Bangladesh’s Chief Adviser Muhammad Yunus has stoked yet another controversy in India after recently gifting a book to the chairman of Pakistan’s Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee (JCSC), General Sahir Shamshad Mirza.
The cover of the book, titled 'The Art of Triumph: Graffiti of Bangladesh's New Dawn', instantly sparked a furore on social media, with netizens pointing out that it allegedly featured a distorted graffiti map of Bangladesh—including all of India's northeastern states, West Bengal, Myanmar's Arakan State, and parts of Bihar, Jharkhand, and Odisha.
The title also points to the 2024 coup that overthrew the Sheikh Hasina government, with the distorted map referring to 'Greater Bangladesh', a concept championed by Dhaka-based Islamist outfit, Sultanat-e-Bangla.
This distorted map first surfaced in April this year, after it was displayed at an exhibition at the University of Dhaka on Pohela Baisakh (Bengali New Year).
An earlier version, which included parts of West Bengal, Tripura, and Assam in the map of Bangladesh, sparked backlash online after Yunus aide Nahidul Islam floated the idea of 'Greater Bangladesh'.
Notably, this is Yunus' second verbal barb at India after an April visit to China, in which he called Bangladesh the "only guardian of the ocean" for the region, because "the seven states of India, the eastern part of India ... they are a landlocked country. They have no way to reach out to the ocean," he was quoted as saying, at the time.
"The Yusuf fangs are out," one user wrote on X.
"Bangladeshis mingling with Pakistanis was the last uno reverse I thought we'll face in this decade but alas, religion intermingled with politics leads to crazy events," a Redditor noted, pointing to the fact that Bangladesh-Pakistan relations have been typically sour since 1971.
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"But i beg your pardon sir why an military general of Pakistan discussing trade ties with a civil prime minister. It does not make sense," an X user questioned.