Muhammad Yunus believes he can play China against India, the US, but having burnt their fingers in CPEC and CMEC, the Chinese, while keen on the Bay of Bengal, are also wary.
Like Caesar, Bangladesh’s Chief Adviser Muhammad Yunus should have been warned about the ides of March before his visit to China on 26-29 March.
Perhaps he was enthused by the welcome he received including travelling to Beijing on a plane sent by China. Perhaps he saw it as payback for not receiving an invitation from India, the destination he wanted for his first bilateral visit. Whatever the instigation, his comments on a landlocked Indian Northeast, and Bangladesh as the “guardian of the ocean”, raise strategic questions about how beleaguered Yunus really feels at the moment.
The Chinese would have seen these comments for what they were—Yunus trying hard to, at least in narrative terms, balance Indian concerns, and pressure from the US, using the China card. For, among other things, Yunus is wrong.
It is unclear how Bangladesh can claim to be the guardian of the ocean, meaning the Bay of Bengal, in this case, with two refurbished Ming Class diesel-electric submarines from China, and a handful of corvettes and frigates. This claim is particularly unwieldy considering the Bay of Bengal has always been India’s backwaters and its domain of influence. India has two naval commands in the region—the Eastern Naval Command at Vishakhapatnam, and the Andaman and Nicobar Command at the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. In fact, the Greater Nicobar Islands are now being redeveloped in one of the biggest maritime projects in India to create an international business, trade, and security hub. India has also built Project Varsha, a naval base to house its SSBNs (nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines) in the Bay of Bengal, and its extensive naval forces are the first port of call for any issue in these waters.
So, both the Chinese and Yunus know that his claims of Bangladesh being the guardian of ocean are misplaced, to say the least. Yunus would also be aware that, in fact, one of the reasons why the US fell out with Sheikh Hasina, the former prime minister of Bangladesh who was ousted last year after widespread protests, was her interest in cooperating with the Chinese in the Bay of Bengal. The US (and India) has been concerned that Bangladesh would allow the construction of strategic naval assets of the Chinese in these waters. The BNS Sheikh Hasina submarine base at Pekua in Cox’s Bazaar—relatively close to India’s Andaman and Nicobar Command—has been a lingering bone of contention. Therefore, offering the Chinese even greater access to the Bay of Bengal wins Yunus no friends in India or the US.
Then, there is the issue of the Indian Northeast which Yunus described as landlocked with no access to the sea barring the Siliguri Corridor (sometimes called the “chicken’s neck”) which connects the states of the Indian Northeast to the rest of India. Now, cutting this corridor off and bifurcating the northeastern states of Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram, and Tripura from the other parts of India has been a consistent aim of all kinds of groups including assorted separatists, Islamist jihadis, and rival countries. Mentioning this does not win Yunus any brownie points either.
So, why did he say such things?
The reason is perhaps Muhammad Yunus, a Nobel Laureate and micro-finance expert, is more beleaguered at home than ever. Contrary to the projected image, he faces critical challenges on ground in Bangladesh. First, he has no democratic legitimacy. He is not an elected leader and has no mandate from the people of Bangladesh. He was selected by the leaders of the mass protests against Hasina as a good technocrat to put Bangladesh on the growth path and reform its institutions. But this is easier said than done in Bangladesh’s vicious politics which has always been authoritarian and with frequent military coups. In fact, Bangladesh was abuzz only a few weeks ago with detailed news of another military coup by some key commanders and their Islamist supporters against the incumbent military chief, who is a relative of Sheikh Hasina. Reports suggest that the coup of was scuttled using Indian help, and intelligence assistance. Hasina herself narrowly escaped such a coup in 2009. Something similar happened again in 2012, and, reports suggest, was being planned right after Hasina’s ouster in August 2024.
There has been widespread concern, even though Yunus and his team dismiss this, that Islamist elements in Bangladesh have been trying for a long time to overthrow any democratic government in Bangladesh, and create a sharia-ruled state with the help of the Bangladesh military. Such plans have been foiled till now but, no doubt Yunus asks himself, for how long can such conspiracies be nipped in a country where radical Islam has spread swiftly in recent years. And if elements in the Bangladesh army were willing to violently overthrow Hasina, seen as one of the toughest rulers in the country’s history, can Yunus, a technocrat and an unelected leader, really stop them?
Their point about the Indian Northeast is a ruse. In fact, what surely worries Yunus more is what is happening at the border of Bangladesh with Myanmar. For years, Bangladesh has struggled to provide resources for the tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees that have poured in uprooted
On the other side, bordering the Siliguri Corridor is the area of Rangpur with a substantial minority population including tribals. This is again a region from where complaints of atrocities against Hindus, and one of the biggest campaigns to protect minorities was organized by the Sammilit Sanatani Jagran Jot, a minority rights civil movement, in Rangpur in 2024 protesting attacks from radical Islamists on minorities. Any breakaway of Rangpur from Bangladesh would resolve India’s chicken’s neck problem, and thus, this is another area of concern for any Bangladesh government, including Yunus.
Yunus is also being hemmed in by political competition. It was widely expected that elections would be held soon after Hasina left Dhaka but a clear timeline for this is awaited. Yunus now says that it is vital for the country to bring about radical reform at the institutional level before elections are held. This argument has merit but his political rivals are not buying it. The main opposition to Hasina’s Awami League party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), has repeatedly urged finalisation of dates for elections to be held.
What has also rung alarm bells is the consistent destruction of anything connected to Mujibur Rahman, the father of Bangladeshi independence and nationhood and the father of Hasina, who was assassinated by conspirators in the Bangladesh military in 1975. The burning down of the house of Rahman, known as Bangabandhu or friend of Bangladesh, and Islamist eradication of many symbols of the Muktijuddho or Bangladesh’s war for independence from Pakistan, and, at the same time, the new-found desire to build ties with Pakistan, is being watched carefully by other political parties. The BNP has recently said that eliminating all memory of the war for liberation would not be correct.
With each passing month, as Yunus hangs on to power, his position becomes more fragile. Even the assistance he desires from China has become clouded by China’s own experience of being hopelessly embroiled in conflicts in the region. In Pakistan, Baloch rebels have brought to a crushing halt any lavish dream of a thriving China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). China has lost both a lot of money (estimates vary between $20-50 billion), and lives of its engineers, in building CPEC through Balochistan. Similarly, in Myanmar, the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor (CMEC) is now overshadowed by the relentless civil war. Does China wish to invest heavily in one more conflict-ridden South Asian country—and if yes, to what extent and under what security guarantees remains to be seen.
The Yunus team often argues that with one of the youngest populations in the world, and significant maritime assets, Bangladesh is ripe for extensive foreign investments. They are right, but their old friends, the Democrats, are no longer in power in Washington, with new, heavy tariffs coming from the Trump administration, even Bangladesh’s famed textile industry is in peril. It is worth remembering that low wages coupled with crippling inflation caused by the energy price shock following the war in Ukraine brought the beginning of the end to the Hasina government.
Without making peace with India, which supplies everything from electricity-to-baby food to Bangladesh, its dreams of prospering while keeping Islamist insurgency at bay most probably cannot be fulfilled. But Yunus is not helping his cause. He may yet live to regret his words and ideas from March 2025.
* Hindol Sengupta is a historian and professor of international relations at the O. P. Jindal Global University.