To the Dhaka Paper

Now a Dhaka-based newspaper, New Age, has taken over an advisory role in the context of India’s ‘‘aggressive diplomacy’’ and ‘‘dominance’’ in the region. In its editorial on Monday, the daily said that New Delhi’s ‘‘aggressive style’’ ever since the Awami League-led government came to power in Dhaka ‘‘could be reasonably interpreted as an assertion of dominance over a neighbouring country, confirmed by historical experiences in the region’’. We would ask that newspaper — and its ilk in the Bangladeshi media — to imagine of a situation in which a country like the US would be its immediate neighbour victimized by the export of jihadi terror as well as illegal population from the neighbouring country. What would the US have done? It would have gone straight into Bangladesh and decimated terror groups and sanctuaries. But what has India done? It has waited for Bangladesh to rediscover itself, refashion itself, reinvent itself. It is not in India’s diplomacy to be aggressive against a country like Bangladesh; after all, competition is between equals, and Bangladesh figures nowhere in that game, given India’s rising power. Can any in the Bangladeshi media tell us what has sustained jihadi terrorism of the HuJI variety in Bangladesh in recent times, the business that the likes of ULFA c-in-c Paresh Baruah operate in that country, or the ISI’s design from the very soil of Bangladesh for the making of a greater Islamic state in the subcontinent? Our friends in the Bangladeshi media would do well to focus more on recent history. And yes, who liberated them from Pakistani tyranny? THE SENTINEL