Bangladesh’s foreign minister AK Abdul Momin
In a last-minute development, Bangladesh's foreign minister AK Abdul Momin cancelled his three-day visit to India, an official at the Bangladesh High Commission in New Delhi said. "The visit has been cancelled as of now. We can't reveal any more details at this stage," confirmed the official.
Momin was slated to arrive in New Delhi on Thursday evening on a three-day visit, as per a press release by the Ministry of External Affairs on Wednesday evening. During his visit, Momin was slated to attend the Delhi Dialogue and the Indian Ocean Dialogue, latter being a crucial event on India’s Indo-Pacific strategy calendar. Momin was also scheduled to hold bilateral talks with Union External Affairs Minister Dr S Jaishankar.
Along with Indonesia’s foreign minister Retno Marsudi, another high-profile guest at the Track 1.5 events, Momin was lined up as a speaker at the combined session of Delhi and the Indian Ocean Dialogues. The MEA had said in its original release that the two events were aimed at fostering understanding among countries towards building an “open, free and an inclusive approach for a cooperative, free and rules-based Indo-Pacific region.”
The emerging security architecture in the region has been necessitated by China’s alleged violations of the marine laws in the South China Sea and its increasing muscle-flexing in the Indian Ocean region.
“Through these processes, India intends to emphasise its open and inclusive approach to fostering a cooperative, free and rules-based Indo-Pacific domain, in which all nations and their aspirations for development have equal space to find expression,” the MEA had said.
Incidentally, the visit of Momin was scheduled to take place a day after the Rajya Sabha passed the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, a legislation guaranteeing Indian citizenship for members of six minority communities — Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Christian — hailing from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah, during the discussions on the bill in the Parliament, reasoned that minorities in the said countries were prone to religious persecution since all of their constitutions had Islam as the state-sanctioned religion.
“While India has kept its part of promise in affording protection to minorities since Independence, our neighbours haven’t kept their side of the bargain,” Shah said during a debate in Rajya Sabha on Wednesday.
"Whereas, the minority population in Pakistan has decreased from 23 per cent in 1947 to 3.7 per cent in 2011. Similarly, minority population in Bangladesh has decreased from 22 per cent in 1947 to 7 per cent in 2011," the Union Home Minister also pointed out during several rounds of debate on the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill.
Shah’s comments and the passage of the bill in the Parliament had drawn sharp reactions from the Bangladesh foreign minister, who rejected the claim that minorities were unsafe in Bangladesh.
“There are a very few countries where communal harmony is as good as in Bangladesh. If he (Amit Shah) stayed in Bangladesh for a few months, he would see exemplary communal harmony in our country,” Momin was quoted as saying in the Bangladeshi media.
While the Citizenship Amendment Bill was expected to feature in the talks between Momin and Jaishankar, India has maintained that “every nation has the right to enumerate and validate its citizenry, and to exercise the prerogative through various policies.”
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