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Why PM Modi's Bangladesh visit around Bengal polls is a 'smart move'
On the day West Bengal witnesses the first of its eight-phase state assembly elections, Prime Minister Narendra Modi may be heading for an unusual shrine in Bangladesh -- Orakandi. Orakandi is not far from Tungipara in Gopalgunj, the ancestral home of 'Bangabandhu' Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and daughter Sheikh Hasina, the now Prime Minister of Bangladesh.
It is the most sacred shrine of the 'Matua' community, a Hindu sect whose numbers are considerable both in West Bengal and Bangladesh.
Modi will reach Bangladesh on March 26, the day observed in Bangladesh as Independence Day when in 1971, Pakistan's brutal army unleashed 'Operation Searchlight', the genocide of Bengalis in tens of thousands that sparked the country's struggle for freedom.