Indrani Bagchi
NEW DELHI: Iran is a strategic partner for India. India and Iran are cooperating in Afghanistan and India has taken considerable flak from the US about maintaining ties with Iran. So is Bangladesh, which is now one of India’s most important partners in the neighbourhood.
But for some time now, India’s security establishment has been tracking radio broadcasts by IranBangla Radio, a Bengali-language radio service which is part of an Iran-Bangladesh goodwill initiative, broadcasting radio programmes inside Bangladesh. India would normally not have bothered with this except for the fact that the radio service has been consistently putting out anti-India polemic and messaging, which is now a matter of growing concern to the government.
Foreign minister Salman Khurshid is scheduled to visit Dhaka in the coming weeks. Home minister Sushilkumar Shinde is also expected to be in Dhaka to sign a visa and extradition agreement.
India and Bangladesh have worked hard to improve relations with each other in the past couple of years. In fact, this bilateral relationship has seen the greatest degree of investment by the UPA government. Despite the inability of the Indian government to seal a deal on sharing Teesta river waters, the relationship has moved to a different plane.
But there remains a strong constituency that hews to the anti-India line. India is concerned that broadcasts like this could undo all the good work being put into the relationship. “Bangladesh has made no move to stop anti-India programming,” said officials tracking this development.
On the other hand, officials said, Iran’s own motives are under the scanner. The radio station is publicly owned, which means the government would have to bear responsibility for running anti-India broadcasts in Bangladesh. No one is quite sure where the programming is done, but they say its unlikely this is done in Bangladesh. Therefore, Iran has a greater responsibility to oversee the tone and tenor of its radio programming.
The matter is likely to be discussed between India and Bangladesh in the forthcoming discussions.
Source: The Times of India
