New Delhi: A major row has erupted after Muhammad Yunus presented a book to a visiting Pakistani general with a map of India that shows the northeastern states as part of Bangladesh.
This took place during the visit of Pakistan’s joint chiefs of staff committee chairperson, General Sahir Shamshad Mirza, to Dhaka over the weekend. The meeting came amid a recent thaw in ties between Pakistan and Bangladesh.
This policy shift took place after the ouster of former Bangladeshi prime minister Sk Hasina from the country in August 2024. Yunus took over as head of an interim government within days. Since then, cases have been registered against Hasina and several of her aides, many of them Mukti Joddhas who had fought against Pakistan in 1971 to liberate the country.
Yunus posted photos of his meeting with General Mirza on social media on Sunday. One of the images showed him gifting a book titled “Art of Triumph” to the Pakistani general. The book’s cover carried a distorted map that portrayed India’s seven northeastern states as part of Bangladeshi territory, aligning with the ‘Greater Bangladesh’ narrative promoted by radical Islamist groups.
The image drew swift outrage online, with critics accusing Yunus of encroaching upon India’s sovereign domain. India’s Ministry of External Affairs has yet to issue an official response.
This is not the first time Yunus has indicated his interest towards the Indian northeastern states. Earlier this year, he courted controversy by describing Bangladesh as the ‘only guardian of the ocean’ for the region and labelled northeastern India as ‘landlocked’, during his maiden visit to China.
‘The seven states of India, the eastern part of India… they are a landlocked country. They have no way to reach out to the ocean,’ Yunus said during his discussions with Chinese officials.
‘We are the only guardian of the ocean for all this region. So this opens up a huge possibility. So this could be an extension of the Chinese economy,’ he added.
These comments by Yunus came in for severe criticism from India.
In response to Yunus’s remarks, external affairs minister S Jaishankar reaffirmed the strategic importance of the northeast, calling it a key hub for the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC), which includes Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Thailand.
An aide of Yunus, Major General Fazlur Rahman (Retd), suggested that Bangladesh should ‘collaborate with China to occupy India’s northeastern states’ if a conflict erupted between India and Pakistan. This statement came shortly after the Pahalgam terror attack that killed 26 people in Jammu and Kashmir on April 22.
Nahidul Islam, another Yunus aide, shared a ‘Greater Bangladesh’ map in 2024 that incorporated parts of West Bengal, Tripura, and Assam into Bangladeshi territory. The post was later deleted following widespread backlash.
