Update: How Pranab saved Hasina from Hillary's ouster moves
April 07, 2017  10:42
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So now it can be told. Of how Pranab Mukherjee saved Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina from then US secretary of state Hillary Clinton's attempts to oust her from office.   

K P Nayar reports in The Telegraph, Calcutta, that Sheikh Hasina is in India officially after a seven-year gap to bid farewell to Mukherjee as he enters the twilight months of his presidency. 

The President, Nayar reports, was given the honorary role of abhibhabak -- guardian -- to Bangladesh, a role entrusted to him by Indira Gandhi on June 15, 1971.   

'Mukherjee mentored Hasina during a long spell when she lived in New Delhi's Pandara Road after the assassination of her father, "Bangabandhu" Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and almost her entire family on India's Independence Day in 1975.   

'But Mukherjee's protectiveness about Hasina did not end when she returned to Dhaka or even after she became Prime Minister,' informs Nayar, and that 'Mukherjee may have more recently saved Hasina from a "colour revolution" of the kind that successfully attempted regime change in countries as diverse as Ukraine, Georgia and Egypt.'   

'Mukherjee, who was then finance minister in the UPA government, one day got a phone call from Clinton,' reports Nayar, and according to to multiple sources from both the Indian and American sides, 'Clinton made an impassioned plea that India should support (Grameen Bank founder Mohammed) Yunus in his bid to frustrate Hasina and her efforts to prise Grameen Bank away from its founder.'   

But Mukherjee would hear none of it and asserted his faith and complete confidence in Hasina, says Nayar.   

To know more of this episode, and the warmth and closeness between the Mukherjees and Hasina's family that has brought the Bangladesh prime minister to India after seven years, click here.

Image: Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina offering her condolences to President Pranab Mukherjee on the demise of his wife Suvra, in August 2015.
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