GROUND SHIFTS AS PM MODI REACHES OUT TO AILING ZIA

Bangladesh watchers believe the recent Twitter/ X diplomacy between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) leader Begum Khaleda Zia is a good bid by New Delhi to normalise ties with its neighbour.

- Ashwin Ahmad

Smruti S Pattanaik, Research Fellow (SS) at the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA) believes that Prime Minister Modi's enquiry about the Bangladeshi leader's health "would have gone down very well with the Bangladeshi public" and would have also helped end long-held rumours that India did not engage with the BNP.

"India has been engaging with the BNP for a long time.

Former NSA Brajesh Mishra visited Dhaka to congratulate Begum Khaleda Zia on her electoral victory in 2001. She then visited India in 2012 where she received the red-carpet treatment. The question is not whether India wants to have a closer relationship with the BNP it is whether the BNP wants to have a closer relationship with India," says Pattanaik.

"The BNP has traditionally been very cautious given its constituency and Zia's supporters were not very happy when she stated that 'we should not look at our relationship with India in the rear-view mirror. The statement shows the BNP has been willing to engage, albeit with caution."