Dhaka: India and Bangladesh want stability, love and peace instead of instability, terror and unrest in the world, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Saturday as he underlined that both countries want to see the world progressing through their own development.
Prime Minister Modi was speaking to the Matua community members after offering prayers at a temple in Gopalganj’s Orakandi – the birthplace of Hindu mystic figure and community’s spiritual guru Harichand Thakur.
“Both India and Bangladesh want to see the world progressing through their own development. Both the countries want to see stability, love, and peace instead of instability, terror, and unrest in the world,” Modi said.
Modi said he was waiting for this opportunity for many years and during his visit to Bangladesh in 2015, he had expressed desire to visit Orakandi, which has come true now.
“I am feeling the same emotions as felt by the Matua community members in India after coming to Orakandi,” Modi said.
Orakandi is the abode of hundreds of Hindu Matua community, a large number of whom are residents of West Bengal.
Prime Minister Modi announced that India will upgrade one girls’ middle school and set up a primary school in Orakandi, from where Harichand Thakur disseminated his pious message.
He said that during the COVID-19 pandemic, India and Bangladesh proved their capabilities.
“Both nations are facing this pandemic strongly and fighting it together. India is working by considering that it its duty that the ‘Made in India’ vaccine reaches the citizens of Bangladesh,” Modi added.
Analysts said Modi’s planned temple visits carry a political significance at the time of the ongoing assembly elections in West Bengal.
The Prime Minister was accompanied by BJP MP Shantanu Thakur.
Last time when Prime Minister Modi visited Bangladesh in 2015, he offered puja at Dhakeshwari temple in the national capital.
Bangladesh has taken extra security measures for the Indian premier’s visit in the wake of protests by few leftist and Islamist groups.
In 2016, the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) said their latest vital sample statistics report found the country’s total population to be 15.89 crore by the end of 2015 with the number of Hindus at 1.70 crore in the Muslim-majority nation.
PTI