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“They (the people of Bhadrabila village) received me like a bridegroom”, said a beaming president, when asked how he felt about visiting the ancestral house of his in-laws for the first time. Mukherjee said though he got married in 1957, it was the first time he’d visited his in-laws’ house. Mukherjee’s wife, Shuvra, was born at Bhadrabila and spent her early years there. She, along with daughter Sharmistha, had visited the village in 1995. “It was an exclusively personal visit”, the president added.
He also sent a strong message to Bangladesh, rocked by violence, counselling that political differences be resolved through dialogue and communal peace and harmony maintained.
Wrapping up his three-day state visit to Bangladesh-— his first foreign tour since assuming the highest office last August — Mukherjee said he had “conveyed to all our interlocutors (in Bangladesh) the need for an inclusive political process and the maintenance of communal peace and harmony”. His remarks assume significance as Bangladesh has been buffeted by days of violence unleashed by activists of fundamentalist, Jamaat-e-Islami.
