Last month a video of Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed, the leader of the Awami League party, went viral, in which she was seen questioning the “boycott Indian products” social media campaign that was launched by the country’s main Opposition, the BNP. In the video, the Prime Minister was scathingly reminding male members of the Opposition about their wives’ Indian saris. “Why are they not taking away their wives’ saris and setting them on fire?” she asked at a party meeting, leading to an Opposition leader’s reply that his wife had a quilt made out of hers.
Analysts have pointed to how the sari has since become a political football. India-Bangladesh bilateral ties span defence, trade and investments, water and energy, and go back a long way. The 1947 Partition of India, which led to the creation of West and East Pakistan, would soon witness allegations of cultural discrimination and human rights abuses inflicted on the Bengali population by West Pakistan.
In 1970, the Bengali Awami League won a decisive majority in Pakistan’s general election. Refusing a democratic transfer of power, the Pakistan Army launched a brutal crackdown. In March 1971, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman issued a call to the Bangladeshi nationalist movement; in retaliation, the Pakistani Army launched Operation Searchlight, leading to the killing of an estimated 300,000 to 3,000,000 Bengali civilians.
The operation led to a large refugee influx into India, with the numbers swelling .