BNP leaders usually don’t buy Indian sarees: Rizvi 

Leaders of Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) usually do not buy Indian sarees, says the party's senior joint secretary general, Ruhul Kabir Rizvi, responding to a recent statement by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on possession of Indian sarees by the BNP leaders’ wives. 

While addressing a programme for the killing, enforced disappearance and assault victims at the party chief’s Gulshan office on Thursday, the BNP leader recounted the time when his maternal uncle gifted an Indian saree to his wife during their visit to India long ago.

He recently asked his wife about the whereabouts of the saree and came to know that it was stitched with a kantha, which also tore, he said. 

On the previous day, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina slammed the BNP's call for boycotting Indian products and questioned their silence when it comes to the Indian Sarees in their wives’ closets. 

“The BNP leaders are advocating for boycotting Indian products. My question is – how many Indian sarees do the boycott campaigners' wives possess? Why don't they take the sarees from their wives and burn them?” she said on Wednesday. 

In his speech, Ruhul Kabir Rizvi castigated the growing intolerance to speeches that go against India.

“Today, it seems a sin to speak against India. I cannot help but say that a few newspapers appear very upset over the issue – whether it is right or wrong to undermine the relationship with India. We see reports on this,” he told the programme. 

At a press briefing at the BNP office in the capital’s Naya Paltan area on 20 March, Rizvi expressed solidarity with an ongoing campaign for boycotting Indian products and threw his Indian shawl on the office premises. 

Later, leaders and activists of the party set fire to the shawl, sparking discussions. It prompted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and some other ruling party leaders to react on the BNP’s solidarity with the boycott campaign.