Indo-Bangladeshi relations continue to worsen following summer’s US-backed regime change after Mahfuj Alam, the Special Assistance to Chief Advisor and de facto Bangladeshi leader Muhammad Yunus, shared a provocative map on X that made territorial claims to surrounding Indian states. That prompted India to register a strong protest even though the post was later deleted. There’s no longer any doubt that the new ruling arrangement in Dhaka is ultra-nationalist and has deep hatred for India.
Northeast India came to international attention in mid-2023 after the brief ethno-religious violence that broke out in its border state of Manipur between local Hindu Meiteis and the descendants of Christian Kukis who immigrated from Myanmar and are accused of participating in the regional drug trade. Bangladesh used to back separatist violence and identity-driven terrorism in the region before former leader Sheikh Hasina rose to power, hence India’s concerns that it might revert to its old ways.
Alam knows this, as everyone from this part of South Asia does, yet he still shared his provocative map. It’s unclear what his motivation was but he certainly worsened the security dilemma between them that emerged after Hasina’s foreign-supported ouster several months back. India used to regard Maldives as the most anti-Indian state in the region behind Pakistan after a demagogue won the presidency late last year, but now Bangladesh replaced its role after Delhi and Male recently patched up their problems.
The implications of this development are tremendous. Unlike the Maldives, Bangladesh could pose a serious threat to India’s security if it reverts to backing separatist violence and identity-driven terrorism in the Northeast States. Moreover, this could be clandestinely supported by China, Pakistan, and/or even the US, all three of which have their own serious problems with India. Any movement in this direction could have mutually disadvantageous economic consequences too given their complex interdependence.
It’s of course also possible that Alam shared that provocative map as part of a ploy for rallying the population behind its new ruling arrangement on an ultra-nationalist basis and that the authorities don’t plan to make good on the territorial claims that he pushed in that post through the aforesaid means. He might also have thought that he was waging psychological warfare on India for the purpose of coercing economic and possibly even political concessions from it but this obviously backfired if that was the case.
Bangladesh should follow in the Maldives’ footsteps by patching up its problems with India as soon as possible lest those two’s security dilemma risks spiraling out of control with uncertain consequences. There’s no reason for Bangladesh to backstab its historical ally India, which was responsible for helping it obtain independence, by making informal claims to its universally recognized territory. The new US-backed ruling arrangement’s toxic demagoguery could soon lead to India perceiving Bangladesh as a threat.
