously is something that impacts our thinking. It is something we have to speak up about, which we have done,” he stated.
India has repeatedly raised with Bangladesh the issue of attacks on Hindus, the largest minority in the latter country, a Muslim-majority state. The attacks began following the August 2024 ouster and escape to Delhi of then prime minister Sheikh Hasina amid rising public protests.
On its part, Bangladesh, while downplaying the attacks on members of its Hindu community, has asked India to extradite Sheikh Hasina to face trial for the “mass genocide” of protestors during the uprising against her “authoritarian” and “India-leaning” regime.
Meanwhile, the “second aspect,” Jaishankar said, is Bangladesh’s domestic politics, saying it is something one can “agree with or disagree with”.
“New Delhi has sent a clear message that we want things to calm down. But we don’t appreciate their constant hostile messaging towards India,” the ex-foreign secretary added.
Jaishankar previously met Touhid Hossain, the foreign affairs advisor in Bangladesh’s interim government of Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York in September last year, marking the first high-level engagement between the countries since Sheikh Hasina’s exit.
