NEW DELHI, Feb 20: Emphasising the old cultural ties and shared heritage of India and Bangladesh, Union Culture Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat on Thursday said people of the neighbouring country used to accept with “pride and responsibility” that “India had a big role” when it came to the creation of Bangladesh as a nation.
His remarks come in the backdrop of recent reports of many murals of Bangladesh founder Sheikh Mujibur Rahman being defaced by protesters and destruction of his historic residence in Dhaka.
Bangladesh was born in the wake of the Liberation War or the Indo-Pak War of 1971, and India played a key role in its birth as a nation.
Shekhawat made the remarks during his address at an opening session of the meeting of the South and West Asian Regional Branch of the International Council on Archives (SWARBICA) at the India International Centre in New Delhi.
The Union minister underlined the cultural ties, deepened by shared heritage that India has with neighbouring countries such as Nepal, Bhutan and Sri Lanka.
“India and Bangladesh also have cultural ties. Similar history, similar language, similar traditions. The cultural exchange programmes that have taken place between India and Bangladesh… people of Bangladesh, with pride and responsibility used to accept that when Bangladesh came up as a nation, India had a big role in it,” he said.
At present, the director general, National Archives of India (NAI), is the treasurer of the SWARBICA. Chief archivist, National Library and Archives of Bhutan, and director general, Directorate of Archives and Libraries, Bangladesh, are its president and secretary general, respectively.
SWARBICA’s secretary general, the NAI’s DG, among other senior officials, shared the dais with Shekhawat at the event.
Unprecedented student-led protests in Bangladesh last year had precipitated the fall of the previous government led by Sheikh Hasina, who had fled to India on August 5 leaving behind a country in political turmoil.
Her father’s legacy too became a prime target as anti-government protesters had vented their ire on Rahman’s towering statue at Bijoy Sarani in the heart of Dhaka and pulled it down, with images being broadcast on local and international media channels.
Public murals depicting Bangabandhu (‘Friend of Bengal’) — a sobriquet that characterised the legacy of Bangladesh’s first president — were defaced and his house in Dhanmondi, where he and most of his family members were assassinated on August 15, 1975 and which was later turned into a memorial, was badly damaged by the protesters during the upheaval last year.
Rahman’s residence in Dhaka was destroyed by some so-called protesters on February 5.
India is hosting the meeting of SWARBICA after a long time, currently in the position of the treasurer of this regional body of the Paris-based International Council on Archives (ICA) and participants from many countries are attending the event.
In his address, the Union minister also underlined that the National Archives of India’s mega project (started last year) of digitising 300 million pages in a period of two years and putting them up online will benefit not just India, but also researchers in Pakistan, Bangladesh and other countries of the region and beyond.
He emphasised the shared heritage of the region embodied in different festivals, traditions, tales and rivers coursing through it.
“Before Independence, we were one country, one geographical entity. And, over 75 years ago, records would pertains to the same country, the shared heritage,” he said, referring to Bangladesh, a region that earlier was East Pakistan.
Even, in context of Pakistan also, “if we go back (before 1947).. to that period for research, then a shared heritage is what we will have to go into”, Shekhawat said.
And, these 300 million pages once fully digitised and published online would be important not just for researchers in India, but those in Bangladesh and Pakistan too, he said.
“Digitisation offers a platform as to how we can preserve our shared heritage,” the minister said, adding the benefits of it can be shared with all members of this platform.
For people in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and other countries, these records would be “just a click away”, he said.
The countries in the region have a “deep shared heritage” despite being different geographies, connected with art, culture, cuisine, festivals, books and manuscripts, Shekhawat said.
“The way knowledge has evolved over the years… a political or a diplomatic difference could be there, but culturally we were one and we are one, and in coming time if we become one, the base will be culture,” he emphasised.
Shekhawat also suggested that India could partner with neighbouring countries such as Nepal and Bangladesh to carry out digitisation of records in those nations and thus help boost cooperation. (PTI)
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