Baitul Mukarram in Dhaka reverberates with 'Go Back, Narendra Modi' slogans

Hundreds took out a rally from the national mosque of Bangladesh, protesting against the forthcoming visit of the Prime Minister of India to the country. The protesters slammed Modi for alleged persecution of Muslims in India and said that he was not welcome in Bangladesh.

Modi is set to visit Bangladesh from March 26 to 27. He will take part in the celebration of the Golden Jubilee of liberation of Bangladesh from Pakistan, the birth centenary of the country’s founder Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and the 50th anniversary of the Dhaka-Delhi diplomatic relations.

The protest at ‘Baitul Mukarram’ was organised by the radical “Hefazat-e-Islam Bangladesh”. But the Islamists are not the only ones agitating against the invitation Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina extended to her counterpart in New Delhi. The leftists are also protesting against it, not only citing alleged persecution of Muslims in India and arguing that the invitation to Modi went against the secular ethos of the 1971 liberation war of Bangladesh, but also criticising New Delhi for lack of progress on the long pending deal with Dhaka for sharing of water of common river Teesta. They also protested against killing of citizens Bangladesh by the border guards of India.

Read | A hero for all Indians: PM Modi on Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's birth anniversary

The scene had been different when another Indian Prime Minister had visited Dhaka five decades ago. Hundreds had gathered at the airport and thousands had lined up along the streets to welcome Indira Gandhi as she had landed in the capital of the newborn nation on March 17, 1972. The Suhrawardy Udyan, where 93,000 Pakistan Army personnel had surrendered to Indian Army just three months back, had turned into a sea of humanity. The “Joy Bangla” and “Joy Bharat” slogans had rent the air as jubilant crowd had cheered for Gandhi and Rahman as the leaders of the two nations had paid homage to the three million people, whom the Pakistan Army had slaughtered before losing the nine-month-long war to the Muktijoddhas (liberation warriors) of Bangladesh and the Indian Army.

Much water has flown down the Ganga and Padma since then.

Ever since Sheikh Hasina led the Awami League to return to power in Dhaka in January 2009, Bangladesh-India relationship was on a positive trajectory. The daughter of Sheikh Mujib never forgot how India contributed to the liberation of Bangladesh, how an Indian Army officer rescued her family from the custody of Pakistan Army in December 1971, how Indira Gandhi had got her and her sister Rehana from West Germany to New Delhi and provided them a secure place to stay after her father and the rest of the family had been assassinated in Dhaka on August 15, 1975.

So, she reversed the policy of the erstwhile Khaleda Zia Government to allow the insurgent outfits operating in the north-eastern states of India to set up camps in Bangladesh. The covert cooperation between the security agencies of the two neighbouring countries resulted in the arrest of several leaders of insurgent outfits in north-eastern states of India from their hide-outs in Bangladesh. A number of connectivity projects got rolling, promising economic boon for both Bangladesh as well as the landlocked north-eastern states of India. An agreement to settle the dispute over land boundary between the two nations was inked in 2011, which the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) initially opposed, but helped get it ratified by Parliament of India after the Modi Government came to power in 2014.

New Delhi also extended its support to the Hasina Government, pledging altogether $ 7.36 billion as loan to fund the development projects as she led her tiny nation of 16.3 million people towards graduating from a Least Developed Country to a Developing Country, registering an impressive economic growth of 8.4% just before the Covid-19 crisis. She also consolidated her position politically, decimating the opposition Bangladesh National Party and the Jamat-e-Islami. She cracked down hard on the radicals, at least during the first few years after her return to power in 2009. What, however, emerged as a cause of concern over the past few years were penetration of the Islamists into the rank and file of the Awami League.

Hasina came under pressure from the anti-India elements in Bangladesh as well as the radicals within and outside her party, not only due to delay on part of New Delhi to clinch the deal with Dhaka on Teesta, but also after the Modi Government introduced the Citizenship (Amendment) Act in December 2019. Dhaka was understood to have been irked by certain remarks made by Home Minister Amit Shah about religious persecution of minority Hindus in Bangladesh while piloting the proposed legislation through Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha. She tacitly conveyed her displeasure to New Delhi as two of her ministers cancelled proposed visits to India. The riots in North East Delhi in early 2020 also saw protest by Islamists in Bangladesh.

Modi’s forthcoming visit to Dhaka is likely to see India loosening its purse-strings further to support development projects in Bangladesh, in order to keep the friendliest country in the neighbourhood as much away as possible from moving into the orbit of influence of China.