When Modi met Yunus in Bangkok

Two events book-end the meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Bangladesh Chief Advisor Muhammad Yunus in Bangkok on Friday on the margins of the BIMSTEC meeting. The first, when an irate mob tried to burn down the house of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman on August 5, 2024, marking a regime change in Bangladesh, moments after Sheikh Hasina fled Dhaka for Delhi and the so-called Students’ Revolution ushered the US-trained economist into the top job — the house was successfully burnt down exactly two months ago on February 5, under Yunus’ watch.

The second is the meeting between Yunus and Chinese businessmen in Beijing last week, where he made his now infamous and uncomplimentary remarks about India’s seven north-eastern states, affectionately called the “seven sisters.”

“Seven Sisters of India are a landlocked region — they have no way to reach the ocean. We are the only guardian of the ocean for all of this region… From Bangladesh, you can go anywhere you want. The ocean is in our backyard. So, this is the opportunity that you want to take,” Yunus told the Chinese.

Perhaps, the Bangladeshi is really just a simple man. Perhaps, some of what he said was lost in translation. Perhaps the reaction of the Indian political class, from S Jaishankar to Himanta Biswa Sarma and Pradyot Manikya Barman, has been unduly harsh.

But the fact remains that the Bangladeshi leader’s comments on the eve of his meeting with the Prime Minister, referring to India’s soft underbelly — which has been prone to insurgency, arms infiltration, including from the time Khaleda Zia’s BNP was in power from 2001-2006, and communal convulsions — may not have been the most diplomatic thing to say.

It struck a deep and uncomfortable chord in India — perhaps, because it is also true.

But here’s a second fact. In terms of the exercise of sheer, brute power, India has the ability to overcome its own weakness in the North-East and strike elsewhere if it believes that it is being unfairly pushed around.

That’s why India’s smaller neighbours look to the big dragon in the room if and when they feel they are being given short shrift by India — except in most cases, and certainly in Bangladesh’s, China is far too far away. Moreover, the same analogy works both ways. If India’s “seven sisters” are hemmed in by Bangladesh, then Bangladesh’s hinterland is really Indian territory.

Both statesmen and geographers understood that fundamental fact early — that geography is not just history, it is also present-day politics and diplomacy. Winston Churchill wasn’t wrong when he decided he wasn’t going to be the prime minister that gave up the jewel in the empire. Excavation upon excavation of the Partition years tells us that the British weren’t going to just let the undivided subcontinent remain one, syncretic unit when they finally left, kicking and screaming, in 1947.

Fast-forward to 2025. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar swiftly responded to Yunus’ childish comments on the “seven sisters,” pointing out that India not just has a long eastern seaboard, about 6,500 km, but that it shares a border with five nations around the Bay of Bengal and provides “much of the interface between the Indian subcontinent and ASEAN.”

Certainly, India’s extraordinary power, especially in its neighbourhood, cannot be wished away — not in 1971, not in 2025. It’s another matter that Sheikh Hasina had pretty much followed a scorched-earth policy in recent years — it is equally true that New Delhi had not approved of several of her moves, especially her outright refusal to reach out to the other woman in Bangladeshi politics, Khaleda Zia, to broker peace in Bangladesh. India ended up supporting Hasina because it knew that the options were far worse.

Those dark fears have come to pass. The August 5 regime change in Bangladesh has not just swept out Bangabandhu’s legacy, it has allowed — nay, welcomed — the sinister presence of the Pakistan ISI in Bangladesh. Back in 1971, on March 26, hours after Mujib declared “independence” from Pakistan, the Pakistan Army had cracked down in an operation termed “Operation Searchlight” — 54 years and some days ago — killing hundreds of intellectuals, civilians and students.

Today, the Pakistan Army’s handmaiden and spy agency, the ISI, is back on the streets of Dhaka and Chittagong and elsewhere. The wheel is turning full circle. Not to be forgotten is the likely role that the US intelligence establishment is likely to have played last year in the return of Chief Advisor Yunus to the top job in Dhaka.

Some would say, not so fast. That the chapter on this latest regime change is not yet concluded. That the Bangladesh Army chief, Gen Waker-uz-Zaman, who hails from the time of Hasina, still remains chief and a force to reckon with. That the Bangladesh Army, many of whom grew up on the stories of their predecessors fighting as “muktijoddhas” in the 1971 war against Pakistan, aren’t going to give up their influence so easily.

Question is, what now? Will Yunus call elections soon and will the BNP come to power, and with it the son of Khaleda Zia, Tarique Rahman, who has lived in London these last several years since his mother lost the 2006 polls? Perhaps that is the future, perhaps because Hasina’s Awami League is so decimated.

Certainly, the predominant motif in Bangladesh today is a muddied sense of the present and all sides, including Yunus, would do well to remember that. Those with long memories will google back to an item in the London Guardian from March 2007, confirming that the Bangladesh army picked up Tarique in a midnight swoop. That’s a long time ago but Tarique certainly remembers that night and so do a few more in Dhaka.

It’s a good thing that Modi met Yunus in Bangkok. If the Pakistanis want to rewrite 1971, with or without a little help from their erstwhile friends in America, the good economist should certainly be made aware. The same Bay of Bengal laps both our shores. The sky’s the limit to our friendship, especially if you together watch the sun go down on the white, sandy beaches of Cox’s Bazaar.

The point here is that Dhaka should always know that Delhi always knows.

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