Video: Bangladeshi politician burns wife’s ‘Indian’ saree as row escalates

A senior leader of Bangladesh’s main opposition party, the BNP, publicly burned an India-made bedsheet in a symbolic protest amid escalating tensions between the two neighbouring nations.

Advocate Ruhul Kabir Rizvi, the party’s senior joint secretary general, set the bedsheet, purportedly manufactured in Rajasthan’s Jaipur, on fire during a ‘Boycott Indian Products’ programme in the city of Rajshahi on Tuesday.

The BNP leader held up the printed bedsheet and declared, “This bedsheet is from India’s Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan. This bedsheet made by Jaipur Textile… We are doing this to protest against Indian aggression.”

He then threw the bedsheet onto the street and instructed party members to burn it. BNP workers then sprinkled kerosene on the bedsheet and set it on fire. They were also seen stomping on it, while the crowd raised pro-Bangladesh and anti-India slogans.

“We are boycotting Indian products because they are not suitable for the people of this country. Their friendship is only with Sheikh Hasina,” Rizvi said, referring to the deposed Bangladeshi prime minister who has taken shelter in India.

This is not the first time Rizvi has boycotted Indian products. Last week, he set ablaze his wife’s India-made saree to protest against what he termed as disrespect to the Bangladeshi national flag in India.

“This is the Indian saree. It belonged to my wife, and she herself gave it for this cause. Today, I am throwing it away in front of you,” he said while addressing a gathering in Dhaka on December 5.

Earlier this year, in March, he discarded an Indian shawl he was wearing as part of a similar protest.

The bedsheet-burning comes just days after a similar protest in India, where demonstrators burned Bangladeshi-made Dhakai Jamdani sarees. The Bengali Hindu Suraksha Samiti organised the protest in Kolkata’s Salt Lake area, condemning what they described as “atrocities against Hindus” in Bangladesh.

Protesters also called for a boycott of Bangladeshi products and warned of retaliation if attacks on the minority Hindu community continued in the neighbouring country.

Amid these rising tensions, Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri met top Bangladeshi officials, including Muhammad Yunus, chief adviser of Bangladesh’s interim government, in Dhaka on Monday. It was the first high-level diplomatic engagement between the two countries since the military-backed caretaker government took charge.

During the meeting, Yunus asked India to “clear the clouds” which “cast a shadow” over the relationship between the two neighbours recently.

On the other hand, Misri conveyed New Delhi’s concerns over the safety and welfare of minorities in Bangladesh, stating that attacks targeting religious and cultural properties were “regrettable”.