Vishal Sharma
A new pain point has emerged in geographical India’s left armpit. Ever since former Bangladesh PM, Sheikh Hasina’s ouster and Muhammad Yunus’s anointment as Chief Advisor, Bangladesh, Dhaka has been moving away from India’s orbit. It’s on design and carefully calibrated. What’s worse, it is guided and facilitated by India’s two arch enemies- Pakistan and China. In the beginning, it did not look as damning. But now, this three way squeeze appears to be well orchestrated, and a part of a plan to put India under a strategic chokehold.
Muhammad Yunus’a rabid anti India stance has taken many in India by surprise. As a Nobel laureate and a widely respected technocrat, he was expected to put Bangladesh on a path towards economic prosperity. Instead he has gone in the polar opposite direction. His animus with Sheikh Hasina has blinded him so much that he has been singing from the same hymnbook as the radical islamists in Bangladesh. In their visceral hatred for India, it is difficult to tell one from the other.
There were enough signals during the foreign sponsored riots that led to Hasina’s ouster and in its aftermath that the long sidelined Islamists were finding their way back to the centre stage of Bangladeshi politics. Massive anti-India bashing and scores of attacks on Hindu minorities and their places of worship left nothing to imagination. Hasina’s rule had been seen by many in Bangladesh as an Indian rule by proxy. The rampaging rioters, therefore, did not make any distinction between Hasina’s supporters and Hindu minorities. Even the symbols and tropes of Bangladeshi independence movement were trashed, vandalized and burnt to ribbons. Muhammad Yunus, who won Nobel peace prize for pioneering microcredit to alleviate poverty in Bangladesh, watched this naked dance of death with the cold difference of a compromised surgeon.
Yunus’s hatred towards India has since gone up a few notches. He has needled India particularly on its north east. During his China visit recently, he invited the Chinese to Bangladesh citing that Bangladesh was the guardian of the ocean and that Indian NE was a landlocked region. “We are the only guardian of the ocean,” he said at the time, inviting Chinese investment to Bangladesh, pitching it as a gateway to the region. He did not stop there, suggesting further that Bangladesh’s geographical position offered a “huge possibility” for China and also asserted that the region could become “an extension of the Chinese economy”.
A little later, during a meeting with Indira Rana, Deputy Speaker of Nepal’s House of Representatives, who visited Dhaka to attend an event hosted by the Embassy of Nepal, Yunus is reported to have said, “There should be an integrated economic plan for Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and the Seven Sisters. We have more to gain together than apart”. His statements to the world leaders in so far as they pertain to NE states of India have not gone down well with India. He is seen to be provocative; studiedly projecting NE as a region separate to India. And Indian misgivings are not without a reason. Recently some maps have been seen floating around in Bangladesh, depicting it as Greater Bangladesh, which includes entire NE and a few other states of India. There is a view that without buy- in from Yunus, it is impossible that such brazen anti India campaigns can be carried out in Bangladesh.
Another thing that has got Indians worried is the recent Chinese attempt to revive a defunct world war II era air base in Lalmonirhat district in Bangladesh near Siliguri corridor. If and when this happens, this will likely have Chinese strike assets perilously close to the Indian’s perpetual object of worry in NE- chicken’s neck. This narrow stretch is India’s critical link to its NE.
Since late 2024, Bangladesh has also introduced a series of restrictions on Indian exports. These include a ban on Indian yarn imports through major land ports. Since April 2025, stricter curbs on rice shipments, and ban on paper, tobacco, fish, and powdered milk imports have also been placed. Dhaka has also imposed a transit fee of 1.8 taka per tonne per kilometre on Indian goods passing through Bangladesh. These measures have made it difficult for Indian NE to access the Bangladesh markets to sell locally manufactured goods.
India has also hit back with retaliatory measures of its own. New Delhi has imposed new restrictions on imports from Bangladesh through land ports, affecting goods worth around USD 770 million. This amounts to nearly 42 per cent of total bilateral imports, according to the Global Trade Research Initiative (GTRI), a trade research group. New Delhi has limited import of several key Bangladeshi products, including readymade garments, processed foods, and plastic items, only through specific sea ports and banned them entirely from entering India via land routes. As per some estimates, Bangladeshi garments, valued at USD 618 million annually, can now only be imported through Kolkata and Nhava Sheva seaports. This is likely to cause significant pain to Bangladeshi exporters.
But India must not stop at that. It’s time to teach some home truths to the Bangladeshis as they embark on a misplaced project to rewrite their history and portray Indian role in it as a mere footnote. It’s time to give them some history lessons. What better than a crash course on the atrocities committed by Pak army on them in 1971 ? At least 3 million Bangladeshi people were killed by the Pakistani military in 1971. Worse still, members of the Pakistani military and Razakar paramilitary force raped between 200,000 and 400,000 Bengali women and girls in a systematic campaign of genocidal rape during that war. How can a nation forget war crimes of the kind perpetrated by Pakistan during 1971 war? But Bangladesh seems to have forgotten all that. And, therefore, it needs a bit of reminding that if it were not for the Indian army, it would still be a part of Pakistan and under the cruel and oppressive rule of Pak Punjabi political and military elite.
The best way to remind Bangladeshis of their ungratefulness or rather betrayal of India is by moving beyond the retaliatory economic costs imposed on them. It is time to move militarily or strategically against them too. Of all the things that India can do, it should first start properly manning the border between the two countries. Gaps and porous points at the Indo- Bangla border need to be immediately plugged both by putting more boots on the ground and via electronic surveillance. The infiltration from Bangladesh represents a clear and present danger to our security. With Indo Pak border/LoC under close surveillance in the wake of the recent skirmish, there is every likelihood that porous Bangladeshi border may be used by terrorists to mount a terror attack in India.
The Chinese backed revival of an air base in Bangladesh near Siliguri corridor will have to be thwarted at all costs. This has similar echo as that of NATO’s eastward expansion in Ukraine closer to Russia Federation. Russia today is at war with Ukraine because Ukraine wanted to be a NATO member and host NATO troops on its soil despite clear objections by Russians. A Bangladeshi air base under the Chinese control so close to our weakest point in NE will have implications. Our concerns in the matter will have to be made known in no uncertain terms to both Bangladesh and China. If, however, things don’t work out to India’s liking, then India must not flinch from stepping beyond persuasion to coercion.
India needs to strengthen Eastern Commands of both its army and air force. Up until now, India has been busy tackling mischief on its western frontier. But now something has shifted on the eastern front what with Bangladesh going rogue. China is also increasingly interfering in the region, especially with its recently renaming some places in Arunachal Pradesh and staking claim to the state. India must now, therefore, train its sights on its eastern front too. This would mean deploying more military assets on the eastern sector- more than that are currently deployed there. The size of combat personnel needs to be radically increased both in air and land domains. An additional corps level formation planned for raising exclusively for eastern sector earlier must be immediately raised. We need to remember that boots on the ground will matter a great deal in a war with China, which has huge advantage of numbers.
Given the belligerent Bangladesh, we have to move fast on connecting the NE internally and to Myanmar and beyond. A network of roads and rail roads needs to be created on a fast track basis in the region. More airstrips should also be laid in the region for increased air connectivity and to facilitate air operations. Government has recently approved Rs 22,864 crore greenfield high-speed corridor connecting Shillong (Meghalaya) to Silchar (Assam), spanning 166.9 km (144.8 km in Meghalaya, 22 km in Assam); built under the Hybrid Annuity Mode (HAM) with a 3-year completion target. The Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Transport Project (KMMTTP) and the proposed Shillong-Silchar highway represent India’s strategic pivot to connect its N E states to Kolkata via Myanmar, bypassing Bangladesh amid strained bilateral ties. The 166.8-km four-lane highway aims to integrate with the KMMTTP, reducing reliance on the vulnerable Siliguri Corridor. Given the urgency involved, the timelines will have to be compressed and project completed in advance of its time table.
While it is always advisable to calibrate and nuance the policy depending on response from the other party, in the case of Bangladesh though, India would do well to keep up the pressure even if Dhaka starts making conciliatory noises and seeks truce. Yunus is not an elected leader; he heads an interim governnment. He is ridden to power on the shoulders of the misguided youth, aided and abetted by foreign powers. The only job expected of him is to hold elections right away and let the people of Bangladesh elect their govt. Even Bangla army has reportedly counselled him to move fast on elections. However, he is deliberately stonewalling the conduct of elections. Another thing that India needs to do is to engage with the forces within Bangladesh that are keen on reviving the democratic process. Who knows such an engagement may resuscitate the appetite of Bangladeshis for electoral democracy? Let those, who thrust him into power, be the ones who thrust him out of it.
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