Two South Asian Neighbors, Once Friendly, Are Now at Bitter Odds

Months of simmering tension between India and Bangladesh erupted into the open this week, as the once-friendly neighbors exchanged angry accusations after the arrest of a Hindu priest in Bangladesh on charges of sedition.

In August, Sheikh Hasina, an ally of Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, was toppled as Bangladesh’s leader by a popular uprising. She fled to India, and her continued presence there has strained relations between the interim government in Bangladesh and Mr. Modi’s government in New Delhi.

The caretaker administration in Bangladesh, led by the 84-year-old Nobel Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus, has expressed concern that Ms. Hasina is plotting a return to power from India. The interim Bangladeshi leaders have also accused India of exaggerating attacks on Hindus in Bangladesh to score political points at home.

The latest flashpoint was the arrest of Chinmoy Krishna Das, a Hindu monk in Bangladesh, a Muslim-majority country where Hindus make up less than 10 percent of a population of 170 million.

In the past, Mr. Das was associated with an influential global Hindu organization, the International Society of Krishna Consciousness, also known as ISKCON or the Hare Krishna Society.

A court in the Bangladeshi city of Chattogram sent him to pretrial detention under a colonial-era sedition law. His arrest came after a local politician complained that Mr. Das had disrespected the Bangladeshi flag by raising it lower than a saffron-color flag — a symbol of Hinduism — at a rally calling for an end to persecution of Hindus.