India’s Modi meets with Bangladesh’s Yunus for first time since revolution

AFP | Bangkok

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Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met yesterday with the leader of neighbouring Bangladesh, the first such meeting since a revolution in Dhaka.

Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, 84, took charge of Bangladesh in August 2024 after Sheikh Hasina was toppled as prime minister by a student-led uprising and fled by helicopter to India.

Yesterday, Yunus posted a picture on social media showing him shaking hands with Modi, and his press secretary Shafiqul Alam later said the “meeting was constructive, productive, and fruitful”.

Their meeting took place on the sidelines of a regional summit in Thailand. Yunus also shared a photograph of the two men smiling as he handed Modi a framed picture of themselves a decade ago -- when the Indian leader in 2015 honoured the micro-finance pioneer with a gold medal for this work supporting the poorest of society. ‘Spirit of pragmatism’ Vikram Misri, the secretary of India’s foreign ministry, told reporters that Modi “reiterated India’s support for a democratic, stable, peaceful, progressive and inclusive Bangladesh”.

Modi said he wanted a “positive and constructive relation with Bangladesh based on a spirit of pragmatism”, Misri added, repeating New Delhi’s concerns about alleged “atrocities” against minorities in Bangladesh.

Yunus’s caretaker government is tasked with implementing democratic reforms ahead of fresh elections slated to take place by June 2026.

Modi and Yunus had dinner on Thursday night, sitting next to each other alongside other leaders from the BIMSTEC regional bloc in Bangkok, but the bilateral meeting yesterday was the first since relations frayed between the neighbouring nations