A Map. A Pakistani General. A Message to India.
Muhammad Yunus walked into a meeting with Pakistan's top military commander and handed him a book. The book's cover showed a map of Bangladesh. India's seven northeastern states - Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Tripura, and Arunachal Pradesh - were drawn inside Bangladesh's borders.
Yunus then posted photos of the meeting on his official social media account. He seemed proud of the gift.
Bangladesh's interim leader Muhammad Yunus presented a Pakistani general - the chairperson of Pakistan's Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, General Sahir Shamshad Mirza - with a map depicting India's northeast as part of Bangladesh. The book was titled "Art of Triumph: Bangladesh's New Dawn."
The pattern is deliberate, the intent is clear, and India needs to treat it as such.
This Is a Pattern, Not a One-Off
The map incident is the fourth major provocation in less than a year. Each one has been worse than the last.
The "Seven Sisters" speech came first. During a state visit to China, Yunus told President Xi Jinping directly: "The seven states of eastern India, known as the Seven Sisters, are a landlocked region. They have no direct access to the ocean. We are the only guardians of the ocean for this entire region. This opens up a huge opportunity. It could become an extension of the Chinese economy." He was essentially telling China to treat India's northeast as a corridor through Bangladesh.
Then came the occupation call, when a close associate of Yunus - Major General (retd) ALM Fazlur Rahman, who Yunus had appointed to head a national commission - wrote on Facebook that Bangladesh should "occupy the seven states of Northeastern India" if India took military action against Pakistan, and suggested forming "a joint military system with China."
Before that, another close aide of Yunus, Nahidul Islam, shared a "Greater Bangladesh" map showing parts of West Bengal, Tripura, and Assam as Bangladeshi territory. The post was deleted only after public outrage.
And now the Pakistani general received a similar map as a gift, at a state meeting, from Yunus himself.
The depiction closely mirrors the so-called "Greater Bangladesh" concept - an expansionist idea long promoted by Islamist group Sultanat-e-Bangla, which envisions Bangladesh extending into Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura, Mizoram, Manipur, Nagaland, and Arunachal Pradesh.
Who funds Sultanat-e-Bangla? According to India's Ministry of External Affairs, the group is reportedly an Islamist entity with links to the Turkish Youth Federation, an NGO based in Turkey. A map displaying this "Greater Bangladesh" was brazenly exhibited at Dhaka University during Bengali New Year celebrations, linked to this group. India's MEA acknowledged the development and said it was "closely monitoring all developments" that could impact national security.
Why the Northeast and the Chicken's Neck Matter
The Siliguri Corridor - also known as the "Chicken's Neck" - is a stretch of land connecting India's northeastern states with the rest of the country. It is approximately 20-22 kilometres wide at its narrowest point and about 200 kilometres long.
That is the only land link between mainland India and eight northeastern states with over 40 million people.
A Chinese military advance of less than 130 kilometres would cut off Bhutan, part of West Bengal, and all of North-East India. Bangladesh sits directly to the south and east of this corridor. China's covert interest in Bangladesh's Lalmonirhat airbase - just 20 kilometres from the corridor - underscores a clear intention to gradually encircle and pressure the corridor from multiple angles.
When Yunus tells China that India's northeast is "landlocked" and that Bangladesh is its only "ocean guardian," he is inviting Beijing to use Bangladesh as a geographic lever against India. When his aide calls for Bangladesh and China to jointly occupy those states, he is describing, in plain terms, the severance of India's connection to its own territory.
These remarks come from Dhaka's official circles, and they have gone unanswered for months.
The Economic Stakes Are Just as Real
With trade around USD 13-14 billion annually, Bangladesh is India's largest trading partner in South Asia. That relationship is now being dismantled piece by piece.
After Yunus's "ocean guardian" remarks in China, India revoked a transshipment facility it had extended to Bangladesh in 2020. India formally revoked the facility that allowed Bangladesh to export goods to third countries via Indian land customs stations, ports, and airports - ending a nearly five-year arrangement.
The suspension of land-route transshipment has had a tangible economic impact on Bangladesh. India's restrictions on land-port imports from Bangladesh may affect trade worth approximately USD 770 million, amounting to nearly 42 percent of total bilateral trade.
The unease in bilateral relations deepened with a China-Pakistan-Bangladesh trilateral summit held in Kunming. For New Delhi, the symbolism of that meeting was hard to ignore. Bangladesh's growing comfort with Beijing and Islamabad presents a strategic and economic challenge for India.
Bangladesh also cancelled a USD 21 million naval shipbuilding contract with India's defence shipyard. It banned certain Indian goods imports through land ports. It imposed new transit fees on Indian cargo. India responded by restricting Bangladeshi garment imports to sea ports only.
Both countries are losing. But India has more leverage and is using only a fraction of it.
What Has India Already Tried
India's "Neighbourhood First" policy, launched by PM Modi in 2014, made Bangladesh its centrepiece. PM Modi's visit to Bangladesh in June 2015 led to the signing of the Land Boundary Agreement, after which twenty-two bilateral agreements followed covering trade, investment, power, cultural relations, and border management.
India and Bangladesh built cross-border rail links, energy pipelines, and transit corridors. It was genuine partnership.
The problem was that India bet everything on one leader. The International Crisis Group found that India's close alignment with Hasina left it "poorly positioned when a mass uprising forced her from power." India had no plan for the day after.
When Hasina fell in August of last year, India found itself with no relationships in the new government, no goodwill among Bangladesh's opposition, and no diplomatic tools ready. The eighteen months since have been largely reactive - India condemning remarks, suspending trade measures, then waiting.
Foreign policy run by embarrassment management is not a strategy.
How Other Countries Have Handled Hostile Neighbors
Three countries offer India a model for what firm, non-escalatory pressure looks like.
Japan and China (2010-2012): When China cut off rare earth exports to Japan during a territorial dispute over the Senkaku islands, Japan did not just protest. It immediately diversified its supply chains, funded alternative suppliers in Australia, and passed legislation to reduce dependence on Chinese minerals. Within three years, Japan had cut its reliance on Chinese rare earths by more than 60 percent. The lesson: respond to coercion with concrete restructuring, not just diplomatic protests.
India and Nepal (2015-2016): When Nepal's new constitution created a political crisis and India imposed an informal economic blockade, the pressure was real. Nepal eventually made constitutional amendments. The episode showed that geography-based leverage - India controls Nepal's fuel and goods access - can shape political outcomes. India has similar leverage over Bangladesh, which depends on Indian infrastructure, coal, electricity, and medical services. That leverage is being left unused.
Australia and China (2020-2023): When China imposed trade bans on Australian wine, barley, coal, and beef after Australia called for a Covid-19 inquiry, Australia did not back down. It diversified its export markets, challenged China at the World Trade Organisation, and strengthened its security ties with the US and UK. Three years later, China quietly lifted most of the bans. The lesson: countries that hold their ground and build alternatives force the aggressor to recalculate.
Who Is Accountable
The Ministry of External Affairs has issued routine statements. It has not presented a structured response. India's formal diplomatic reaction to the Pakistani general's map gift was silence - the MEA had not issued a statement at the time of writing.
This is a failure of the MEA's South Asia division, which spent fifteen years building a single-leader relationship in Bangladesh with no parallel investment in Bangladesh's civil society, opposition parties, or media.
The Home Ministry shares responsibility too. With over 400 tribes in the Northeast, some insurgent outfits still active and reportedly supported by China and Pakistan's intelligence services, the security challenge in this region remains real. A hostile Bangladesh changes the calculus on every one of those threats.
The National Security Council must now treat the China-Bangladesh-Pakistan triangle as a structured strategic challenge, not a series of unrelated provocations.
What Would It Cost
India has real economic tools it has not used. Bangladesh imported over 1,160 megawatts of power from India. It needs Indian coal to run its factories. Bangladesh accounts for nearly 50 percent of India's medical tourists - Bangladeshi patients come to India for cancer treatment, cardiac procedures, and surgeries their own hospitals cannot perform.
A structured reduction of these dependencies - made visible to the Bangladeshi public - would create domestic pressure on the Yunus government that no diplomatic note can replicate. The cost to India of reducing electricity exports temporarily is manageable. The cost to Bangladesh is immediate and visible.
India also has leverage over Chinese access to the region. The USD 2.1 billion deal signed earlier this year cemented Bangladesh's strategic realignment with China, including Chinese involvement in the Teesta River development project. India can make that instability more likely by supporting democratic processes and civil society in Bangladesh.
None of this requires military action. It requires a government that treats foreign policy as a continuous operation, not a series of press conferences.
What Needs to Happen
First, India must establish non-negotiable red lines with the Yunus government. Territorial provocations - maps, speeches, aide statements - must have documented consequences. Not lectures. Consequences. A reduction in power export. A delay in visa processing. A suspension of a specific trade channel. Each provocation earns a specific, reversible, documented penalty.
Second, India must rebuild relationships across all of Bangladesh's political spectrum. The BNP, civil society, secular journalists, and minority groups all have interests that align with India's. India should be funding academic exchanges, trade relationships, and people-to-people contact that survive government transitions.
Third, India must accelerate infrastructure that reduces its dependence on Bangladesh's geography. India is already planning to build alternative railway connections through Jogbani in Bihar, which would enter Nepal and connect back to West Bengal. That project needs to move faster. The Kaladan Multimodal Corridor connecting Kolkata to Mizoram through Myanmar also diversifies access to the northeast. Both should be treated as national security priorities, not routine infrastructure projects.
Fourth, India must name Sultanat-e-Bangla and its Turkish funders in international forums. India should raise this at the United Nations and in bilateral conversations with Turkey. When a foreign-funded Islamist group openly promotes the annexation of Indian territory on university campuses, it is a matter for India's diplomatic offensive.