India must respect BD’s aspirations

Prime Minister Tarique Rahman’s decision not to attend the BRICS Summit in New Delhi was driven by the circumstances surrounding Bangladesh’s newly elected government, rather than a refusal to engage with India, Bangladesh’s High Commissioner to India Riaz Hamidullah has said.

In an exclusive interaction with an Indian television channel on Friday, Hamidullah said Bangladesh had had a “democratically elected dispensation” for six and a half months and that “a certain context and certain circumstances” had led to the prime minister’s decision not to attend the summit.

“That’s the simplest answer,” he said, while declining to characterise Rahman’s absence as a refusal to participate.

The high commissioner, whose country currently holds the chairmanship of the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC), also urged India to take into account the aspirations, dignity and democratic expectations of the Bangladeshi people to help repair bilateral relations.

Asked about the recent back-and-forth over Rahman’s participation in the summit, Hamidullah said the decision had been known to key officials in New Delhi.

“You know that, I think not only you, I think many others in Delhi, particularly the principals involved in the whole process, they have known,” he said.

His comments came as the two-day BRICS Summit began in New Delhi, with BIMSTEC invited to participate in discussions on cooperation among emerging and developing countries.

Hamidullah welcomed the invitation, describing the inclusion of regional and subregional organisations in major international summits as a constructive practice.

He said Bangladesh remained committed to regional cooperation through BIMSTEC, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) and the Bangladesh-Bhutan-India-Nepal (BBIN) framework, while acknowledging the difficulties in translating political commitments into practical outcomes.

Turning to Bangladesh-India relations, Hamidullah said the two countries needed to focus on the aspirations of their peoples and create pathways for them to fulfil those aspirations.

“The key word is aspiration,” he said. “At any given point of time, any two people, in this case Bangladesh and India, they get the aspiration of the two peoples right and create pathways or avenues for the population to fulfil the aspirations.”

He called for a combination of cooperation and collaboration between the two countries, extending beyond government-to-government relations to include the private sector and people-to-people engagement.

The envoy stressed that the relationship was “organic” because of the economic, social and cultural interactions between the two peoples, rather than being defined solely by state-to-state relations.

He said a failure to understand the aspirations of Bangladeshis could make it difficult for any country to move forward in its relationship with Bangladesh.

“If you have heard the word dignity, mutual trust and respect and the aspiration of people, if these are not addressed and the aspirational and the sense of the demography in Bangladesh, if it’s not understood, I think it would get difficult for any country to move,” he said.

Hamidullah also referred to Bangladesh’s young population, saying that 88 per cent of the population was made up of people in his age group, his peers and younger generations.

“If you find that, you know, I have trampled your rights or if I have literally brutalised things, and which has happened absolutely bare, I think then there’s little room for any other discussion,” he said.

He described this as “the strongest and the clearest message that comes from Dhaka for New Delhi.”

The high commissioner identified the Teesta water-sharing issue as a critical test of whether Bangladesh and India could rebuild mutual trust and respect.

He rejected the tendency to view the issue merely through statistics, saying its importance extended to people’s livelihoods, ecology and the right of communities to sustain themselves.

“It’s not simply recognition of a fair right and fitting demand, not only for a people and state but also for nature, ecology,” he said.

Hamidullah said the Teesta basin affected about 14 per cent of Bangladesh and that nearly two crore people, or more, were suffering as their livelihoods changed and they were pushed out of their habitats.

“There’s a profound human story,” he said, urging greater attention to the people affected by the river’s changing conditions.

He said resolving the issue would be a litmus test for Bangladesh and India in terms of “redeeming mutual trust and respect” and ensuring shared benefits.

The envoy argued that cooperation on the Teesta could help the two countries build a shared economic geography in which both sides prosper.

“Once, because at the end of the day that would not only bring us to the table but help us to really look at a shared economic geography where both sides prosper,” he said.

On Bangladesh’s position regarding BRICS membership, Hamidullah said Dhaka had expressed interest in joining the grouping at an earlier stage.

“We raised our things, our interest, at a point of time,” he said, adding that the interest was consistent with Bangladesh’s approach to open regionalism.

He described BIMSTEC’s potential contribution to BRICS as a form of “cooperative competition”, in which countries could draw on complementarities and synergies while recognising asymmetries and challenges.

“First, let us see that, let us get the foundation right,” he said, identifying an optimum balance between values and interests as the basis for regional cooperation.

He said regional arrangements needed to ensure dignity, mutual respect and shared benefits, rather than being driven exclusively by competition.

Hamidullah also rejected the suggestion that the BBIN initiative had stopped functioning, arguing that regional cooperation should be understood in terms of the progress made and the decisions of individual countries.

He said Bangladesh remained committed to SAARC, noting that several of its mechanisms continued to function despite the absence of a summit for many years.

The high commissioner said regional cooperation should not be judged solely by whether a particular mechanism was moving at the desired pace, but also by the progress being made through different regional and subregional platforms.

The envoy’s remarks came as Bangladesh-India relations remain a key regional issue, with water sharing, connectivity, trade and political trust central to discussions on the future of bilateral ties.

Hamidullah said the relationship needed to move beyond a narrow government-to-government framework and reflect the interests and aspirations of the people of both countries.

He called for frankness, openness and a willingness to engage with people’s concerns.

“Let’s try to engage with them, work with them, try to understand and then try to say, you know, I think this is what we are asking for beyond your borders is also in shared interests,” he said.