India’s relations with Bangladesh, once considered a model of regional cooperation in South Asia, have entered a period of deep uncertainty and strain since the fall of Sheikh Hasina’s government in August 2024. The interim regime led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus has displayed a pattern of behaviour that many in India interpret as openly antagonistic and strategically provocative. From inflammatory rhetoric and symbolic gestures to the revival of ties with Pakistan and growing proximity to China, the Yunus administration appears to be steering Bangladesh away from the cooperative trajectory established during the Hasina years and into a confrontational stance that directly threatens India’s security and territorial integrity.

The latest provocation came during Yunus’s meeting with Pakistan’s military chief General Sahir Shamshad Mirza in Dhaka in October 2025, when the Bangladeshi leader handed over an artwork titled Art of Triumph. The cover of the artwork allegedly depicts parts of India’s Northeast ~ including Assam, Tripura, and West Bengal ~ as integral to a “Greater Bangladesh.” This act, which Dhaka has yet to clarify or disown, has been interpreted in India as a symbolic assertion of expansionist intent. The fact that this gesture was directed at a visiting Pakistani general further magnifies its significance, evoking the spectre of a Dhaka-Islamabad rapprochement rooted in anti-India sentiment. This episode is not an isolated aberration but part of a consistent pattern of hostility.

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Since assuming office, Yunus has made several statements portraying India’s Northeast as “landlocked” and Bangladesh as its “guardian of the ocean”, implying a form of dependency that challenges India’s sovereignty. His close aides have made even more incendiary remarks. In the wake of the Pahalgam terrorist attack in April 2025, which claimed the lives of 26 Hindu pilgrims, retired Major General A.L.M. Fazlur Rahman ~ now head of the National Independent Commission appointed by Yunus’s government ~ suggested that if India retaliated against Pakistan, Bangladesh should exploit the opportunity to “occupy India’s Northeast” with China’s help.

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While the Bangladeshi Ministry of Foreign Affairs later distanced itself from Rahman’s statement, the damage was already done. The fact that such rhetoric........

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