India’s Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla met officials of the Bangladesh Tariqat Federation, a secular-Sufi political party, and discussed the shared civilizational heritage of the two countries. india has traditionally promoted this moderate and plural strain of Islam. 

Taking to Twitter, India's Ministry of External Affairs’ spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said Shringla met Al Haj Syed Nazibul Bashar Maizvandary, Member of Parliament and chairman and Syed Tayabul Bashar Maizbhandari, joint secretary-general of the Bangladesh Tariqat Federation.

 “Foreign Secretary @harshvshringla met Al Haj Syed Nazibul Bashar Maizvandary, MP & Chairman and Syed Tayabul Bashar Maizbhandari, Jt Secretary-General of the Bangladesh Tariqat Federation. They discussed India-Bangladesh shared civilizational heritage and P2P ties,” Bagchi tweeted.

The Bangladesh Tarikat Federation was founded in 2005 following Syed Najibul Bashar's resignation from the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, as the party had allied with the Jamaat-e-Islami which Bashar accuses of supporting terrorists, Prothom Alo reported.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has often extolled the virtues of Sufism and recently, speaking virtually at the SCO summit at Dushanbe, Tajikistan, he highlighted how Central Asia has been a "bastion of moderate and progressive cultures and values" and "traditions like Sufism have flourished here over the centuries and spread throughout the region and the world."

Attending the World Sufi Forum in New Delhi March 2016, Modi had memorably praised Sufism as “a celebration of diversity and pluralism” which “helped shape a distinct Islamic heritage of India”,

(SAM)