Is it necessary that we become friendly towards India? Is it also ok to weep for not getting DONATIONS from India in 1974? Is not this kind of expression by someone from BD makes Indians feel big and they slap on our face whenever an opportunity arises?
Please remember that $1 billion tied credit from India. How these mean minded Indians try to shame us projecting themselves as the richest country of asia and projecting BD to be at par with Nepal or sub-saharan countries, when, in reality, the fund is to support Indian selling of goods and services to BD.
If the sentiments you have expressed had not been so sad, they would have been amusing.
This, from you? If educated people, sitting in a first-world country, go through these bouts of self-pity and pretence that they are innocent litle darlings totally unaware of how aid, including aid from the country presently hosting them, is distributed, then what should we expect from the uneducated and the ignorant?
It is not a secret to you that India has got massive amounts of aid from a number of countries. If you know that much, you will also be aware that the bulk of that aid was tied aid; we had to buy that country's products and services, and none other. It was not easy to take, but we took it; the cost of pride and a high-handed attitude of aloof independence would have meant that poor people, those who benefited from such aid, would have suffered. So we gulped hard, and we took it, and we bought services and products - from Britain, the US, France, Germany, Italy, the Scandinavian countries, Japan - everybody who would give us a helping hand - and built our country. We didn't complain, we didn't burst into tears, we didn't sulk, we just got on with what we had got and did what we had to do.
Nobody wants your gratitude, nor does your complaining about it make a difference. Aiding a neighbour who needs the help is a moral concern, and even Pakistan, who has been such a faithless, constantly-conspiring enemy, has received aid when she needed it. That she, or her small-minded administrators, acted high and mighty about it while their own people were dying was their affair, typical of the corrupt ruling classes who dominate their administration and their services. What excuse do you have? All the claptrap and fanfaronade about what we are projecting ourselves to be, and what we think Bangladesh to be can be avoided very easily if you lay off the chingri-maachh and go on a diet. It's all to do with your digestion; get it right and the world will seem to be a brighter, nicer place.
And this comes even while we are a poor country, with a vast number of poor people. It is not that we have a surplus and we are parking it for you. This kind of gift is the gift that hurts, the only worthwhile kind. We are giving you what is precious to us, it is a sacrifice to our higher self, if you like, if you understand at all what that might mean. Sacrifices come in various shapes, sizes and seating classes; those that hurt, our sacrifices in making aid available to you, for instance, are the only ones that count. Think what you will of it, say what you will of it, this is a sacrifice that we make willingly and that we will keep on making. That is our character.
How you choose to receive it is up to your character.