New Delhi: Bangladesh Prime Minister Tarique Rahman is unlikely to undertake a bilateral visit to India anytime soon and is also expected to skip the BRICS Leaders’ Summit scheduled next month, ThePrint has learnt.
“There are no plans of a bilateral visit in the coming months unless India’s outreach goes beyond symbolic measures,” a political source in Dhaka said. This comes amid growing differences between the two countries over former prime minister Sheikh Hasina and her press conferences and interviews with the media in New Delhi.
Political sources in Bangladesh said Rahman’s government wants better relations with India but believes New Delhi will have to make a substantive political gesture if ties are to move forward.Some of the sources even said that a visit by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Dhaka could provide the signal to the people of Bangladesh that India is genuinely interested in resetting ties.“Any outreach now will have to happen from India’s side, perhaps a visit by Modi to Dhaka. There is no chance of a bilateral visit unless Delhi is ready to walk the talk,” a political source in Dhaka told ThePrint.The sources stressed that the Rahman government was not pursuing an anti-India policy and wanted stable and friendly relations with New Delhi. However, they said the new government could not be seen as compromising on what it describes as Bangladesh’s national dignity and sovereignty.“The messaging from this government is not anti-India, unlike the previous interim administration of Yunus. Nor has the government indulged in anti-India rhetoric. Yet the Indian attitude remains the same as it was with the previous regime,” another source said.The sources pointed out the delay in restoring tourist visas by India to Bangladeshi nationals. Although Rahman’s government was sworn in in February this year, tourist visas remained suspended until the end of June. When they were restored, they were not issued under the earlier system of longer-duration visas, the sources said.For Dhaka, the issue is increasingly about public perception as much as government-to-government ties.“More than BNP (the ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party), it is the public which thinks that India is doing mere lip service and is not sincere about establishing ties with Bangladesh 2.0,” a source said.Rahman, the sources added, would not want to be seen as going against that sentiment. He is referred to by his supporters as “Janatar PM”, the people’s prime minister, and he cannot afford to appear to be conceding to New Delhi without reciprocal gestures, they argued.
