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The Ramakrishna Mission authorities here and at their global headquarters at Belurmath are worried that the working of their nine centres in Bangladesh will be severely affected if the BNP-Jamat-i-Islam-led coalition government in Dhaka continues to create difficulties in issuing visas to their Indian monks based in that country.
For the first time since Bangladesh's liberation, Dhaka's immigration authorities have refused to give long-term resident visas to the RKM monks holding Indian passports and asked them to be satisfied with short duration visas which have to be renewed every third month. The immigration authorities have pleaded their helplessness in the matter as this was the "order from above". "In the past they got long-term resident visas easily ... things have changed now," said a senior Dhaka immigration official over the telephone.
Dhaka authorities have ignored repeated
submissions made by the RKM that this would severely affect their work.
But Bangladesh immigration control has adopted a "take it or leave it"
approach. Significantly, Indian monks of the RKM order had never experienced
this change in Dhaka's attitude even during the worst days of anti-Indianism
in the 1970s and '80s.
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