It was a typical day in April 2018, the hottest month in Bangladesh. Rasel Miah, a 14-year-old boy hailing from Phulbari Upazila in Kurigram, accompanied his father Md Hanif Uddin, a farmer, to their field near the Bangladesh-India border, just beyond the 150-yard No Man’s Land. As the sun began to set, Miah and his … Read more
In November last year, Iqbal Hasan Mahmud Tuku, a standing committee member of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), asserted in an interview with an Indian daily, The Hindu, that the BNP is a secular party. He continued: “At one point, we had an alliance with the Jamaat [Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami] just the way political coalitions take … Read more
The Pulse | Diplomacy | South Asia India has not yet commented on the unrest roiling Bangladesh. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bangladeshi counterpart Sheikh Hasina jointly inaugurate three Indian-assisted development projects via a video conference on November 1, 2023. Credit: X/Arindam Bagchi Advertisement India and Bangladesh launched two new railway links and a thermal power plant … Read more
Advertisement During the G-20 Summit in New Delhi last month, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi exalted the virtues of democracy and diversity, even calling his country “the mother of democracy.” But in Bangladesh, India’s neighbor to the east, the Modi government is supporting the increasingly authoritarian regime of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. And to add … Read more
Advertisement Within foreign policy, domestic variables play a vital role. We have seen this in Bangladesh-India relations before. A mural in the new Indian Parliament building that was termed by a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) minister as depicting “Akhand Bharat” (Undivided India) caused Bangladesh’s government to ask for an explanation from India’s Ministry of External … Read more