The first signs of a reset in India-Bangladesh relations have arrived not through a grand summit or a formal agreement but through two carefully choreographed meetings in Dhaka.

On Monday, Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Tarique Rahman met Indian High Commissioner Dinesh Trivedi in what was the first such high-level engagement after months of Trivedi’s tenure in Dhaka. When it almost seemed that Rahman was set on snubbing New Delhi by not meeting with its first minister-ranking envoy in Dhaka.

A day before that, RAW chief Parag Jain, accompanied by a delegation of senior spooks from India’s external intelligence agency, arrived in Bangladesh to hold talks with his Bangladeshi counterparts on Monday, almost at the same time as when Rahman was busy talking to Trivedi and posing for photo-ops with the usual warm handshake and smile.

Diplomatic engagement at the political level, accompanied by the reopening of intelligence channels, suggests that New Delhi and Dhaka may be attempting something more consequential than merely repairing an uncomfortable bilateral relationship. They appear to be testing whether the relationship can be stabilised around a narrower but more durable foundation: security, geography, and economic interdependence.

Of course, as is usual in a country riven by political bad blood, press officers in Bangladesh gave a spin to the two meetings that they were designed to seek the repatriation of Sheikh Hasina from India. Though insiders aver that such a demand was made almost in the passing “without much seriousness” and was never the core issue discussed. In fact, they point out that BNP leader Mirza Fakhrul Islam, now tipped to be the next president of Bangladesh, had, for quite some time, already made it clear to all and sundry that Hasina’s presence will not be a deterrent to “good’ relations with India.

What is important from India’s point of view is that the twin meetings signify........

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