Mangoes To Modi: Yunus's Sweet Outreach To India Amidst New Delhi-Dhaka Tensions
Bangladesh Chief Adviser Muhammad Yunus’s gifting of mangoes to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, though seemingly a sweet gesture, may not yield diplomatic dividends.
Published : July 13, 2025 at 9:10 PM IST
|Updated : July 14, 2025 at 8:35 AM IST
New Delhi: Though mango diplomacy has long been a norm in India-Bangladesh ties, the eastern neighbour’s interim government Chief Adviser Muhammad Yunus’s gifting of mangoes to Prime Minister Narendra Modi does not assume much significance given the tensions in ties between New Delhi and Dhaka following the ouster of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government in August last year.
According to reports in the Bangladesh media, Yunus has sent a consignment of 1,000 kg of the Haribhanga variety of mangoes to Modi as a sign of the interim government’s willingness to normalise ties with India.
“One thousand kilograms of Haribhanga mangoes are being sent to New Delhi,” the Daily Star news website quoted an official of the Bangladesh High Commission in New Delhi as saying. “We have prepared the list of dignitaries from the Indian Prime Minister’s Office, diplomats, and other officials. We hope to deliver the mangoes to the dignitaries concerned in a day or two.”
Apart from Modi, Yunus is also gifting mangoes to West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and Tripura Chief Minister Manik Saha, the leaders of two of the Indian states that border Bangladesh. According to one report, Yunus sent 300 kg of the Haribhanga mangoes to Tripura Chief Minister Saha on Thursday.
The Haribhanga mango is a mango cultivar produced in the northwest part of Bangladesh, especially in the Rangpur district. Cultivation of the Haribhanga mango has gained popularity among the farmers of northern districts. These mangoes are round. Haribhanga is highly fleshy and typically weighs 200 to 400 grams. They have been recorded weighing up to 700 grams. In July 2021, India received 2600 kg of Haribhanga mangoes from Bangladesh as a memento of friendship between the two neighbouring countries. It was sent through the Petrapole border of Bangaon in West Bengal.
Yunus’s act should be seen as a continuation of a practice started by Hasina, known as “mango diplomacy”. Apart from mangoes, Hasina also used to send the delicious hilsa fish as gifts to West Bengal Chief Minister Banerjee and other leaders.
Meanwhile, Tripura, in exchange, sends Bangladesh its famed and juicy Queen variety pineapples as gifts.
Bangladesh descended into political instability following the ouster of Hasina in August 2024. Hasina’s removal from power came after a students' revolution that snowballed into a mass uprising against what people called her authoritarian style of governance. Her decade-and-a-half-long rule ended abruptly, leaving a political vacuum that exacerbated existing divisions and triggered a struggle for control.
The immediate aftermath of Hasina’s ouster saw the formation of an interim government led by Yunus. With Hasina taking refuge in India, relations between the two South Asian neighbours have since been tense.
Meanwhile, the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) of Bangladesh has ordered the extradition of Hasina and many of her associates who fled the country after the upheaval in August.
The ouster of Hasina also saw the rise of extremist Islamist elements in Bangladesh’s political landscape, leading to large-scale violence against religious minorities, particularly Hindus. India has been continuously voicing its concerns over these developments.
After he took power in August last year, Yunus uttered a lot of anti-India rhetoric. However, in a surprising turnabout, in an interview with a British media outlet in March this year, Yunus said that, for Bangladesh, there is no alternative to good relations with India. Yunus claimed Bangladesh’s ties with India are “very good” and “our relationship will always be very good”.
“There is no way Bangladesh-India relations cannot be good,” he said. “Our relations are close, our dependence on each other is so high and historically, politically, and economically, we have such a close relationship, we cannot deviate from that.”
Then, in April this year, Modi and Yunus held their first official bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) Summit in Bangkok. During the meeting, Modi voiced India’s unease over the treatment of religious minorities and urged a swift return to parliamentary democracy. The conversation underscored New Delhi’s uneasiness with Dhaka’s post-Hasina trajectory and raised fresh questions about the future of one of South Asia’s most consequential bilateral relationships.
Meanwhile, Bangladesh’s politics remain in flux. A new political outfit called the National Citizen Party (NCP) has been formed. The main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and other political parties have been demanding that the interim government hold parliamentary elections at the earliest. But Yunus had been deferring this, citing the implementation of reforms in various sectors. Now, though, he has announced that the elections will be held any day in the first half of April 2026.
Given that political instability in Bangladesh will continue to be a matter of concern for India, how can Yunus’s gesture or rather the continuance of a practice of gifting mangoes to India, be seen?
According to former Indian High Commissioner to Bangladesh Pinak Ranjan Chakravarty, this is just a routine protocol. “It should be seen just as a symbolic gesture. Nothing more than that,” Chakravarty told ETV Bharat. “It has happened in the past, too.”
Prabir De, Professor at the New Delhi-based Research and Information System for Developing Nations (RIS) think tank, echoed the same view.
“This is a normal ritual,” De said. “We should not look too much into it. Modi too sent Eid-ul-Adha greetings to Yunus this year.” Hence, the question: can sweetness succeed where strategy fails?
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