The foreign minister has said Bangladesh and India relations have “withstood the test of time” and become “increasingly interlinked” ahead of a change in India’s political regime.
“The engagement is intense at all levels, from highest political leadership to officials down to common people,” Abul Hasan Mahmood Ali said on Friday.
He said the mutual respect and understanding particularly of each other’s concerns and priorities had put the relationship on solid fundamentals.
He referred to the India’s role in Bangladesh’s 1971 war of independence and said India and its people had “a special place” in the hearts of Bangladeshis, and “a permanent niche” in Bangladesh’s history.
And both sides became increasingly interlinked through engagements in “almost all conceivable sectors of cooperation”, he said.
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Ali was speaking at a national council of ‘Bangladesh-India Friendship Society’, a civil society group, at Dhaka University.
He made the comment at a time when India’s BJP led by Narendra Modi won the general elections in a landslide victory and set to form a new government in couple of days.
There had been a lot of discussions in Dhaka during the election campaign as Modi remarked that ‘illegal Bangladeshi migrants in India should pack and leave’ on May 16 when the results would be announced.
However, several former ambassadors of both India and Bangladesh, senior journalists and political analysts found no cause for concern as they believed it was mostly rhetoric and India did not change its foreign policy with the change of regime.
Indian High Commissioner in Dhaka Pankaj Saran also had said that India’s policy did not change with the change of government.
Saran who was also present at the function on Friday said friendship between India and Bangladesh was good for the people of both sides and good for the region.
He said Bangladesh and India would have to prosper and grow together for peace and prosperity for the countries and the region, a message that he said should be spread in both parts of the border.
The foreign minister, however, did not speak about the regime change in India on Friday.
He tried to portray the current bilateral relations and the importance of it for both sides as well as for the region.
Mahmood Ali said the relationship was based “on a multitude of commonalities–historical, cultural, linguistic, religious, ethnic and social and what not”.
He said it was defined in 1971 when the Indian leadership, the government and people stood beside Bangladesh and “offered unstinting support to the cause of our independence and sovereignty”.
But it got a formal shape during the Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and Indira Gandhi regime, months after 1971, and that relationship was “revitalized and given a new direction” in the last five years by the Hasina and Manmohan regimes.
He said both leaders expressed “the strongest commitment to address the common development challenges and for widening and deepening our relationship for mutual benefit”.
India rolled out an $800 million line of credit and $200 grants in what is its largest ever one-time assistance to any country.
Bangladesh has also addressed India’s concerns over extremism.
The foreign minister said apart from bilateral relations, “we have now embarked on sub-regional and regional cooperation in certain sectors”.
“The relationship has matured from historical connections to a multi-faceted, dynamic, complex and comprehensive realm, as it stands today,” he said.
Ali said both sides attached “highest importance to attaining a stable, peaceful and economically prosperous region”.
However, he said in all of these there was no alternative to “peoples’ camaraderie”.
He said there had been “emotional bond” and people-to-people contacts and “we need to nurture and leverage it as a catalyst to further enhance the bilateral ties”.
Both sides have “firm commitment” to set an example of “good neighbourliness” in the region and thereby create “a legacy for our posterity”.
He believed the two sides needed to put heads together and “think of ways and means by which we can strengthen, deepen, widen and consolidate this unique bilateral relationship”.
“We all dream of a safe, happy and prosperous habitat for the people of this region,” he said.
“Let us all play our respective roles for the fulfilment of that dream.”
Source: Bd news24
