India should gradually take steps to normalise relations with Bangladesh. Even if โfull engagementโ is not possible right now, Delhi should open new avenues of communication through โtrack-twoโ or cultural diplomacy.
This is exactly what was discussed in a special meeting of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on the Ministry of External Affairs in the Indian Parliament on Friday afternoon. The MPs from different parties on the committee have largely agreed on it, Bangla Tribune has learned.
Since last year, high-profile Congress MP and one of Indiaโs most popular politicians, Shashi Tharoor, has been serving as the chairperson of this influential committee in the Indian Parliament.
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The experts invited to the committee meeting were former Foreign Secretary and National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon, former Military Secretary of the Indian Army Lt Gen Syed Ata Hasnain, former Foreign Secretary Riva Ganguly Das and Professor Amitabh Mattoo of JNU, Delhi.
After this special meeting titled โRelations with Bangladesh,โ Shashi Tharoor said that the committee will present its full report to Parliament within the next two to three weeks. However, the discussion of the Standing Committee is a closed-door meeting, so he did not open his mouth publicly about the discussion of this meeting.
It is very rare for a Parliamentary Standing Committee to call a separate meeting to discuss Indiaโs diplomatic relations with a specific country. The experts were invited since they are known in India for their expertise on Bangladesh.
These experts not only presented their personal opinions before the committee members but also answered various questions from the MPs. This incident of calling a bunch of external experts to the Standing Committee is also almost unprecedented.
The meeting on Friday lasted for about two and a half hours. In addition to Chairperson Shashi Tharoor and outside experts, a total of 16 MPs, members of the committee, participated in it.
The Bangla Tribune learned about the meeting minutes after talking to several MPs and experts who participated in the meeting.
-Almost all the members have emphasized that India should now think about moving its relations with Bangladesh forward (โforward-looking policyโ), leaving behind what happened in August last year.
-Various suggestions have also been made on what initiatives can be taken by India to repair bilateral relations.
-Some MPs have also proposed relaxing visa restrictions for Bangladeshi citizens, but there has been no specific consensus on this.
-The experts who have come to the committee feel that whenever there is an election in Bangladesh, India is ready to cooperate with them in every way if a democratically elected government comes to power in that country and should be sent out from now on. At the same time, India has been asked to repeatedly make clear its position that the election in that country must be fair, free, and participatory.
However, the committee has also practically accepted that relations cannot be fully normalised as long as the interim government is in power in that country.
-Until full diplomatic relations are re-established, there has been a lot of emphasis on maintaining communication between the two countries at the cultural level and through people-to-people contacts.
-Bangladesh’s newly appointed ambassador Riaz Hamidullah recently took steps towards this end by paying a courtesy call on West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in Kolkata, and the meeting suggested that India could also โreciprocate.โ
-Several experts said in the meeting that when the normal channels of diplomacy do not work properly, โtrack-twoโ discussions are maintained behind the scenes through academics, analysts, former diplomats, or members of civil society; in the case of Bangladesh, too, India should now start that.
At the end of the meeting, the committee’s chairperson, Shashi Tharoor, did not comment on record, but he did say: “We (the committee) have been told that illegal infiltration from Bangladesh has now come down a lot, meaning that there are far fewer people coming to India from there than before.”
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