A GROUP of people banded under Hindu Sangharsh Samiti, an affiliate of Vishwa Hindu Parishad, having broken into Bangladesh’s assistant high commission in Agartala, the capital of the Indian state of Tripura, on December 2 is unacceptable. The protesters — who marched demanding an early release of the Bangladeshi Hindu monk Chinmoy Krishna Das, reportedly an expelled member of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness order, arrested by Bangladesh authorities on sedition charges on November 25, and an end to ‘attacks on the Hindus’ in Bangladesh — broke into the Bangladesh mission premises, vandalised the flag pole, desecrated Bangladesh’s national flag and damaged property. All this constitutes a breach of Article 22 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations 1961, which lays out that the premise of the mission is inviolable, it must not be entered by the host country except with the consent of the head of the mission and the receiving state must protect the premises of the mission against any intrusion or damage; and, it must prevent any disturbance of the peace of the mission or impairment of its dignity. Indian authorities have failed on all the counts. Indian authorities have, however, expressed regrets about the breach of Bangaldesh mission premises in Agartala, noting the events as ‘deeply regrettable.’
New Delhi has said that it was taking action to step up security arrangements for the Bangladesh high commission in New Delhi and all its consular premises in India. Indian authorities also arrested seven people and suspended four police officers by the afternoon on December 3. But an apology is not enough. Indian authorities must, as Bangladesh authorities have called for, take early action to attend to the incident, undertake a thorough investigation of the incident and prevent any recurrence of violence against any diplomatic missions of Bangladesh in India. The West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee has, meanwhile, urged India’s central government to seek the deployment of UN peacekeepers and the prime minister Narendra Modi’s intervention to secure the safety of the Hindus in Bangladesh. Whilst a Voice of America survey, made public on November 29, shows that minority communities in Bangladesh are more secure under the interim government compared with how they lived under the Awami League government that was toppled on August 5, going by what the West Bengal chief minister has said, it is, rather, imperative to keep UN peacekeepers deployed in India considering the untoward situation that minority people in India have to face almost each day. Hindus in India the same day held protests outside the Bangladesh mission in Mumbai at the arrest of Chinmoy Krishan Das. The West Bengal Bharatiya Janata Party chief, Suvendu Adhikari, led a protest by a group of BJP legislators that blocked cargo movement at the Petrapole-Benapole land border that day, calling for a five-day blockade of the port in the next week. Hundreds of members of Sanatani Aikya Manch, a combine of Hindu organisations in Assam, joined a Bangladesh Chalo march in Sribhumi in the state the day before to protest at ‘atrocities’ against Hindus in Bangladesh. Security arrangements, however, foiled the marchers at the border.
More than one such episodes happening almost the same day can very well be construed as ‘politically orchestrated’ events that could cause further decline in bilateral relations. Delhi must, therefore, attend to Dhaka’s concern.
