In the sweltering heat of Dhaka’s political cauldron, Muhammad Yunusโonce the Nobel laureate hailed as a beacon of microfinance and peaceโhas morphed into a figure of profound controversy.
Since seizing power as interim Chief Adviser following the violent ouster of Sheikh Hasina in August 2024, Yunus’s regime has veered sharply toward pro-Pakistan policies, laced with provocative anti-India rhetoric and an alarming cosiness with Islamist militants. Reports suggest that a nascent Islamist militia, formed through alliances with Jamaat-e-Islami and radical outfits, is threatening to radicalise Bangladesh.
This trajectory not only imperils the nation’s fragile democracy but also poses an existential threat to India’s security, minorities in the region, and South Asian stability. As Defence Minister Rajnath Singh sternly warned Yunus last week to “watch his words,” the international community must confront this unravelling before it spirals into catastrophe.
Yunus’ Nobel sheen has faded; what remains is a regime bartering sovereignty for survival, allying with yesterday’s traitors to provoke tomorrow’s wars. South Asia cannot afford this gambleโlest the “quiet Islamist coup” explode into open conflagration.
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The rot began subtly but has accelerated into overt antagonism. Yunus’ October 2025 meeting with Pakistan’s Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, General Sahir Shamshad Mirza, was no mere diplomatic courtesy. In a gesture dripping with symbolism, Yunus gifted the general Art of Triumph, a compilation of protest graffiti from the 2024 uprising.
But beneath the artistic veneer lay a blueprint for expansionism: illustrations depicting a “Greater Bangladesh” that engulfs India’s northeastern states, particularly Assam, with “battle plans” and “post-victory management frameworks” to integrate them under Dhaka’s sway. Unnamed intelligence sources described it not as art, but a “message to transnational Islamist networks,” signalling Yunus’s alignment with forces eyeing India’s “Chicken’s Neck”โthe vulnerable 22-kilometre-wide Siliguri Corridor linking the mainland to the Northeast.
This provocation fits a pattern of Yunus’s pro-Pakistan pivot, a stark reversal from Hasina’s era of robust Indo-Bangla ties. Under Hasina, Dhaka cracked down on cross-border terrorism, dismantling networks that funnelled insurgents into India’s Northeast.
Yunus, however, has thawed relations with Islamabad, inviting Pakistani military brass and echoing their anti-India playbook. Long a patron of Bangladeshi Islamists, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) is reportedly exerting influence. According to intelligence leaks, ISI operatives have established a covert office in Dhaka’s Mohakhali DOHS, coordinating the smuggling of arms, including assault rifles, explosives, and night-vision gear, via Karachi.
Yunus’ overtures extend to China, with renewed economic pacts that sideline India, fueling New Delhi’s fears of a pincer movement on its eastern flank.
India’s response has been swift and strategic. In a bid to fortify the Siliguri Corridor, the Indian Army established three new outposts: Lachit Borphukan Military Station in Assam’s Dhubri district and forward bases in Bihar’s Kishanganj and West Bengal’s Chopraโall mere kilometres from the Bangladesh border. Eastern Army Commander Lieutenant General R. C. Tiwari laid their foundations, emphasising enhanced surveillance and rapid response capabilities.
These sites, under the Tezpur-based 4 Corps and Brahmastra Corps, integrate with Rafale jets, BrahMos missiles, and S-400 air defenses, transforming the corridor from a vulnerability into a “strongest link,” as Army Chief General Manoj Pande asserted. The moves stem directly from Yunus’s overtures to Pakistan and China, with security agencies monitoring his regime’s every twitch.
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Yet, the provocations are not mere bluster; they are underpinned by Yunus’s deepening alliance with Jamaat-e-Islami and militant fringesโan unholy matrimony that has resurrected ghosts of 1971. Jamaat, the pro-Pakistan outfit that collaborated with the Pakistani army during Bangladesh’s Liberation War, opposing independence and abetting genocide, was banned under Hasina for its terrorist ties.
Yunus lifted that ban shortly after assuming power, a “strategic alliance to consolidate power,” critics charge, legitimising a party with deep ISI patronage and a vision of an Islamic state. In June 2025, Bangladesh’s Supreme Court restored Jamaat’s registration, paving its return to electionsโ a move that spells trouble for India, given the party’s advocacy for “Ghazwa-e-Hind,” the prophesied conquest of India.
Jamaat’s rhetoric has turned incendiary. At a September 27, 2025, event in New Yorkโhosted by the Bangladesh American Association and attended by Yunus’s entourageโJamaat Nayeb-e-Amir Dr. Syed Abdullah Mohammad Taher thundered that if India invaded post-Jamaat victory, “50 lakh youth will fight… implementing Ghazwa-e-Hind.”
He envisioned guerrilla warfare and a “war of independence” across the region, recasting 1971 collaborators as “true freedom fighters.” Taher, a former MP and ideological heir to the Muslim Brotherhood, boasted of Jamaat’s role in orchestrating the 2024 protests via its student wing, Islami Chhatra Shibir. This is no fringe voice: Jamaat now mobilises under “Touhidi Janata,” organising mobs nationwide while demanding Jizyaโa medieval tax on non-Muslimsโfrom Hindus, as Emir Dr. Shafiqur Rahman declared in July 2025, invoking Sharia to equate it with Muslim Zakat.
Worse, this alliance has birthed reports of an Islamist militia: the Islamic Revolutionary Army (IRA), a Yunus-backed force aimed at supplanting the Bangladesh Army. Leaks reveal the IRA’s genesis in December 2024, announced by Yunus-loyalist students under the Anti-Discrimination Student Movement.
Ideologically fueled by Jamaat’s narrative, it recruits from radical pools: Ansar al-Islam jihadists, Rohingya refugees, and stranded Pakistanis. Brigadier General Abdullahil Amaan Azmiโson of war criminal Ghulam Azam and a Yunus confidantโoversees the plot, training suicide squads for assaults on India.
Azmi, reemerging in August 2024 after years in hiding, collaborates with pro-Pakistani ex-officers and ISI visitors, plotting to “Islamize” the army and dismantle the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI). By October 2025, Yunus’s regime charged 25 military officers with “crimes against humanity,” a purge to clear paths for IRA infiltration, analysts say.
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Yunus’ inner circle amplifies the peril. Adviser Mahfuj Alam, a former Shibir activist exposed by ex-Jamaat leaders, shared a “Greater Bangladesh” map on Facebook in July 2025โencompassing Indian territoriesโand called for jihad, deleting it only after backlash. Backed by Turkey’s Youth Federation via the “Saltanat-e-Bangla” group, this propaganda echoes at Dhaka University exhibitions.
External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar flagged it in Rajya Sabha, affirming India’s vigilance on security implications. Alam, son of a BNP leader and kin to Ahle Hadith radicals, masterminded the 2024 “uprising,” admitting to conspiracies mimicking 1969-71 movements but laced with arson and killingsโacts for which Yunus’ government granted impunity.
The foiled August 31, 2025, plot to besiege Dhaka’s Indian High Commission underscores the stakes. Armed with weapons smuggled by ISI, militants from Jama’atul Ansar Fil Hindal Sharqia (JAHS) and Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) planned to storm the mission, take hostage diplomats, and demand Hasina’s extradition, considering her refuge in India a point of contention for Islamists.
Reconnaissance masqueraded as cricket games near embassies; remote bombs and FM broadcasts for psychological warfare were primed. A US “Deep State” cover-up initially pinned it on a US Embassy attack, but Bangladeshi intelligence exposed the ruse, implicating CIA-ISI collusion. This wasn’t isolated: it reflects Yunus’s tolerance of radicals Hasina crushed, now resurgent under his “zero militancy” facade.
India’s alarm is palpable. Singh’s admonition to Yunusโ”India can handle any challenge”โechoes Modi’s April 2025 BIMSTEC warning against vitriolic rhetoric. New Delhi eyes Yunus’s power games: his May 2025 “warlike situation” ploy, blaming India for woes, delayed elections, and rallied parties like Jamaat behind him.
With Jamaat eyeing university wins and Yunus floating a “July Charter”โa supra-constitutional order akin to Iran’s Ayatollah modelโthe interim leader clings to power, unnerved by Awami League resurgence.
The implications ripple far. Jizya extortion and mob violence confront minorities, while Hefazat-e-Islam and Khelafat Majlish intensify the situation. Regionally, Yunus’s tilt invites Pakistani adventurism, Chinese inroads, and Turkish meddlingโa volatile cocktail. The US, once Hasina’s foe for her Russia-China ties, now props Yunus as a “democracy saviour,” but risks birthing another Frankenstein, as in Afghanistan.
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