India, June 24 -- A more fitting appointment than Dinesh Trivedi's could not have been made to our High Commission in Dhaka. I applaud it, for I have known Dinesh over the last 20 years, from the time (2004-2009) that I worked out of Kolkata's Raj Bhavan. And so I know it to be right. He was then a stalwart colleague of Opposition firebrand Mamata Banerjee. He came up to me at the city's Taj Hotel where I was attending a function, and introduced himself, saying, "Good evening, Sir, my name is Dinesh Trivedi. I have had the privilege of knowing your brother, Rajmohan." Shortly thereafter, when Mamata Banerjee came with a Trinamool delegation to talk about Nandigram, she brought Dinesh with her. "You can talk in Gujarati, both of you. kem chho, kem chho", she said. Neither switched to our shared language, staying with the language linking all present - English. But a language link is a language link, and it did connect me somewhat specially to Dinesh. I was sad when Mamata and Dinesh parted company - sad for her on losing a sharp-minded and objective colleague, and sad for him to be inviting the typification of floor-crosser. But both Mamata and Dinesh have very tough skins and survived the break-up. Dinesh, born to Gujarati parents, spent most of his student and professional life in Kolkata and is, therefore, a Bengali-speaking non-Bengali -a condition that made his presencein Parliament and in the Unioncouncil of ministers a very Bengal presence and now makes him linguistically and culturally gifted for his office in Dhaka. To recapitulate, briefly. Prime Minister (PM) Indira Gandhi very aptly appointed Subimal Dutt of the Indian Civil Service, and India's longest serving foreign secretary and a former secretary to the President, as India's first high commissioner to Bangladesh (1972-1974). Dutt was a Bengali born in Chittagong, once part of undivided Bengal and now inBangladesh. Such was the warmth in India-Bangladesh ties in the first months of the latter's life that no one thought India selecting a Bengali Hindu born in what was now Bangladesh inappropriate or even anomalous. Dutt was so altogether outstanding a diplomat that his appointment to Dhaka was seen there as felicitous. Dutt was succeeded by Samar Sen, who was a Bengali born in Dhaka. In the distinguished scroll of India's high commissioners to Bangladesh, there figures more than one "proper" Bengali, including the extraordinary diplomat, mountaineer, and photographer, Deb Mukharji. Three other Indian high commissioners in Dhaka who were not Bengali but, like Trivedi, had Bengali connections are Muchkund Dubey, the Bihar-Jharkhand born scholar-diplomat who spoke Bengali as to the manner born, Krishnan Srinivasan, the Madras-born diplomat-author married to Brinda, the grand-daughter of the greatDeshbandhu Chittaranjan Das, and Vikram Doraiswami, the Tamil-speaking Stephanian whose father, an officer with the Indian Air Force who fought in the Bangladesh war. So, if the majority of India's selections of its chief representative in Dhaka have been standard in the way of diplomatic postings, some of them have also been Bengal- or Bengali-related appointments, strengthening the unique linkages between the two countries. Bengal knowing andBengali-speaking Dinesh Trivedi, the first non-career or "political" appointee to that position, thus,continues a prized tradition. Therefore, when he said after reaching Dhaka that the 1.4 billion people of India and the 200 million people of Bangladesh should "achieve great things together" and that they "share the same sky, the same air, the same pain", adding "whatever we do, we have to do it together; we cannot be powerful in isolation," I thought to myself, "Well said!". To be sure, Dinesh's core being is political, not literary or aesthetic (he plays the sitar though, it is said, quite classily). But his reference to the sky, air and pain came straight out of bhadralok's imagination of the famine-hit and pain-stung Bengal of Tagore's poems and music, Satyajit Ray's plangent films, and Amartya Sen's explorations of poverty's roots. All three, incidentally, have Bangladesh roots - Tagore's ancestral estate being in Shilaidaha in Kushtia, Ray's father and grandfather having been born in Kishorganj, and Shantiniketan-born Sen having roots in Dhaka and Manikganj. Dinesh's comment also was embedded in the Bengal that master photographer Sunil Janah captured in his shots of the 1943 famine and that Somnath Hore drew in his sketches of the Tebhaga struggle and the trauma of the 1946-47 riots. The sharp reaction to Dinesh's statement from Shafiqur Rahman, chief of the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami and leader of the Opposition in parliament, was to be expected but is completely misconceived. For anyone in Dhaka to imagine that Dinesh's statement reflected an inherent vision of India absorbing Bangladesh is not just politically off the mark butalso civilisationally erroneous. He was expressing a sentiment that is as oldas the Partition of India. Not a few thought and suggested in India - as well as the partitioned portions toour east and west - that while the Radcliffe Line had come to stay, while Pakistan was a fact forever, and by extension, Bangladesh is too, there is much that could be done together for mutual good. KC Neogy - who had studied in Dhaka and was minister for rehabilitation and, later, commerce, in PM Jawaharlal Nehru's first cabinet - said in Parliament on March 11, 1949, that as sovereign nations, India and Pakistan could yet have a joint economic vision for development, including an economic and customs union. In times like the present, where there are active blocs such as the European Union, the Eurasian Economic Union, and the African Union, the kind of hope Dinesh expressed was not only unexceptionable but pragmatic and progressive. High Commissioner Trivedi will do great good if, as he strengthens old bridges and builds new ones, he helps reduce if not eliminate mistrust and hate speech in our joint discourse. I close with an anecdote which many in Bangladesh today may not warm to because it has to do with Sheikh Mujibur Rehman. But I hope they will appreciate its anthropological and ecological verity. When, onJanuary 10, 1972, Rehman was onhis way from London to Dhaka to assume the leadership of the newlyliberated country, he stopped in Delhi. PM Indira Gandhi gave him a rousing welcome. He spoke in Bangla at a rally, upon popular urging. As the two leaders exited the stage, one man held up a placard that read, "India-Bangladesh same blood. Ganga Padma same flood." This is the sovereign truth of our two nations. May that truthpreserve and help us progress in friendship....