NEW DELHI: India and Bangladesh on Saturday demonstrated strong commitment towards “fraternal” relationship based on cooperation and connectivity to send a message to Pakistan with which both of them have fraternal ties anchored in history but have strained relations in the present.
Despite not signing Teesta Water Sharing Agreement, the importance of the visit of Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is not lost in India or in the neighbourhood. The two countries signed 22 agreements in total – 4 in defence, 5 in civil nuclear energy and space and others to further trade and connectivity between the two countries. Prime Minister Narendra Modi also assured Bangladesh of bringing the Teesta Water Sharing Agreement towards finalisation soon.
After the slew of agreements signing, Prime Minister Hasina also honoured seven Indian Army soldiers who laid down their lives for liberation of Bangladesh in 1971 War. The war is the common factor in the histories of India, Bangladesh and Pakistan; and had altered the political map of South Asia permanently.
“History of Bangladesh has been written by the blood of the Indian martyrs along with valiant freedom fighters of Bangladesh. They fought together for the independence of Bangladesh. The story of their sacrifice will be remembered from generation to generation in our countries,” Prime Minister Hasina said in her statement while exhorting both countries to work towards “shared peace and prosperity”.
The honouring of seven Indian martyrs is part of her government’s long drawn efforts to recognise India’s role and honour sacrifices of 1661 soldiers in the 1971 war. In July 2011 the Bangladesh government conferred the Bangladesh Freedom Award, the highest civilian award for a foreign national, on former Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Later Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and President Pranab Mukherjee were also given the award. The Sheikh Hasina government has also brought the traitors of 1971 War to justice, a move that has not gone down well with Pakistan.
Prime Minister Modi also, without naming Pakistan, hit out at the neighbour in the West during the felicitation programme for perpetrating atrocities on Bangladesh population, then East Pakistan. “Today is the day to remember the sacrifices of the martyrs of India and Bangladesh. Today is also the day to reject the abhorrent mentality behind the tragedy imposed on Bangladesh,” Prime Minister Modi said.
The Indian Prime Minister also enumerated the India-Bangladesh template of good relationship obliquely hinting at Pakistan’s mentality to scuttle development initiatives in the region.
“There is a mentality in South Asia opposed to the approach of India and Bangladesh to promote development; this mentality nurtures and inspires terrorism. The mentality which influences those who plan policies under it and which regards terrorism as higher than humanism, destruction greater than development and annihilation better than creation,” Modi said at Delhi’s Sam Manekshaw centre.
Later Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar told the New Indian Express in response to a question that there was “fraternal relationship” between the two countries. “Clearly our relation with erstwhile East Pakistan is different from relationship with West Pakistan. Now are there lessons of one which can be carried to other? Quite frankly yes. Today the benefits of cooperation, benefits of connectivity, benefits of trade, the benefit of cooperation against terrorism, which is a threat to both India and Bangladesh, are for there to see. It is up to others to pick up those lessons and decide which one of them they want to use,” Jaishankar told the Express.