(Bloomberg) -- India’s foreign secretary will visit Dhaka next week to discuss bilateral relations, a Bangladesh official said, in an attempt to mend ties after weeks of heated dialogue regarding the abrupt change of government in Dhaka and treatment of religious minorities.
This is the first high-level visit since Bangladesh’s elected government was toppled in August and replaced by an interim one. Ousted premier Sheikh Hasina, whose iron-fisted rule spanned 15 years, fled to India during a mass uprising that left hundreds dead and thousands injured.
Vikram Misri, India’s top diplomat, will be in Dhaka to hold talks on Dec. 9 and is also expected to meet Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel-winning economist who’s leading the temporary administration in Bangladesh, according to Mohammad Rafiqul Alam, director general of the public diplomacy wing at the Bangladesh foreign ministry.
In Bangladesh, discontent against India has surged after the fall of Hasina, a close ally of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Beyond New Delhi’s sheltering of Hasina, a chief pressure point is the plight of religious minorities in Muslim-majority Bangladesh. Indian officials and news outlets accuse Yunus’s government of failing to protect Hindus, who make up less than 10% of the population. Dhaka has repeatedly dismissed those reports as exaggerated and politically motivated.
“Various attempts have been made to overturn” the political shift, Yunus said at a meeting this week with political parties. “This nation is not dead, nor has it weakened. We are a powerful nation, ready to fight.”
Tensions have escalated in recent days. The countries sparred over the arrest of a Bangladeshi Hindu Monk and an attack on Bangladesh’s consulate in the northeastern Indian state of Tripura, which prompted protests in Dhaka. This week, Yunus’s government summoned New Delhi’s envoy to register its displeasure and India has gradually withdrawn diplomatic staff from Bangladesh.
India’s External Affairs Ministry didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Links between the South Asian nations stretch back to 1971, when India assisted Bangladesh in its war of independence against Pakistan. Under Hasina, Bangladesh and India forged strong economic and defense ties. She was also credited with cracking down on Islamist militants and banning the country’s main right-wing Islamic party from participating in national elections. That ban was recently reversed.
The decision to restart diplomatic dialogue was taken when Indian external affairs minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar met his counterpart Touhid Hossain on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in September in New York, according to Indian officials who asked not to be named as discussions are private.
As the two sides prepare for the visit, Asif Nazrul, who heads Bangladesh’s law ministry, said all parties came together to show unity against New Delhi’s recent rhetoric.
Despite the acrimony, though, both nations are eager to restore ties.
Misri’s visit is an opportunity for a restart, said a senior Bangladeshi official who asked not to be named as discussions are private. India’s envoy in Dhaka, Pranay Verma, echoed that view on Tuesday, saying that relations between the nations are “wide-ranging and multi-faceted,” and cannot be reduced to a single issue.
“We really want to build a constructive, positive relationship moving forward,” he said.
(Updates with official confirmation from Bangladesh’s foreign ministry)
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