Republic Day: Indian, Bangladeshi soldiers to march together again – 50 years after 1971 triumph over Pakistan

India will host a contingent of Bangladesh Armed Forces to participate in the parade on Rajpath in Delhi

The soldiers of India and Bangladesh will march together down the Rajpath in New Delhi on January 26 this year – half-a-century after the bravehearts of the two nations fought shoulder-to-shoulder and vanquished the genocidal army of Pakistan.

A contingent of 122 soldiers of the armed forces of Bangladesh on Tuesday flew from Dhaka to New Delhi. They too will take part in the ceremonial parade in New Delhi on the occasion of the Republic Day of India.

“Together We Fought, Together We March, proud of 50 years of a friendship beyond strategic partnership,” Vikram Doraiswami, New Delhi’s envoy to Dhaka, posted on Twitter, along with pictures of the Bangladesh Army personnel boarding a C-17 Globemaster aircraft of the Indian Air Force (IAF) in an airfield in the capital of the neighbouring country.

This is the first time India will host a contingent of the armed forces of Bangladesh taking part in the parade on the Republic Day.

When the soldiers of India and Bangladesh will march down the Rajpath in New Delhi on January 26 next, the two nations will also commemorate the grit and gallantry their bravehearts displayed together in 1971. They will celebrate the history the Indian Army and the ‘Muktijoddhas’ or the ‘Liberation Warriors’ of Bangladesh scripted fifty years ago – ending Pakistan’s repressive rule over “East Pakistan” and giving birth to a new nation.

Bangladesh celebrated the 50th “Victory Day” on December 16 last – commemorating the day 93,000 soldiers of Pakistan Army surrendered to the Indian Army at the Ramna Race Course in Dhaka, bringing to the end the nine-month-long war.

A day later, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bangladesh counterpart Sheikh Hasina had a virtual summit and both the leaders paid “solemn tribute to the martyrs of the Liberation War of Bangladesh – the ‘Muktijoddhas’ and the Indian Army soldiers – for the great sacrifices they made in 1971. Modi and Hasina vowed to uphold and protect the cherished values of democracy and equality in line with the aspirations of the people of the two friendly countries.

The two prime ministers also agreed that they would be commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Liberation War and the establishment of diplomatic relations between India and Bangladesh. They also agreed to jointly organize several activities to commemorate these two epochal events, not only in India and Bangladesh, but also in third countries.

It was in 2016 that the foreign soldiers for the first time participated in the parade on the occasion of the Republic Day of India with a contingent of the French Army marching down the Rajpath.