Open Thread: Bharat overawes France

“After 18 Months of Strain, Dhaka and Delhi Eye a Cautious Reset, But Youth Anger Looms”

By Devirupa Mitra

https://thewire.in/south-asia/after-18-months-of-strain-dhaka-and-delhi-eye-a-cautious-reset-but-youth-anger-looms

But amidst the open-air festivities in front of the central library, the conversations on campus that afternoon turned quickly to a question that the poll result had made suddenly urgent – what would a BNP government, riding a wave of post-uprising anger, actually do about India?

Jahid, a 26-year-old computer science student who declined to give his full name, put it in terms of parity. “We expect the same treatment from India as from Nepal,” he said. “We are a free country.” His friend Shobhan, standing beside him, was more pointed in response. He said the relationship had never been one between equals, and that the previous government’s foreign minister had himself described it as a marriage to an Indian magazine. (Incidentally, the interview’s online version does not have the widely quoted line.) “In a marriage, wife is perceived to be submissive and the husband is dominant,” Jahid said, completing the thought. “Why should we accept dominance?”

The specific grievances, when pressed, clustered around a few recurring themes. Water was one. Students spoke of being flooded during monsoons when upstream barriers opened, and of feeling that river-sharing negotiations had always tilted against Bangladesh. “During the rainy season, they drown us,” Shobhan said. “No country will accept that.”