Bangladesh is not what it used to be. The familiar portrait of a secular, India-friendly neighbour has faded post-Hasina, and in its place stands a new Bangladesh, driven by Islamist fervour and charting a dangerously erratic geopolitical course.

‘Inshallah Bangladesh’, an explosive book authored by senior Indian journalists Deep Halder and Jaideep Mazumdar, and Bangladeshi journalist Sahidul Hasan Khokon, tears the curtain on this metamorphosis.

Halder, Mazumdar, and Khokon do not mince words. They show how Bangladesh’s ideological foundation has shifted from liberation pride to Islamist assertion. The book vividly brings to light how the fall of the Hasina regime was not a political transition but a moral collapse, a vacuum that was swiftly filled by Islamists, Pakistan nostalgists, and anti-India activists.

The book unsparingly brings out how Bangladesh today has become a country where anti-Hindu rhetoric serves as political oxygen, where India is caricatured as a “Hindu state,” where Islamist mobs dictate foreign policy, and where Pakistan and Turkey have emerged as emotional and ideological anchors. Beneath all this simmers a fantasy called “Greater Bangladesh,” nurtured not just by Islamists but also by students, professors, bureaucrats, and even retired generals, the book reveals.

‘Greater Bangladesh’ fantasy

The book records how Islamists in Bangladesh fantasise about severing the Northeast from the rest of India and bringing it under Bangladesh’s fold, even imagining a future in which West Bengal, Assam, Odisha, and Bihar are absorbed into the so called “Greater Bangladesh.’

The book captures a disturbing scene at Dhaka University, where a section of students are reciting rhymes about making Northeast India a part of Bangladesh. In another scene, cited in the book, a female research scholar is reciting a limerick that speaks of Bangladeshis visiting Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland — territories she claims would “soon become part of their country.”

That is not all. The book also mentions a radical map, circulated by a group called Suotantr e Bangla, which openly calls for the creation of a “Greater Bangladesh”.

It further documents rallies held by teachers and students across Bangladeshi universities, with participants raising explicit calls for Bangladesh to deploy its armed forces to “occupy” Northeast India.

The book brings out that retired Major General ALM Fazlur Rahman wrote on Facebook: “If India attacks Pakistan, Bangladesh should occupy the seven States of Northeast India.”

Rahman, who is also a former Director General of the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR), has floated a platform called Nirdolio Jano Andolan, whose manifesto proposes raising a “national army” to “invade India,” “liberate” Northeast India and Sikkim, and annex Assam, West Bengal, Bihar, and Odisha into Bangladesh, the book reveals.

The book further brings out that Rahman told Pakistani journalist Sultan M Hali that Bangladeshi-origin Muslims living in Assam, West Bengal, Bihar, and Odisha could serve as the “fifth........

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