In Comments Of Bangladesh Minister, A Hint Of Recalibration Of Ties With India

Bangladesh's Junior Foreign Minister Humaiun Kobir's comments on the ties between India and Bangladesh is bound to create ripples in foreign policy circles as the comments are seen as an attempt to recalibrate a time-tested friendship to a more transactional relationship, where Dhaka views New Delhi as equals. This is being seen as Dhaka's attempt to rewrite the decades-old construct of the India-Bangladesh relationship amid the existing niggles over the presence of Sheikh Hasina and the hurdles that are stopping Tarique Rahman from visiting New Delhi even as India continues to push for normalisation of ties with steps like restarting tourist visas for Bangladeshis.

But Bangladesh, it seems, is in no hurry to respond to India's invite and the comments of Kabir, a close aide of Prime Minister Tarique Rahman, are seen as an attempt to redefine the future of the relationship.

"Your daily discussion at breakfast is India, at lunch it is India and at dinner also it is India... Think of your own country. Get out of this India fascination. India is just another country that we want a good working relationship with," Humaiun Kobir told journalists while answering questions on ties with India.

Foreign policy watchers have been asking about when the Bangladesh PM will visit India - given that it shares almost its entire land-boundary and New Delhi has stepped in with help especially earlier this year when the country faced a grave shortage of fuel.

Bangladesh has been looking to make new friends after signing multiple agreements with China with plans to buy fighter planes. Dhaka has also indicated that it wants to join the Mecca Pact, something that is likely to shift equations in the Indian subcontinent.

While Bangladesh is yet to respond to India's invite to Prime Minister Tarique Rahman for a bilateral visit, Rahman skipped the invite for the BRICS summit which he was invited to in the capacity of the Chair of the BIMSTEC. Bangladesh indicated that Dhaka wants Rahman's first India visit to be framed primarily around the bilateral relationship rather than a multilateral gathering.

Bangladesh said Tarique Rahman was not invited to the BRICS summit as PM of Bangladesh but as chair of the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC). But even as India and Bangladesh were discussing a bilateral visit in August in the backdrop of the invite from PM Modi, those plans fell through as Bangladesh fumed over former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina addressing an event in New Delhi.

India clarified that the government did not have any role in organising the event and it did not endorse the opinions expressed at the event.

Speaking on the state of India-Bangladesh ties, Bangladesh's National Parliament's Speaker Hafiz Uddin Ahmad said, "Bangladesh has some reservations about India especially the decision to give shelter to former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and allowed her the opportunity to conduct politics from there which we don't believe is how a friendly neighbour should behave".

"We want good relations with India but till now, we don't see indications that they want good relations," he added.

"In the past during the Awami League tenure, India-Bangladesh relations were described as a relationship between a husband and a wife by the then Foreign Minister. We don't want a husband-wife relationship. We want a relationship based on mutual respect as it should be between two sovereign nations," he added.

Bangladesh is holding off on deep or multilateral engagement with India due to its position on Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and domestic political pressure in Dhaka. India believes that the relationship must move beyond Sheikh Hasina and focus on people to people ties.

India's High Commissioner to Bangladesh, Dinesh Trivedi has pitched for a relationship based on issues that affect the common people of both the countries and not high-voltage political issues.

After meeting Bangladesh's Commerce Minister last month, Trivedi said, "Let us have people-to-people ties. Let us have business to business ties together. Politics will continue in its own way. But business and what is due to the common man - giving that is our responsibility".

India is keeping the doors open for normalisation of ties. Trivedi is meeting high-level officials in the current administration.