Bangladesh’s Bluster On Northeast India: Empty Threats, Or More?

How serious is the slogan for wresting the seven sister states in India’s northeast region, raised by Islamic extremists in Bangladesh, for New Delhi? For a proper assessment of the political challenge this poses for India, a brief study of background information is necessary.

Bangladesh sought to revive old links with Pakistan towards the end of Sheikh Hasina’s 2019-24 tenure as Prime Minister. Meanwhile, the ruling establishment in Islamabad was expanding its tenuous intelligence network in India’s Northeast states. In a sense, Pakistan already had a foothold close to the NE region. Its powerful intelligence organisation, the ISI, had established a strong presence in Nepal. It was there that its hijacking of an Indian Airlines plane in 1999 was conceived and executed.

Bangladesh had also upgraded its diplomatic ties with Turkiye, a consistent backer of Pakistan in its dispute with India over Kashmir. Ties between Ankara and Dhaka were close, as visiting Turkish delegations and officials suggested setting up arms manufacturing centres in Bangladesh.

Meanwhile, at home the ruling Awami League (AL) was losing ground over its alleged corruption and a poor human rights violation record, which had alienated the West. The Awami League enjoyed little international support, except in India. Agitations by opposition forces like the Bangladesh Nationalist party (BNP), the Jamaat-e-Islami JEI) etc, were becoming more aggressive, drawing in more support.

As Prime Minister, Hasina could not afford a growing alienation among common people within Bangladesh, on top of her isolation internationally. She encouraged the growth of new upstart outfits like Hifazat-e-Islam (HI) which she used as a stick to beat down the BNP! (Shades of the Congress led by late Prime Minister India Gandhi to support the JS Bhindranwale-led militant Sikhs to keep the Akali Dal down!)

Apparently, Ms Hasina misread the bitter political message implicit in Mrs. Gandhi’s tragic death: A short-sighted policy of flirting with political extremism never worked in the long term for secular ruling parties.

Already in Bangladesh, the signs were ominous: for Sheikh Hasina and the Awami League, long before August 5, 2025.

Pro Hifazat elements forced the Awami League government to remove public sculptures and murals built on secular themes from prominent places. They exerted pressure on the judiciary. They ran rampant among student activists in the universities and colleges, posing a threat to Chhatra League, affiliated to the Awami League.

Radicalised youths in the HI and JEI gave notice of their newly achieved domination in Bangladesh in 2021 itself. They carried out an unusually violent anti-India demonstration for two days running, forcing the visiting Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to curtail his scheduled programmes. The genie had escaped from the bottle, as far as the Awami League was concerned.

The anti-India demonstrators had exposed the helplessness of the Bangladesh police, its rapid action battalions or the BGB guards. Further, they served notice to the government of India as well about their growing clout. Surprisingly, there was little reaction from the Indian government to the public heckling PM Modi had suffered in Dhaka.

Bangladeshi analysts explained that Pakistani agents who functioned openly as they met rising younger leaders in Dhaka and the districts, had performed their task very well. The overall dominance of India in Bangladesh had been challenged for the first time and Delhi could do little.

In retrospect, policymakers both in Dhaka and Delhi can be censured for their complacency, their incompetence in the face of a rapidly growing menace of Islamic extremism among Bangladeshi youths. They overlooked or ignored the new major political trend emerging in Asia and Africa, wherein students/youths played a big role in various West-sponsored ‘colour revolutions’ in other countries, bringing down one ruling regime after another.

Even the lessons of the successful coup carried out by anti-Russian forces in Ukraine in 2014– in this case, the increasing radicalisation of youths armed by the West – were apparently not learnt. Bottom line for ruling parties, there should be no collaboration with political extremism, which mostly devours its sponsors.

However, it must not be assumed that as new anti-Indian leaders and organisations, which have appeared in Bangladesh in the shape of Dr Yunus and parties like the National Citizens Party (NCP), have already consolidated their present authority. Far from it. For all their provocative rhetoric about cutting off the Indian Northeast region and taking over parts of West Bengal from India, they have little striking power vis-a-vis India, even if they join forces with Pakistan.

It is significant that so far China has not given any reaction to the Bangladeshi call to ‘free the seven sister states’. Only a section of the Pakistan mainstream media has reported Dr. Yunus’s call. But no senior official/spokesperson in Pakistan has commented on the issue. Russia says relations with Bangladesh will continue as before. There has been no official reaction from the EU/US bloc countries.

Significantly, even within Bangladesh, no major leader or party has bothered to comment on Yunus’s demand to carve the NE states out of India.

Coupled with the total silence on the issue from the rest of the world, this suggests that the Indian government need not take Yunus’s capers very seriously.

As for the NE region’s response to the call for seceding from India, it is a tempting for newspersons to ask Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma to express his views on Dr. Yunus’s words on the NE or about Bangladesh in general.

In case Dr. Yunus has forgotten basic details about the seven sister states, he needs to be reminded that Assam is the largest state in India’s Northeast. He should understand that Bangladeshis are not exactly popular in Assam. Special detention centres have been built in Assam and other states to detain illegal Bangladeshis prior to their deportation to Bangladesh.

And the outlook for Bangladeshis is not much better in, Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram or Meghalaya.

Major student/youth organisations in the Northeast, like the AASU, the Khasi students” union, the NESO and the AJYCP, have always opposed illegal infiltration from Bangladesh. They have been in the forefront of mass agitations against infiltration from Bangladesh.

Therefore, except for visiting Bangladeshis travelling in India (including its NE region!) with proper documentation, it is not irrational to suggest that dubious non visitor Bangladeshis generally arouse suspicion and distrust among common people here, with due apologies to Dr. Yunus, Chief Advisor to the interim Government of Bangladesh. (IPA Service)