On Sunday, March 3, Pranab Mukherjee left New Delhi for Dhaka on his first trip abroad since becoming the president. While his three-day trip was overtaken by the crisis situation in Bangladesh and the diplomatic snub from the leader of opposition, what is incredible is the fact that it was the first official trip by an Indian president since VV Giri visited the newly independent neighbour in 1974.

Mukherjee’s immediate predecessor, Pratibha Patil, who created a record of sorts by flying to 21 countries at a cost of over Rs 205 crore to the public exchequer, never thought of paying a visit to the country with which India shares a 4,096.9-km international border. According to the ministry of home affairs, that figure is 3,323 for Pakistan.

Patil’s predecessor at Rashtrapati Bhawan, APJ Abdul Kalam, visited 16 countries, including the UAE twice, his predecessor KR Narayanan 10 countries, while Shanker Dayal Sharma, the country’s president between 1992 and 1997, visited 16 countries, according to information accessed through RTI towards the end of Patil’s tenure.

It’s of course not the president’s prerogative to do the tickets and board the flight; what this means is the importance, or rather the lack of it, with which India regards Bangladesh. Due largely to the 4,000-odd km border the two countries share, and much of it porous — despite the government and the BSF’s claims — it is in India’s interest to ensure that a friendly government calls the shots in Dhaka. Diplomacy, in this day and age, entails more than just an exchange of pleasantries that Mukherjee did during his three days there.

According to a report in Telegraph-Kolkata from Dhaka, Mukherjee’s wife Shuvra and members of Parliament Sitaram Yechury (of the CPI-M), Mukul Roy (Trinamool Congress), Chandan Mitra (BJP) and Bhubaneshwar Kalita (Congress), all part of the president’s entourage, took part in what could be termed hilsa diplomacy at Bangladesh PM Sheikh Hasina’s house. On agenda, of course, were the ongoing trials of that country’s war criminals, the resultant demonstrations at Dhaka’s Shahbagh square — where lakhs of people, led by the country’s youth, are seeking death for the pro-Pakistan elements convicted of killing many during Bangladesh’s torturous war for liberation, which came to fruition in 1971 — and counter-protests by the hawkish and stridently anti-Indian and pro-Pakistan Jamaat-e-Islami. And, worse, the country's main opposition party, Khalida Zia's Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) which could return to power if it takes part in the general elections slated later this year, is on the side of the India-hating hardliners.

That all is not well can be gauged by the scale of violence, reportedly unleashed on the streets by the Jamaat. And that it does not bode well for India can be gauged even better by the adjectives used by the radical party for the Shahbagh demonstrators: “atheists” who are “Indian agents”. The message that the whole event promises to be worse for New Delhi was delivered by BNP chairperson and leader of the opposition in Bangladesh’s Jatiya Sangsad, Khaleda Zia, when she called off her scheduled meeting with the visiting Indian president — an action that can well be called a diplomatic no-no.

It’s not that these are new issues. While the Shahbagh protests and the ongoing violence are the violent spark that has come now, Jamaat’s raucous anti-India stance and BNP’s equally raucous anti-Sheikh Hasina stance, and thereby a pronounced anti-India posture, is growing proportionately with Hasina’s cosying up to New Delhi since returning to power in 2008.

It is here that diplomatic efforts in the past might have come in handy. Rather than fire-fighting, India could well have been on top of the game had the government paid more attention to its eastern front.

India’s economic interests with Bangladesh might be minimal — trade between the two countries in 2011-12 was recorded at $4.4 billion, with the dice loaded heavily in favour of India, which exported goods worth $3.8 billion to Bangladesh, and clocked imports of only $0.6 billion — but the dangers of the relatively porous border make up for it on the internal security front. Ergo the need for New Delhi to keep Sheikh Hasina in Dhaka, and the necessity to try and cosy up to Khaleda Zia in an effort to neutralise the Jamaat factor.

Therein lies the significance of Mukherjee striking an emotional chord in Dhaka. “My wife was born in Narail and started her education here. I have grown up reading the compositions of the same poets as you, listening to the same songs which both our people love, and walked along the banks of the same rivers which inspire the songs that make us all similarly wistful,” he had said on Sunday as the 47th convocation speaker of Dhaka University.

Pratibha Patil or Abdul Kalam could not have sung in the same lilt but they could have tried to amble up the tilt. No, Khalida Zia's diplomatic snub is not the headline of Pranab's Dhaka visit. The fact that he went there at all, is. Wake up, Raisina Hill, smell the coffee. It’s being freshly brewed at Shahbagh.