Jaishankar meets Bangladesh FM, backs BIMSTEC cooperation; subtly rejects Muhammad Yunus's call to revive SAARC

India cold-shouldered the calls by Yunus and Sharif and rather signalled its intent to pursue regional cooperation through the BIMSTEC, which included Bangladesh, but not Pakistan, which played spoilsport and blocked several initiatives within the SAARC.

New Delhi: India stressed regional cooperation within the framework of the BIMSTEC and tacitly rejected the recent attempts by the interim government of Bangladesh to revive the SAARC, as External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar had a meeting with his counterpart in Muhammad Yunus’s regime in Dhaka, Md. Touhid Hossain, in Muscat on Sunday.

Jaishankar and Hossain met on the sideline of the Indian Ocean Conference 2025 in the capital of Oman, even as a delegation of senior officials of the Border Guards Bangladesh of the neighbouring nation reached New Delhi for a meeting with the top brass of the Border Security Force of India.

This is going to be the first such engagement between the border-guarding forces of the two nations after the relations between New Delhi and Dhaka came under stress following the collapse of Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League government in Bangladesh on August 5, 2024, in the wake of widespread protests against the crackdown on the agitation by students and youths demanding the end of the reservation in recruitment to the government jobs.

“Met Foreign Affairs Adviser Md. Touhid Hossain of the Interim Government of Bangladesh. Conversation was focused on our bilateral relationship, as also on BIMSTEC,” Jaishankar posted on X after the meeting with his counterpart. “It was okay,” Hossain briefly told journalists after the meeting with the external affairs minister of India, without elaborating.

Jaishankar referring to the BIMSTEC in his post on X about his meeting with Hossain was significant as Yunus over the past few months repeatedly called for the revival of the SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation), twice after the meetings with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif of Pakistan in New York and Cairo.

India cold-shouldered the calls by Yunus and Sharif and rather signalled its intent to pursue regional cooperation through the BIMSTEC (Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation), which included Bangladesh, but not Pakistan, which played spoilsport and blocked several initiatives within the SAARC.

After back-to-back terror attacks in India by outfits based in Pakistan, Modi had declined to attend the 19th SAARC summit that his then counterpart M Nawaz Sharif had planned to host in Islamabad in November 2016. The leaders of other nations had also decided to stay away leading to the cancellation of the conclave. The SAARC has remained in an impasse since then.

“Every coastal nation in the Indian Ocean region should ensure that their growth and prosperity are based on mutual trust, respect, and shared interests,” Hossain said, addressing the Indian Ocean 2025 conference, subtly sending out a message to New Delhi amid allegations by a section of the student and youth leaders, who spearheaded the protests against the Awami League government, that India had been allowed to undermine the sovereignty of Bangladesh during Sheikh Hasina’s regime.

The relations between New Delhi and Dhaka came under stress over India’s protest against the persecution of Hindus and other minority communities in Bangladesh after the change of government in the neighbouring nation, India’s silence over the request by the interim government of Bangladesh for extradition of Sheikh Hasina or its protest against her virtual addresses delivered from India on recent developments in Bangladesh, including the vandalism and demolition of the historic residence of her father and the founder of the nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.