Blitz Bureau
NEW DELHI: CHIEF Adviser of the interim government of Bangladesh Prof. Mohammed Yunus met a high-level Pakistani military visitor during the weekend and gifted him a book that depicted parts of northeast India as part of Bangladesh.
The map in question was printed on the cover of a book that was presented to Chairman of Pakistan’s Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee (CJCSC) General Sahir Shamshad Mirza on October 2 at the state guest house Jamuna in Dhaka, according to a media report. The Ministry of External Affairs had lodged a strong protest last December when a similar map was used by a student adviser online.
The book, meant to celebrate the 2024 student movement that led to the fall of Sheikh Hasina’s government, included a map portraying Bangladesh as encompassing Assam and other northeastern Indian states. The distorted map immediately triggered backlash on social media and among political observers. The controversial map appears to represent the idea of a “Greater Bangladesh,” a concept propagated by the Dhaka-based Islamist group Sultanat-e-Bangla.
The group’s version of the map extends Bangladesh’s borders to include all of India’s Northeast, West Bengal, parts of Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, and Myanmar’s Arakan region. The visit by General Mirza took place after the August 23-24 visit to Bangladesh by Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar, who asked Bangladesh to “clean hearts” and move on from the painful memories of 1971 genocide by Pakistani military forces.
