By Jaideep Saikia
Md.Yunus has once again provoked India’s North East. He reportedly told the Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives of the Federal Parliament of Nepal, Indira Rana on 12 May 2025 when the latter called on him in Dhaka that, “there should be an integrated economic plan for Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and the Seven Sisters.”
The reference to the “Seven Sisters” is a clear and deliberate reference to the Indian states of the North East. The temerity has been compounded as Md. Yunus told this to a visiting foreign dignitary.
The first time around he spoke about how the North East is land-locked and had no access to the Bay of Bengal. His reference to the region by stating, “They have no way to reach out to the ocean. We are the only guardians of the ocean for this region,” was brazen to say the least. The fact that he did so on Chinese soil was particularly insulting and quite rightly the Chief Minister of Assam, Himanta Biswa Sarma objected to Md. Yunus’ uncalled for remarks, especially as he was encouraging India’s adversary, China to expand its economic influence in the region by suggesting that, “it could be an opportunity for both China and Bangladesh”!
A few weeks later, a retired Bangladesh army officer, Major General. ALM Fazlur Rahman who is reportedly close to Md. Yunus called for the occupation of the North East in case India launches an attack on Pakistan over the Baisaran incident. Rahman, who had headed the Bangladesh Rifles went so far as to suggest that Bangladesh, “needs to start discussing a joint military system with China.” Although officialdom in Dhaka distanced itself from the post, it is well-known that China not only covets the 90,000 sq.km of Arunachal Pradesh, but has entered the North East insurgency game by proxy. Important insurgent leaders such as Paresh Baruah (ULFA-Independent) and Manohar Mayum (PLA-Manipur) are billeted in China’s Yunnan province.
Therefore, there is a clear agenda in the recent pronouncements that are emanating from Bangladesh about India’s North East. Clear-eyed observation and analysis are of the opinion that Md. Yunus is deliberately attempting to not only utilise the geographical imbalances that the North East has been afflicted by, but stoke up the occasional dissonances by way of insurgencies that had been distressing the region, but has been successfully controlled by New Delhi.
But the manner in which Bangladesh has been eyeing India’s North East is not new. The search for lebensraum or living space in the North East for Bangladesh’s burgeoning population and the “rapidly shrinking living space” (as a result of climate change!) has engaged the sinister minds of several Bangladeshi intellectuals.
In an article in the weekly magazine Holiday, Sadeq Khan, former diplomat and editor of the magazine blatantly wrote, “it is said that a borderless world has become the prime requisite for economic growth under the new world order. In fairness, if consumer benefit is considered to be better served by borderless competitive trade of commodities, why not borderless competitive trade of labour?”.
Khan further goes on to write, “it is doubtful that Bangladesh may develop sufficient urbanisation or can engineer sufficient reclamation of habitable land from its own offshore potential to settle its projected population growth in the next decade. A natural overflow of population pressure is therefore very much on the cards and will not be restrainable by barbed wire or border patrol measures. The natural trend of population overflow from Bangladesh is towards the sparsely populated lands of the South East in the Arakan side and of the North East in the Seven Sisters side of the Indian subcontinent”. (Quoted in “Our Land, Their Living Space” by D.N. Bezboruah in “Bangladesh: Treading the Taliban Trail”, Jaideep Saikia (Ed), Vision Books, New Delhi, 2006).
Md.Yunus, it is certain, has probably not only the same lebensraum concerns as Sadeq Khan, but other strategic motivations as well when he and his associates make statements pertaining to India’s North East.
Bangladesh’s growing affinity with China and Pakistan has identified the North East as India’s soft underbelly. With an ongoing ethnic strife in Manipur and apprehensions of radicalisation of a crucial piece of real estate in the region, forces inimical to India’s sovereignty and integrity are viewing the possibility of a balkanisation of the North East by severing the tenuous 22 Km Siliguri corridor that connects the region to the rest of India.
Further, Bangladesh of earlier times had been the happy hunting ground of several anti-India insurgent groups such as the ULFA, NDFB and a host of radical Islamist outfits such as the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen and Muslim Tigers of Assam. It was only as a result of the aid that Sheikh Hasina had provided India, that Bangladesh was able to get rid of such elements. However, with her ouster there is a serious possibility that insurgent leaders like Paresh Baruah of the ULFA could return to Bangladesh, especially as he not only has his family residing in Dhaka, but a plethora of businesses as well. Baruah is a wanted man in Bangladesh because of his complicity in the Chittagong Arms Haul episode of 1 April 2004. But if Md. Yunus’s dispensation can lift the ban on the Jamaat-e-Islami (Bangladesh), the Islami Chhatra Shibir and release several Islamist terror actors from prison, the return of Paresh Baruah and his cohorts to the erstwhile east Pakistan is not unthinkable at this juncture.
It is high time New Delhi works out not only a robust course of action whereby the manner in which the North East is being continually drummed up by a Bangladesh in the throes of insanity (diplomatic statements and demarche’ have not served their purposes!), but work out a comprehensive action plan such as the institution of a North East Security Council (NESC). The blueprint of such an apparatus had been conceived by the author and presented to the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate, L.K. Advani way back in 2008. Nothing came of it despite the fact that the NESC was part of the BJP’s election manifesto during the general election of 2009. The formation of a NESC is particularly important as it the considered opinion of many in the North East that not only would it be able to provide focused attention on the security of a crucial real estate of India, but decisively counter statements such as the ones that are originating from hostile lands about a region that is integral to India. The North East which Delhi clamours is part of the Indian nation-building exercise can stand compromised if caution is not correctly and expeditiously exercised.
(Jaideep Saikia is a Conflict Theorist)